flashes of brilliance watered down
★★★★☆☆☆
Title: Sex & Love & Rock&Roll
Author: Tony Walsh
Genre: Contemporary poetry
First published: 2013
Edition: Paperback, published by Burning Eye Books in 2015
Tony takes us on an extraordinary journey through ordinary lives; flying the flag for the performance poetry scene which packs out venues and festival tents around the UK. These are accessible, musical poems;influenced by the songs which soundtrack our lives;brimming with northern warmth and humour; propelled by passion and compassion as their bassline and their beat.
***
Poetry is personal. Probably the most personal genre of books out there in my opinion. I fully expected to love this one as the themes of real life and music speak to me. And yes, I did like the themes, but the poems themselves did not do as much for me as I wanted them to.
There were some flashes of brilliance, especially in the more elaborate poems, but a lot of them were like sparse lyrics for EDM songs. There was a lot of repetition of lines and I found that I started finding that a little irritating. I wanted the poems to speak to me and the more they repeated, the less they did so. I think I want my poetry to be a bit more elaborate than this. I am not sure.
This was definitely not a bad collection and I enjoyed parts of it a lot, but too many of the poems did not speak to me.
4 out of 7 stars
Lola Et La Vie 
Tony read at my work a few years back and I really enjoyed his performance. I think his is the type of poetry that is better live than on the page.
Yes, that may well be true. The book does say he’s a performance poet and I can see how that would be the case for sure.