Read IN BED: Hera Lindsay Bird

Words by Sam Somers

It’s an accepted fact amongst my friends (hell, even people I’m faintly associated with) that Hera Lindsay Bird is my favourite modern poet.

Hera Lindsay Bird – you simply must use her full name – has unique balance of awkwardly funny dry wit, intellect, partial bouts of teen angst and piles of nostalgia in her work. Much like her actual lines, her overall poetry is a combination of seemingly un-pairable things that just work.

In her piece ‘Having Already Walked Out On Everyone I Ever Said I Loved’ Hera Lindsay Bird explains herself quite simply for us readers, stating, The official theme of all my poems is/You get in love and then you die. Given this knowledge, if you too wish to read about love and death in a hauntingly humorous way, then you will be strongly inclined to read her debut poetry book, which is so aptly self-titled.

It’s so easy to just read humour and witty one-liners, especially in the midst of a global pandemic. But God forbid we forget to read the deeply sentimental stuff. The unorthodox way in which Hera Lindsay Bird delves beyond to tackle relationship struggles, death, gender and a sexuality bursts from the pages – and it’s heart-achingly unique. It’s necessary.

It’s so nice to read someone who’s not afraid to be too cliché but is equally content to blow the whole cliché up. The only real way to describe her work is to paraphrase her work: Hera Lindsay Bird is a ransom note to life with no demands.