‘Why fi’ by Ana Carrete
Review by Richard Brammer
- I had to wait a few days for Ana to email a PDF of her new zine/chapbook ‘Why fi’ to me because she was moving house and ironically had no wi-fi at the time.
- Whenever I’ve read Ana’s poetry I’ve always felt that if it was a Tumblr, it would have around 5 columns and be quite playful and colourful and definitely have a few animated gifs but then sometimes you’d look more closely at it and find this really nuanced poetry mixed in and you’d hope she has it set to endless scroll because you’d just want to keep scrolling up and down to see if you’ve missed anything and would keep finding things you want to read.
- This book reminds me of Belle and Sebastian and indie-culture of a certain type (The Pastels, C86 music, Postcard Records, Allo Darlin, Camera Obscura) but I can’t decide whether it reminds me most of the song ‘Photo Jenny’ or ‘Lazy Line Painter Jane’ or ‘String Bean Jean’.
- I’ve just thought about this alot more and played all three songs because I knew it was one of them and her poem ‘Ten Years Later my First Pair of Skinny Jeans Still Fit Me’ means that ‘String Bean Jean’ wins. So, if you have this book please follow this recipe: open it after reading this, I’ll post ‘String Bean Jean’ in the post above this, now listen and read the two of them together for an enhanced experience. If you don’t have this book then you should really go out and get it or go on the internet and buy it.
- My favourite poem in the whole collection is actually the first one which is called ‘But High School Was Good to Me’ which has some beautiful and intriguing imagery throughout and involves Disneyland and an argument with her Mum and finishes with the lines: ‘…so after doing the peace sign next to goofy/i ignored her for the rest of our lives’ which are just so poignant but also funny but then shocking and dramatic. Oh and it has the word ‘walkman’ in it which reminded me of the walkman and I like to remember the walkman.
- Until this book, I’ve never before actually read a poem about not getting an internet connection on my phone which I really should have done by now because it’s like one of the most common experiences of contemporary life. Now every single day at work, when I exit the elevator from an area that is devoid of mobile-phone coverage and flick on my airport mode and flick it off again to try and get a signal, I always think of Ana’s poem ‘404 not found’.
- A poem entitled ‘Video’ talks about how the vast amount of seemingly pointless videos (Facebook photos, selfies, etc) that your typical Millennial adult has to negotiate nowadays, of themselves eating a burger or drinking a drink, only take on relevance later, when contexts have shifted and you no longer go to the places where those videos were filmed or you’ve moved across the country or something or these place have been knocked down.
- The vastly crowded contemporary job market is also tackled in all of its banality in poems like ‘Requirements’: ‘pushing on the job is required/begging on the job is required/being on the job is required’.
- Ana plays with words well…very playfully (see - the title, obvs, but also poems like ‘Diminish my Skin’ (p.24) and ‘Yes we Cunt’ on the opposite page. Not enough poetry does this now. More poetry should do this.
- Do the Belle and Sebastian read ‘Why fi’ and ‘String Bean Jean’ thing, it works (see the post above this).
20 Notes/ Hide
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