Scrolling! Yes!” enthuses Louisa Reid. “Phones have changed the way people read. Those short lines. Sometimes playful. Sometimes endlessly analysed for deeper meaning. They’ve primed us for poetry.” No wonder, then, that verse novels are trending in the YA (young adult) market. Authors including Sarah Crossan, Elizabeth Acevedo, Jason Reynolds and Kwame Alexander have all used the form to explore the intense emotions of adolescence. Those books inspired Reid – who has published five prose novels for YA readers – to write her first adult novel in verse.
Consequently, The Poet delivers the propulsive kick you get watching a shocking drama unfold on a friend’s social media account. In short, sharp lines it unspools the story of Emma: a 25-year-old Oxford graduate stuck in a toxic relationship with her former lecturer, Tom. Their affair began when he was still her teacher (“that intoxicating thrust of knowledge… my arse on your desk”). Working-class Emma won a coveted poetry prize and published her first book at 21. But four years of Tom’s withering critiques of her work (“you cocked your leg and pissed on my newly painted promise”) have left her unable to write. Instead, she’s stuck at home washing his socks while he bathes in the adulation of his students and leverages his role as a celebrity academic with a blue tick on Twitter. When she googles him she finds:
