These are odd times we find ourselves in, but what a joy to be living in the same timeline as Leena Norms!
Title: Bargain Bin Rom-Com
Author: Leena Norms
ISBN: 9781913958299
Publisher: Burning Eye Books
Publication date: 2022
Genre(s): Poetry
Available format(s): Print
Reading level/interest level: Information not available on the publisher’s site or on purchasing sites. Personally, I would say this collection is appropriate for teens aged 15 and up.
Summary: Leena Norms embraces a world “filled with both doom and glitter” in this poetry collection about surviving and dreaming on a planet facing an environmental crisis, social unrest, a global pandemic, political extremism and other challenges (Norms, 2022).
Bargain Bin Rom-Com is a reflective, even nostalgic look into the narrator’s girlhood – from formative library visits to text conversations – and an emerging womanhood filled with new revelations about herself and changing relationships with others. It is also a thought experiment that imagines what a better future could look like for the narrator and her loved ones.
About the author: Leena Norms began her professional career in the publishing industry working for big names like Pan Macmillan and Penguin Random House. Today, she is mostly “a poet, vlogger, and presenter” (Norms, n.d.). On her longstanding YouTube channel, she primarily creates videos about poetry, politics, books, and sustainability.
Critical review: This is a gorgeous, luminous collection and immediately after I finished my first run-through of the book, I went back to several of my favorite poems! I was impressed by Norms’ witty wordplay and her astounding rhymes (I just really, really love rhyming poetry, okay?). It maintains a humorous, hopeful tone throughout which is extremely enjoyable to read.
The standout poems for me were “[the sound of ripping paper],” which reads as a permission slip to live without inhibitions, “Make Art For Your Friends,” about the necessity of friendship in an apocalyptic world, and “Meet Commute,” about maintaining a shred of hope in a harsh political climate.
Related programming ideas: A poetry workshop is a fairly obvious but wonderful choice of program to pair with this collection. Leena embraces silliness in her work and, in a particularly amusing YouTube video, churned out some poetry using bizarre stock images and videos as her writing prompt. I think teens would find a similar exercise pretty fun!
Brief booktalk: These are odd times we find ourselves in, but what a joy to be living in the same timeline as Leena Norms! In this debut poetry collection, Leena lovingly embraces the weirdness and wonder of humanity and the way we treat our planet, ourselves, and each other. She’s also just hilarious and a total cinnamon roll of a person – check out her YouTube channel after you check out the book!
Potential challenges: Though some poems contain a very light sprinkling of profanity, I would not consider the topics covered in this collection “controversial” or “mature” and don’t really envision any formal challenges for this particular work.
Reason for inclusion: I included Rex Ogle’s Abuela, Don’t Forget Me and The Poet X in this mini-collection and feel that it is important to balance the heavier themes of those works with some more lighthearted poetry as well.
References:
Norms, L. (2022). Bargain bin rom-com. Burning Eye Books.
Norms, L. (2022, May 23). i had to try this [Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qYMrmF8K1Gk&t=141s
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