Reviews — August 8
Review: If The World Were Upside Down by John Englezos
By Gem Mahadeo
I like to think that every poem or collection has a ‘hook’, or a ‘way in’ that reveals itself gradually to its reader or listener. When reading John Englezos’ collection If The World Were Upside Down, it seemed important to honour that John is a poet whose words need to be heard as he performs them, rather than to be read off the page.
Thankfully, there’s lots of clips online of John performing many of the poems in this collection. I wanted to start with the one that personally ‘hooked’ me in – ‘The Proper Way to Make a Cup of Tea (YouTube)’:
I admittedly giggled cheekily at the beginning words, because I am a tea-lover, and also may still fall in love with not-just-men:
Young man
If you wish to learn the proper way to make a cup of tea
meet a girl
fall in love
and get married
John preempts the feelings this might bring up in the reader/listener – perhaps ridicule, amusement, excitement, inward groaning as the poem continues:
Hear me out
In an age where gas was lit and fire burned
a kettle would whistle to you the constant reminder of its boiling brew
Now he’s captured our full attention, and we feel like we need to know what has to follow – he’s mentioned things that are common to many of our everyday lives, and we want to know: what does making tea well have to do with love, with care, with intentional acts shared?
This collection is full of poems that celebrate the wonder in the ordinary, in those things we might take for granted in our lives. I especially like that ‘The Proper Way to Make a Cup of Tea’ can also be taken as an exercise in mindfulness. From a mental health perspective, the act of listening to or of reading a poem that talks to you the way John does is incredibly comforting, or downright amusingly raucous.
An example of his playful, more surrealist take on life is in the title poem ‘If The Worl
