Richard Barrett

U Make Me Laugh in a Different Way Richard Barrett

u make me laugh in a different way is a style guide for today's modern poet; it is Justin Bieber's oiled torso illustrating the month of September; it is realising, belatedly, that some of your most cherished memories didn't actually involve you but a now long-forgotten, minor character from Coronation Street; it is hating every single, last ex-ballroom dancer in the world for laughing, forever, at their own jokes and for sitting behind you, noisily, at work; it is Pizza Hut rather than Pizza Express; it is second string supermodels with murder in their eyes; it is the eternally rolling screen of an iPhone-whatever; it is boredom and face worship in equal measure, skating on the surface of everything always and empathising - wildly - with Taylor Swift's romantic dilemmas; it is Berrigan theft and O'Hara homage and weddings in April (a cruel month); it is hurlements in favour of the domestic, delivered with all the vigour contained in an overweight, forty year old northerner's frame; it is your face reflected back at you from Ross Kemp's shiny forehead as he strikes another important blow against ISIS; and it is, finally, a love letter to the only person in the world who matters and the very least tribute the poet could pay that person's life-saving skills.