On Johny Brown’s BAD POETS (Skill Books, 2026)
Bad meets beauty at last as Johny Brown reconfigures
The plight of the poem written as wish, scribed by souls
On a Eurostar jaunt, jolted from loss into learning
About what we can accomplish once we understand
Heart and hole. In today’s culture voids versify all the time
We just don’t have the sense left to see them. One can feel
Duly blinded even as we stand stunned by lights, whether
Performing in Paris (as here) or before the dead whose
Critique you’ve incited, or before the grey and the gruesome
Brown always seems to know what feels right. ‘Can it be
Considered?’ he asks, after ‘excremental being’ works
Through you and a sudden windfall sets fires under both
Thought and foot, compelling him to soon spend on
An indulged trip to Paris to perform his torn poem,
By which I mean ripped from where through form
And fate he’s been put. Brown’s narrative arc, as you circle it
Feels inspired. His soul spun speed captivates you as each entry
Grows line by line, and you learn how both to grieve and to grow,
Whether doused by doubt or compulsion to perform
And give others what they do not know they need: the design
Of devil colouring god from whatever faith you desire; in your
M&S jumper with ‘your hair an ostentatious mess,’ you’re aligned
With all of the forces which fuse hurt and heart worn together
Misshapenness never matters when each of us stumble on
Through a darkness that is scribbled and sketched in the mind.
But during the reading Brown finds his own (Inga?) Alma matter,
An alternative Alter ego, soon altared, a secular saint
Who chorales all that he came to do, and all he would share
And discover, that a bad poem read badly ‘is a terrible but
beautiful thing in itself’ From the ballad of a broken Britain
To this in which Johny Brown dutifully picks up the pieces
Beside fresh found freedoms which allow him to raise
Each low shelf. Poetry is a ‘flawed soul’ performed before
An uncaring public, yet as they commune, his side spirit
Shadows the search through Art’s ache to work through
The pains of each day and win a world worth the writing:
‘You have the night in one singular phone’ to relay you
Across audience, air and heartbreak. Brown then, is a bard
For both wisdom and wreckage. His works are confessions.
While in song surreal sermons smatter words with soul paint.
As it proves here, as each experiment energises;
‘The half-hearted reticence of brooding resentful ego
imprisoned’ is through this book explored further in order
To unearth Genet’s saint, as served by Satre perhaps.
So how is that for pretension? As one arch example
That Brown would duly burn down to source, in this
Form of thief’s journal which steals from our own private
Chambers in which we conceal our destructions
And decisions too through discourse. For Bad Poets
Is a true talking book. And Johny Brown so converses,
With his northern directness and his artist’s heart
He relays across reason, through rhyme and out of step
With missed metre the precise rhythm of wanting
That only this epic piece can essay. From ‘Vivre le Anarchie,
Patti Smith, pitch, pace and pause, poetsplaining’; through
How performance itself is soon peopled by strangers within
Who incite, as Nina Simone always did whether in 1989,
Or before that, what we invest and evolve and show others
Is vampiric sometimes, a fouled bite, but one whose hunger
Is held by the need for ascension. And so this tome is a handbook
As JB coaches U to reconsider the world and your contribution.
Each one of us are bad poets, seeking to stanza the day
And pass through the eye of the needle which sews soul
Onto sinew; Brown alliterates, lists and lurches from dust’s
Disturbed shade to sky blue. From Sarah Mary Chadwick,
Plath, Hughes, to Breton’s Nadja, Brown and his other,
His shadow in skin, sheet and sound, strive across doubt
And the Parisian night for a semblance of the dreamstate
And heartland within which love is found. From ‘psychic
Automatism’ they move with a magic mix of intention,
The Sphinx Hotel sifting secrets, the solutions to which
Cowards seek, from Apollinaire in Marseilles, to Robert Desnos,
Hugo Ball, each begetting enough food for thought, enough
Futures to make the world from an onion and an aeon
At least from a week. As with every Brown book or song,
Honesty is the issue. To look him in the eye reveals kindness
And a kind of resolve owned by few. He will trust. He will tear
He will carouse. He will call you. Appealing to your own
Inner poet, to fathom the flavours within a kiss’s spit,
Or hate’s spew. From therapy to ‘a piss fingered peanut,’
From the sucked Gauloise to a shipwreck the images here
Rhapsodise the weary romantic within, sans or avec
A stained sweater. ‘God’s gallic balls’ must be nibbled.
In the hunger alone rests the prize. This takes us roughly
Half way. The rest is for you to discover. Anyone who sees
Brown’s Instagram entries will know of his Monday
Coffee reads and so sip the sustenance this man takes
From the way of the word working for us. Whether
Well intentioned yet artless, or effortless text to be taken
We can sit still and travel into the colour stained world
Of Brown’s trip.
David Erdos 10/1/26
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