Songs My Enemy Taught Me

by Joelle Taylor

'Songs My Enemy Taught Me' is a collection of poems themed around the experiences of women globally, but it had simple beginnings. It began with me. It began with a small child in a hotel room not wanting to speak. It began with opera, but the kind that cannot be heard. It began at the point at which I ended.

This is a book about colonisation and terrorism, about invasion and ownership. It is a survival manual, a map, a photograph, a song. It is internet at 2am. It is the way your mother just looked at you. It is the way the girl in front of you on the soft journey home just reached for her keys. It is your hand reaching for keys.

Genres: Poetry, Queer

164 pages, Paperback

Published January 1, 2017

About the author

Joelle Taylor is an award-winning poet, playwright, author, and editor.

Reviews

[Katrine Solvaag · Rating 5 out of 5]

A book too perfect to ever truly be returned to the bookshelf. Instead it's words will haunt you, inhabit you, as they burrow a small place in your chest where they will continue to tell you their stories and you will share yours with them.

[Curtis · Rating 5 out of 5]

Joelle babes, I love everything you are and do.

[Ben Hancox-Lachman · Rating 5 out of 5]

I love reading with Emilie can we do that again that was really cute

[SadieWhiteCoat · Rating 5 out of 5]

I dress myself in thick swathes of naked.
I take off my skin.

Here. Have it. Have it all.

I'm in love. I am in love. I am very much in love. Joelle Taylor, I love you. Joelle Taylor, you have given me another place to call home.


I do not identify as female, or male for that matter, and for a long time I did not call myself a feminist. I didn't call myself a feminist, even though I was born female, because I didn't believe that it had any place for me, that I now realise probably had a lot to do with the fact that I am not cisgendered. I no longer believe this.

One of the most important things I have learned that changed my mind is that sexism, misogyny, rape, and violence against women and femininity affects everyone. It perpetuates inequality and toxic masculinity. It intersects with racism, colonialism, homophobia, transphobia, and basically any other -ism and phobia you can think of. It isn't just a woman's problem. It's an everyone problem, and Joelle Taylor understands this. Reading this book, I have never felt more like feminism has a place for me.

I don't even know how to effectively describe it. Taylor's writing is incendiary and angry and loving and understanding and oh my god just read this:

the girl whose eyes are shallow graves beneath suburban patios goes to
school and rows of heavy lidded desks are filled with the smiling
dead. When the world ended nobody noticed. The sun has eaten itself.
Skeleton birds mutter bone songs.

From the first fucking poem.

I never once feel a hint of misandry, which honestly I don't really care about (obviously to an extent, violence is no bueno), but other people may, so I thought I'd mention it. For example, this stanza:

(ii) he

how your dreams were trained to walk in tight circles
how your dreams were dogs
how you named your dog after the first woman you beat
how you beat her, your bright piñata
so you could build a house of sweets
and eat it
how you learned to walk on women
how women learned to smile at you
how their smiles were tightropes
how their smiles were cut throats
how your father was a bomb
and your mother rich in minerals
how they gentrified your streets
how you were forced out of your own mouth.

Disgustingly beautiful.

It's just. It isn't political. Okay maybe that's misleading, but it's also kinda true. It's a collection of stories, of real stories, of women's stories, stories of victims, of survivors, of fuckin warriors. It's a grieving, a celebration, a personal revolution that you're being invited to observe. It can't possibly be summarised by me, here, writing this review. Go observe it yourself.

Somewhere
a woman burns her dress in the back yard
a mother hangs a string of bullets around her neck
a girl plays house in a deserted city
performing voices of the gone

the songs of silence

[Helen Black · Rating 5 out of 5]

I read this collection slowly because there was so much that made me question and gasp! Really powerful poetry and so many painful issues dealt with and explored sensitively and powerfully. Whilst I lack the words to review this collection, it's just as well that Joelle doesn't lack them when it comes to the poetry!

[Felix Maclean · Rating 5 out of 5]

Ahh this book is so good! Like, a really hard read most of the time but so good! The way she uses words is just mind blowing.

Content warnings for sexual assault (adults and children), violence against women, homophobia, war.

[Amanda · Rating 5 out of 5]

This a fiercely powerful collection of poetry written from perspectives of women experiencing sexism in various forms all over the world. It is a truly intersectional, empathetic collection.

[Aimee Nicole]

First poem Canto was unbelievable. Imagery and description is some of the finest I have read.

[Maria Iliffe-Wood · Rating 5 out of 5]

Heart-wrenchingly good.
I feel the women who these poems represent.

[Rubli Carran · Rating 5 out of 5]

Beautifully written contemporary poetry

[Lucy Pearlman · Rating 5 out of 5]

Just as incredible when performed live.

[Sarah Hobbs · Rating 5 out of 5]

First of all, this is not just a 'poetry book' - it is so much more than that, it is a poetic encyclopedia of the fight of women across the whole world.

I wanted to be thorough when reading this so when doing this there were many times where I had to put the book down after reading certain segments just so I could process it all.

Click here to read my full review...