Suitabook50 Ways to Score a Goal and Other Football Poems
Brian Bilston
- Reading
- Try one or two poems at a time, reading some aloud and looking at how chants, haiku and shape poems sound or appear. Pause to explain unfamiliar football references, then compare which word choices make the joke work.
- Themes
- Football fandom and humour: The poems address football, matches, football debates and fan experiences through jokes and wordplay. Football is used as the setting and subject for playful language and shared humour, rather than as a continuous story.
- Disappointment and belonging: One named poem concerns being left out of a World Cup squad, and the collection is described as including a bittersweet narrative. The book’s stance on this remains unclear.
- Poetic form and language: The collection includes witty chants, haiku and fun shape poems, with humour built through puns. Experimentation with poetic form is clearly part of the book’s offering and may encourage attention to sound, layout and concise expression.
- Worth knowing
- Some poems touch on disappointment, such as being left out of a World Cup squad, and the collection is also described as containing a bittersweet narrative. The wider emotional range is not clear.