Life in Transit: The Journey that Counts – review

Sam Berkson – or ‘Angry Sam’, as he says he’s known on stage – seems more comic than cross in his first book of poetry. Life in Transit uses journeys on public transport to discuss politics, freedom and British manners with a dynamic and wry swag, observations of his fellow passengers saying volumes about how he sees the world.

The poet is normally a performer rather than a writer, which presented the publishers with a challenge – would his style work on paper? But in an interview with the Citizen in October they also reportedly wanted to publish poetry ‘for people who don’t read poetry’ – another ambitious goal, and one which worked out well for such a confident collection.

Despite not being able to hear Berkson’s voice aloud (disappointingly no CD or MP3 is provided) it is clear from the Roots Manuva quote on the title page you’re dealing with a man who welcomes the overlap between poetry and other forms of culture.

Berkson keeps the collection as colloquial and ‘real’ as possible. A poem about leaving a protest against the third runway at Heathrow nestles against another, titled lust (on a bendy bus).

One poem hangs out on the platform of Dover Priory station, observing one passenger trying to cadge a fag. Another tracks phone networks across Europe – “Arriva, G4S, and the same named brands” – and another rebuffs an evangelist on the Overground to Richmond. There are even bits of Hackneyed kitsch, such as ode to the bicycle, when the poet sees two chained bikes as “fair creatures cuddling at a lamppost”.

But the characters that populate Life in Transit give the book its meat. The very first poem, another veteran with a head wound, finds Berkson trying to make sense out of a fractured conversation with a former soldier on the train to Totnes. “I’m all truth, me / ‘cause it’s in me, it’s in you, / it’s in all of us,” the man says, and the poet reports “the voices talking through him as his voice talks through me.”

His representations feel lifelike – the pompous fare-dodger in the inspector’s discretion, for example, rings a bell. At times, it can feel aimless – for instance, the verbatim conversations in carriage talk feel tenuous, and the foreign speech Berkson transcribes even feel insensitive. Would he imitate non-English speakers during a performance? Unlikely.

Fans of his contemporaries, other London performers such as Kate Tempest and Salena Godden, might enjoy his poems, as with anyone who wants to dip into modern poetry without having to deal with pretension. Note also that the illustrations by Iain Somerville make it a beautiful piece of publishing. Anyone who’s still curious can hear the poet performing extracts from the book in the Arcola Tent on 15 November at the launch party.

Life in Transit: The Journey that Counts
Sam Berkson
Influx Press
ISBN: 978-0-9571693-3-3
RRP: £7.99.