Scala Radio Book Club: Days Like These by Brian Bilston
Perfect for reading aloud and sharing with friends
Last updated 13th Oct 2022
In the Scala Radio Book Club on Thursday 13th October, Mark Forrest chatted to poet Brian Bilston, on his brand-new collection of poems Days Like These: An Alternative Guide to the Year in 366 Poems.
Frequently described as the ‘Poet Laureate of Twitter’, Brian Bilston is a poet clouded in the pipe smoke of mystery. Very little is known about him other than the fragments of information revealed on social media.
In this playful, innovative collection, Brian Bilston writes a poem to accompany every day of the year. Each poem is inspired by a significant - often curious - event associated with that day: from Open an Umbrella Indoors Day to the day on which New York banned public flirting; from the launch of the Rubik's Cube to the first appearance of the phrase, 'the best thing since sliced bread'.
Perfect for reading aloud and sharing with friends, Days Like These: An alternative guide to the year in 366 poems will take the blues out of Monday, flatten the Wednesday hump, and amplify that Friday feeling. A brilliant way to enliven every day of the year.
Mark began the interview asking why Brian decided to write this project.
‘I think it partly sprang out of the fact that I have a novel called Diary of a Somebody where the main protagonist tries to write a poem a day and fails. So, I thought, well maybe I could give it a go, and I think given my origin, as a poet writing daily poems on Twitter, it felt like something I could do. But it took a while. I couldn’t actually write at the pace of a poem a day, so it’s probably taken about 3 years to get the book into this shape.’
Mark was interested to know, ‘How do you land on the ideas you use in your poems?’
‘I suppose there are certain topics that stand out for me. Literary entries like when books have been published, or indeed, there are a lot of awareness days for endangered animals, so both of those are go-to topics.’
Mark asked, ‘For those who eagerly wait for your poems to drop on Twitter, and contact you, to let you know that they would love to follow in your footsteps. Do you encourage them, and how encouraging can you be? Is this a potential job for many?’
‘Whether it’s a job or not is neither here nor there,’ said Brian. ‘It should be more than that, and what it’s about, is the right to express yourself, regardless of whether other people enjoy what you write. It’s really about trying to get down the words that are in my head. Often, I’ve offloaded things that are in my brain, so I’m writing as therapy, rather than as a job.’
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