Urban Lights Book Review

Where Urban Lights Reflect Hope
By “The Homeless Poet”
Published by the Endless Bookcase
ISBN: 978-1-917061-10-0
Price: £5.99

A regular contributor of poems and stories to The Big Issue magazine, ‘The Homeless Poet’ claims that a love of, and a desire to create, literature has been a constant in his life for many years. In the preamble to his book, ‘Where Urban Lights Reflect Hope’, he expresses the wish to contribute to society through these poems. He states that “enduring street life is tough and adapting [to being] homeless has been transformative.”

His book’s 41 poems explore the issues of homeless life, including the threats and violence that are an ever-present reality; revealing the destitution inherent in that life which can so easily lead to despair, and outlining the approach of ‘society’ to homelessness made manifest by authorities such as the police.

The sentiments expressed may be predictable (as in the poems ‘Homeless Hate’ and ‘Destitution’) and the homeless lifestyle and its consequences seem inevitable (as in the poems ‘January’s Shadow of Death’ and ‘Shelter’) but the poems’ edgy, contemporary style paints a vibrant, unambiguous image of a dystopian real world that barely touches the lives of most of the poems’ readers – an issue which is explored in the poem, ‘The Dosser’.

Towards the end of the book, some poems explore wider, but related issues – such as the murder of George Floyd, a black American man who lost his life on 25th May 2020, in Minneapolis, Minnesota. There are also poems of a more personal nature, relating to the poet’s father and daughter; while the final two poems are introspective self-examinations. Not every poet will be able to identify with the first stanza of the final poem (‘The Poet 2’) but very many will echo the sentiments in its final stanza: “I’m a poet shorn of chance, ignored with distain, screaming in outbursts, mocked in pain and impotent to change the circumstances…”

Collections of poems – even those written by well-known authors – rarely become ‘best sellers’, however worthy their crafting or their focus. That doesn’t mean they don’t deserve to be more widely read or that their literary value is less than other writings. As a poet of yesteryear, Thomas Gray, wrote, in ‘Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard’, “Full many a flow’r is born to blush unseen, And waste its sweetness on the desert air.”

This ‘flower’ – this collection of 41 poems – deserves not to ‘waste its sweetness’. Rather, its perspectives, especially illuminating the issues facing the homeless, deserve to inform and challenge a wide audience. The Homeless Poet should be praised for speaking out on these issues – and the Endless Bookcase should be congratulated on taking the commercially brave decision to publish his work.

By Bob Little