…er then become famous enough to release their own poetry and the results aren’t really much better. YouTuber Rachel Oates has made many videos criticising the banality and un-poetryness of many of these poets, but her own collection of poems Reflections on Healing, was disappointingly mediocre at best, full of poetry slam sounding slightly unnecessary rhymes (a child scrambles / on hands and knees / picking up individual peas) and a whole lot of tell don’t show expressions of feelings about subjects such as abusive relationships that while no doubt may have been a cathartic experience for the writer, ultimately fall flat in their attempts to translate any of that catharsis for the reader. Yes, her basic awareness of the fact that poetry involves consciousness of language and use of meta…
