Don’t Let It Go To Your Head is the first poetry book by the activist/artist Liv Wynter, and it offers up some very inspirational rage. Poems lament lost love all the while connecting shitty exes to the shitty tory state of affairs that continues to produce such assholes en masse. It’s a collection both angry and vulnerable, raw with emotion without losing radical, pointedly political grit. If anything, the emotion adds to it's politics.
Liv Wynter held an Instagram launch for the book, and during their reading they admitted that the book could have been published by somebody else, but didn’t want to abandon their dream-cover. The cover indeed is pretty cool and encapsulates the collection really well: an intricately ferocious design of chains and a tiger eating (what I presume to be) a tory, all in the shape of an unravelling brain. Wynter’s collection from cover to cover is uncompromisingly tough, however it never pretends to be infallible. Poems show the power that can come after mentally unravelling, the need for no shame about that.
Part of the strength of the work is Wynter’s honesty in writing moments that are not necessarily empowering or enjoyable or easy. Their work calls for brutality in the best sense. I really liked the authenticity of the work, by which I mean how much of Wynter is visible. There’s no interference from publishers or editors steering the work in any direction but their own. One poem is on the way home from the pub, another angrily texting a dumb ex, yet another asking for a love letter; the poems are private but not hostile as they sprawl and contradict themselves amidst the private and political. They allow for us to tag along without slowing, without stopping to explain themselves unnecessarily.
If you love radical politics and swearing at tories then you will LOVE this poetry collection. Equally, if you love supporting independent artists and home-grown DIY publishing culture (this collection has very strong zine-vibes to it) I highly recommend this book! It depicts personal life with an outlook that calls witness to the very un-personal processes of oppression it must endure. A life bombarded with debts and the uneasy eyes of strangers; but a life made all the more beautiful for resisting and rebuilding something better. Something better to be shared with other outsiders at the pub. Wynter gives the middle finger to complacency of all kinds, and I for one found it FUCKING BRILLIANT.
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