If you’re looking for a quick burst of positivity in your morning routine, may I introduce you to a pocket-sized wonder?! Let The Light Pour In: book review.

More than simply sharing a daily habit, Lemn Sissay offers us a pure dose of Vitamin Poetry.

Being a fan of regular creativity, I love how each poem consists of the same form: four lines. When you know that’s the intention when you wake up, it’s easier to begin – it’s a structure to hang words on, that’s already decided. Formally described as a quatrain, four lines is doable, achievable, but a challenge nonetheless.

Sissay has selected this collection from ten years of morning poems. The sun and moon, the contrast between day and night, the monumental and the quietly domestic, all feature.

Knowing somebody’s biography is not always relevant to reading their words, but in this case, there’s a glimpse, into Lemn Sissay’s grim childhood in care, at the end of the book, which illuminates what has gone before (and adds another volume to the TBR pile – My Name is Why.)

Morning Pages, as advocated by Julia Cameron (the Grande Dame of beating writer’s (or any creative’s) block) in The Artist’s Way, is an utterly brilliant and freeing practice…but four lines might be a preferable discipline for you – what do you think?!

Let The Light Pour In: Morning Poems, by Lemn Sissay, is published by Canongate.

To purchase your copy, with a 10% discount, from Golden Hare Books, use code bookbinderbookreview47 valid until 16th May 2025.