Kiarah Hamilton, this is what fifteen feels like (KDP, 2024) 145 pages, poetry, $19.99 US. Order here.
Hamilton invites us to read this collection from the point of view of our 15-year-old selves so that's where I'm going to write this review from (mostly). I say "mostly" because I'm late Gen X and Hamilton is Gen Alpha, I believe, so our 15s are very different POVs. When I was 15, the internet was called "Prodigy", it was dial-up, extremely expensive, almost no one had it (almost no one had a PC), and social media didn't exist yet. Late Gen X are in general a nihilist group of people who believed the world would end before they finished college and as teenagers were criminals and gangsters who got away with everything precisely because they were the first generation with parents who divorced at high rates, worked two jobs, daycare didn't exist yet, and smartphones were sci-fi. It was ghetto. I'm sure it's extremely difficult for kids today too, just in very different ways. Same old threats with new avenues.
As a teenager, I was a moody goth but not goth, punk but not punk, (nowadays the term might be "emo") loner who wrote poetry and lurked in shadows and wore black as often as my mother would let me get away with it. Because if you wear black and stand very still, you can be as near to invisible as physics allows. Very handy for avoiding bullies. My poetry was similar to Hamilton's but much less innocent and light. I wrote about dark stuff. I wrote about stuff I lived with, violence and loneliness and darkness. And I found beauty in it. And, stereotypically for a teenage poet of my generation, I could quote Edgar Allan Poe's "The Raven" on cue (I can't anymore). None of my early poetry survives today.
Hamilton writes more as a teenager should, if there is such a thing. Her poetry is as light, innocent, and clean as her book cover. It's refreshing. She writes about the pressures social media puts on youth to have a certain appearance, which is something that certainly hasn't changed, although social media has prismed it uniquely. She writes about social anxiety, the stresses that hormonal changes bring, trying out different hobbies to find a few that'll stick as she works out who she is, and her crushes. All typical of the adolescent experience. And which certainly do help take you back to your own personal experiences.
There are some poems here that give you a window into Hamilton herself. She writes about moving around a lot and about her family dynamics. Another fun feature is that she includes a playlist of songs that you can look up on Spotify or YouTube. This places her 15 in a specific time frame - more so than the copyright notice will because not everyone reads a title page - but it also includes a whole other dimension to the book and a view into the poet's mind. I particularly liked this because when I write, I always have soundtracks in mind too. But since it never occurred to me that I could simply write up a playlist to include, I weave the songs into the poems and books themselves in ways I'm sure no one has caught on to, lol. Hamilton's playlist is an elegant solution to this conundrum.
In summary, this is what 15 feels like. The poetry is not sophisticated. That's not what you're here for. But it is what you're here for. A walk down memory lane vicariously. A reminder that no matter how many years have passed, 15 is never very far away.
