Gold Light Shining by Bebe Ashley

Regular visitors to this blog will know I love a bit of poetry so I was delighted to get the opportunity to read and review a new collection. My thanks to Anne Cater for the invitation and to the author and publisher for my review copy.

The Blurb:

In her debut collection of poetry, Bebe Ashley spins gold from the detritus of the internet. A landscape often depicted as a wasteland is illuminated in poems that explore celebrity, obsession, sexuality, coming of age, and that charismatic enigma, Harry Styles. Inspired by sources as diverse as Styles's track listings, Scandi webseries Skam, and One Direction newsletters, Ashley spins us across continents on a tour of the surreal highs and absurd lows of celebrity culture. These are poems of youth and yearning, yet they're suffused with the hard-won wisdom that the communities we build can be as meaningful as the families we're born into. Perceptive, witty, and exuberant, Gold Light Shining introduces an essential new voice; one that captures how pop culture's Technicolor joy disrupts our greyscale world.

My Review:

I never once imagined I'd be reviewing a collection of poems inspired by Harry Styles, formerly of One Direction, yet here I am! I should start by saying I'm not particularly a fan of his but neither do I dislike him and I admired the change of direction his music took after One Direction broke up. Have they actually broken up, or are they taking a long break? Anyway, I digress. You don't need to be a fan to enjoy this collection because whilst it was loosely inspired by all things Styles, it 's not about him. Not directly anyway. 

Split into four sections - Fandom, Fan girl, Fanfic, and Fan Mail - this collection is full of joy. The author clearly a lover of music, and not just Harry Styles and One Direction! And the whole music culture; the live shows, the clothes, the glamour, the fans, the whole package. But these poems aren't all about music, they're about life and love. 

I really liked 'From the Dining Table' about the simple act of having a coffee and a chat with a loved one, 'Oh No' about puddle soaked undies, tattoos at the Botanic Gardens in 'Ink and Hellebore' and looking back at a life well lived in 'Give Pop Music, Give Peace a Chance.'

Prose poems aren't usually my thing but I loved the Fanfic section, a series of short prose poems telling the story of the tentative beginnings of a romance between two young men. 'Woozy' was my favourite here, I think. The poems in this section were inspired by characters from a Scandinavian webseries called Skam (a Styles song featured in the first series of the German remake, Druck). 

I don't know whether any of this collection was written in the last twelve months but given the uncertain times we are living in just now when everything can feel a bit bleak, I hope Ashley will forgive me for sharing one of the last poems in the book because I think it speaks to now:

                     In a Time When Joy Feels Like an Endangered Resource

                     Things are very simple - 

                                     protect each other.

Gold Light Shining is a fun, joyous and colourful debut collection - just what was needed in a cold, damp January! I look forward to seeing where Bebe Ashley goes next. 

As a wee aside, as someone who works with deafblind adults can I just say how impressed I am that Bebe is learning British Sign Language and Braille. How cool is that! Brilliant. 

The Author:

Bebe Ashley lives in Belfast. She is an AHRC funded PhD candidate at the Seamus Heaney Centre for Poetry. Her work can be found in Poetry Birmingham Literary Journal, Poetry Ireland Review, Banshee, Modern Poetry in Translation, Poetry Jukebox and The Tangerine. When procrastinating from her PhD, she takes British Sign Language and Braille classes and writes pop culture articles for United by Pop, specialising in Harry Styles.