Days Like These: An Alternative Guide to the Year in 366 Poems by Brian Bilston (Picador, £16.99)
The poem-a-day format of poetry publishing is ripe for subversion. One suspects the tongue of the “poet laureate of Twitter” is in his cheek when celebrating such wildly various historic occasions as Charles I’s execution, Dylan going electric and … Bilston finding one of his books in a charity shop. He succeeds when he describes the specific in the mundane, such as on TV: “I used to believe that the tiny people in the magic box / were watching me as I watched them – / looking out at somebody else inside a tiny box”.
A Little Resurrection by Selina Nwulu (Bloomsbury, £9.99)
“I’ve been an angel before. No big deal, but it’s true.” From the off, the first collection by a former young poet laureate for London grabs the attention. Ranging across poems dealing with deportation and repatriation, trying to find a home between cultures, and charting the impact of this on Black bodies, Nwulu’s voice is direct and disarming, powered by a quiet anger. She is particularly good at illuminating the eddies of grief, thanks to her ability to freeze-frame decisive moments. When her father dies in hospital, there are “scattered around him, debris of a quiet bomb”. A compelling debut.
England’s Green by Zaffar Kunial (Faber, £10.99)
Kunial’s second collection sees him find serenity within the roar of modern England. He directs us to look at not just war memorials and hedges (“This place is full of them”), but cities and “the locked stone wreath / of motorways” too. His ability to convey moments of sheer loveliness remains unmatched; his style is simple, declarative, elegant. A guarded sense of the spiritual provides another thread to bind the poems together. Ings, a long poem that braids JL Carr and a speed awareness course into a meditation on mourning, is a brilliant example of this: “There is something / locked-in about grief, but there is something / horribly unlocked about grieving.”
After Sylvia, edited by Ian Humphreys and Sarah Corbett (Nine Arches, £14.99)
Nearly 90 years after her birth, Sylvia Plath remains a touchstone for many writers. Here, 60 established and emerging poets including Kunial, Pascale Petit and Mona Arshi celebrate Plath’s influence on them despite, as Corbett says in her introduction, it not being easy to write after her. Karen McCarthy Woolf’s Ariel is one effort that jumps out, combining precision, delicacy and rage. Contributors don’t shy away from parts of Plath’s work that are problematic, such as Degna Stone’s essay on her use of racist language. Ultimately the anthology will send you back to the poems, the best kind of tribute. As Emily Berry puts it in Last Poem, “And everything / you wrote is alive”.
Journeys Across Breath: Poems 1975-2005 by Stephen Watts (Prototype, £15)
Watts has, for the past 45 years, been one of the UK’s most singular poetic voices. A friend and influence on WG Sebald, Watts has forged connections between cultures and countries, finding the common humanity – sometimes even rapture – between us. It has been hard to get hold of his work, so this selection is welcome. His primary concern is how the language we need to truly express ourselves is always out of reach, yet we must keep trying to speak: “Not that there is a gate to be climbed / through in my lyric – / but what is a poem if not an opening / onto an open field”. This is a wonderful way to get to know a wonderful poet.
• Rishi Dastidar is co-editor of Too Young, Too Loud, Too Different: Poems from Malika’s Poetry Kitchen (Corsair).
