Joshua Idehen’s “Songbook” is a difficult collection to categorise – which is perhaps a reflection on the source of the material: mainly musical collaborations / rap. Many of the poems contain QR links to Spotify tracks, and these further demonstrate the variety of the work: from the melodic to what seems to me at least as little more than ‘noise’. Hardly ‘jazz’, surely.
Because of this variety, it’s easy to both like and dislike the work. Some of the pieces feel ‘unedited’, poetically at least, a few succumbing all too easily – and too irregularly – to lazy rap-rhyming; yet others contain superb images and lines: “she said she almost fell in love / I swear I almost caught her” (‘All the same’).
There is a deal of anger in many of the pieces, mainly the understandable raging against colour-based injustice. As a white person, sometimes this can be difficult to fully comprehend (not having suffered in the same way); yet in pieces such as the superb ‘bleach’, the poems work incredibly well.
One of the most varied collections I think I’ve ever come across, I’m not entirely sold on it as ‘a collection of poems’ – but undoubtedly there are some gems within it.
Ian Gouge - Writer 