Remarkable Coincidences

Len Pennie became famous during the Covid pandemic, posting on social media about Scots words and reading her own ‘poyums’. She now has more than 700,000 followers on TikTok and in excess of 500,000 on Instagram.

You might have seen those words before. They’re not mine: they are the opening sentences to Graeme Richardson’s recent Sunday Times review of Pennie’s second collection (in two years), Poyums Annaw, published by Canongate in September. I probably could have passed them off as my own, though: they’re not remarkable, but constitute a simple establishing shot. What is remarkable, however – or, rather, the first and yet least remarkable thing about this story – is the extent to which Richardson buries the hatchet into the work. Hardly any reviewers seem to do that anymore, under any circumstances. Pennie’s poetry is, he writes, ‘execrable’, and he backs this up with a smattering of quotations.

I do not own Poyums Annaw (though a sample can be read for free online), know little about its contents, and this is not a review, so I’ll just give a flavour of her style, in a passage quoted by Richardson:

We’re still here burying our heads in the sand
While they bury their kids [sic] severed heads with a hand
Holding white flags still stained with their tears blood and sweat […].

Okay, this feels a bit like a death march blasted from a kazoo – but some people really like Pennie’s poems, it seems, and good for them, and good for her. The Sunday Times chose a line from the review for its ...