The extract on the Guardian’s website proves its pretty affecting stuff, but grief poetry really isn’t my thing. Because it deals with something to which there are no real answers, I find it depressingly unilluminating, not to mention frightening and ultimately, what I want from poetry is something to help me see through the darkness.
Without meaning any disrespect to Reid, I also think it takes something off the significance of a poetry book winning an award when its content is so personal and emotional. We live in an age where misery memoirs have their own shelf in the bookshop and it’s hard not to suspect that this culture-wide fascination with pain is somehow involved in the judgement. Or at least I find it hard.
