I work at Waterstones as a Book Seller/Visual Merchandiser, and an old colleague of mine recommended a book of poetry titled Hera Lindsey Bird written by Hera Lindsey Bird. When advertising it to me he said "this is Fleabag in poetic form", and he is completely right. The collection is funny, self aware, and deeply honest in playful and nuanced ways.
Bird will often start a poem with the objective of describing a truth in a long list of bizarre similes, for example a poem would often go as so "Love is hard, it is like a crow bar, it is your mother talking about the death of Princess Diana, it is a snow storm on an ant farm" and so on. I found her poetry required time to figure out, and that was the joy of it, each line being its own individual puzzle, echoeing Lewis Carroll's riddle, "why is a raven is like a writer's desk".
The Waller-Bridge in this book resided in the small injected phrases of truth that mimicked Fleabag's turn to camera, saying exactly what everyone is thinking when it comes to sex and relationships. Unlike a lot of other poets I have read, Bird loves to commentate and reference the act of writing poetry. In a 19th Century "Dear Reader.." manner, which I usually can't abide as it draws you out of the world of the text. However, her comments regarding poetry were very perceptive and breaks the pretentious glass that the genre often sits behind.
If you want Phoebe Waller-Bridge humour and an manipulative grip on poetic language, this is the book for you.
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