Popular Song, the eagerly awaited debut from Harry Man, is an electric adventure into science, science fiction, poetry and pop culture. Here we encounter the Invisible Man’s search for meaning, traverse time and space through the music of David Bowie, find Wordsworth water-skiing with a clownfish, Ed Sheeran’s superabundant love of typography, and find a new connection with our past by re-watching The Empire Strikes Back in reverse.
This collection captures both the unearthly beauty of supermarket night shifts and the peculiar dreamscapes of birds of the British Isles – as well as how the term ‘popular’ has the potential to both unite and divide, to move from current obsession to obsolescence and nostalgia. These poems connect with a wonder-filled verbal and melodic energy, considering both the fragility of our position on Earth as well as the hold of our intimacy while we are still bound by its gravity. Playful and cosmic, Popular Song is a jukebox filled with new favourites, beckoning readers out onto the dancefloor of the literary, the unexpected, and the joyful.