I Saw the Best Memes of My Generation

Like much else that finds its way onto the internet, the poetry in ‘I saw the best memes of my generation’ is fleeting, reactionary and selective with its facts—only ever tangentially concerned with the ‘real’ world. Somehow this book skewers SS utes, flower arrangement, the antiquated forms of Italian Opera, the emerging politics of the climate crisis and the misogynist underbelly of rock and roll with one flukey shot of an arrow. This much anticipated debut collection pins Symes’ viral poems down like delicate butterflies for the pleasure of your eighteenth century drawing room.

‘Dominic Symes gives us everything we want from poetry—surprise, charm, wit and irony, a dash of contrariness, the occasional wtf, and some heavy name-dropping. And let’s not forget tenderness. This is poetry as the weird and fugitive experience of now: sassy, chatty, fresh and invigorating, contemporary as all get out and a lot of serious fun.’
Jill Jones