This was a great poetry book. I always absolutely enjoy his work and I can't wait to read more in the near future. I highly recommend it.

Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for providing me with a free copy in exchange for an honest review.

I did not connect with any poem from this collection. With that being said, maybe slam poetry is not my thing. I don't think I have a lot to say about this just that I did not enjoy a single verse nor thought they were relatable.

This is such a nostalgic collection of poetry, I really enjoyed it. It was filled with emotion, love, heartbreak, sorry. IT is a book that will appeal to so many readers, to dip in and out of or for a proper in depth and focused read. Some of the poems gave and gave and gave with each individual reading. The more time I spent on it, the more thought I gave it, the more I got from it. I really enjoyed it and I highly recommend!!

This is not a book of poetry I would have picked out for myself--I lean more towards nature poems or spoken poetry pieces--but I am glad I read it. The first couple of poems had me scratching my head, but then I began to appreciate the author's voice and point of view.

Neil Hilborn made me love poetry again. I will follow him anywhere. Button Poetry has recharged the poetry world.

I’ve watched Neil from Youtube so I was happy to see this book on the Read Now’s on Netgalley (aka also the worst place to be if you’re terrible at restraint like me. It should be renamed to something like People who can’t restrain themselves – but that’s too long, so we can shorten it to PWCRT – we’ll have to work on the pronunciation or even rewrite the renaming).

I read (well in this anthology it mentions) that he wrote some of these while on the road and I can just see that – waiting at a petrol station or in the queue at a coffee shop and just furiously scribbling on a notepad or the back of a receipt. And I love it because it’s so raw – which is something that’s a theme with him – rawness in his writing. He writes poems that are to the point, ones that are real.

What I love about poetry (and slam poetry in particular) is that different people can find different meanings in the poems. I think it’s so important for writers to talk about mental illness and to not treat it like something that should be stashed away in the corner. It shows that it can and should be commonplace, it should be showcased, it should be discussed.

Favourite quotes:

The Ballad of Fuckknuckle Jones:
He’s the kind of guy who, when he says you’ll be fine, is probably right. The end isn’t coming soon, just what’s next.

All Ages:
What’s more punk rock than living despite all that which has tried to make you not?

Psalam 12, In Which the Author Alienates His Audience, Part 2:
Your cat is the best thing that happens in your day; your cat is the best thing that happens in your cat’s day.

Going to Wales:
…right now I’m inventing castles and in one of them is a dragon.

The Future:
I know tomorrow is going to come because I’ve seen it. Sunrise is going to come,
all you have to do is wake up.
I saw the future, I did, and in it I was alive.

Neil Hilborn discusses mental health in poetry the way it needs to be spoken about. Its inside of us,

Disclaimer: I received this book from the publisher through netgalley in exchange for an honest review.

I starting watching Neil's slam poetry on YouTube, which is something I love doing, but when I found out that there were physical collections of them, I wanted to give that a try too. There's something deeply relatable in how he puts words together, and talks about his mental illness struggles.

Overall - I'd highly recommend this, and his other poetry collection, but also I'd recommend to check out him reading them live. Mostly because he's so good at delivering it, his performance is amazing.

Absolutely beautiful writing. The poems slither and seethe with wit and a certain melancholic charm. Hilborn is like Billy Collins for redditors.

I was curious. I shouldn't have been. Evidently, it is a question of taste as a lot of people seem to enjoy Hilborn's style - but I had to realise that I am not one of them. This volume and I just couldn't get along.

I missed rhyme and metre, and I could have done without the cursing. Or I would have been happy if it was without rhyme, but the text was lyrical and poetic, something superior. Or if there was cursing, but at least the writer used rhymes. What should I say, I can appreciate the confessional nature of these poems, but they just fail to impress, and I have to admit that by the time I got to "Psalm 12, In Which the Author Alienates His Audience" by declaring that "cats suck," I had already been alienated.

I'm sorry to give this volume a low rating, but I did find it a bit disappointing. The cover is beautiful, though!

(And a polite note to the poem titled "Vocabulary": Hungarians definitely use the phrase "Go to hell.")

I have seen a lot of Neils' work preformed by him on facebook and social media. But reading this book was such an incredible experience. The struggles he writes about are relatable on a personal level and it's so magical. The words flow just right and hit you in all the feels. This book will make you laugh and cry. I would recommend this book to everyone I know.

I have heard some of Neil's spoken word poetry videos from Button Poetry and admire his ability to share vulnerably about his life.

There are some good poems in here, but I felt like the train of thought in some of the longer poems were hard to follow (and that might have been stylistic to represent manic episodes).

Thanks, NetGalley, for the read.

Neil Hillborn uses his wit, humor, and experiences to weave together a lovely lyrical journey on the road with him. His poems are accessible and full of an easy charm that makes me want to come back for more. While not all of them struck me at the heart, most of them felt "right". His description of his life with mental illness is beautiful and heartrending and I sincerely look forward to giving this book to my clients so that they can see that they are not alone in the world.

There is just one word I would like to say about this book – BEAUTIFUL. The poems are well-written and to be honest, has the power to enchant its audience. They have some deep meaning and you might need some time to understand it but it is worth the time. I have been following the author for some time now and I am a big fan of his poems.

This poetry is crisp and always has a deep meaningful ending. Though there are few poems which I didn’t get but the rest was amazing!

The poems are crisp and on point. There are some quotes which I would like to share with you guys. I hope you all will like it!
RATING
♥♥♥.5

ARC provided by the publisher via Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.

Unfortunately, I didn’t like this book. I just didn’t.
Some lines were okay and made sense. But that’s it. For me it was just a big chaos full of incomprehensible thoughts... this just wasn’t my cup of tea.

I have a feeling reading Hilborn’s book The Future he’s a really cool guy.
He writes a poem in this book called Bruce Springsteen will Never Die (which seems to affirm it) ‘I mean that the Reaper has Nebraska in his top five albums and won’t take the Boss because He also likes going to arena shows in Jersey,’ and ‘it’s going to be lonely for Bruce when we’re all gone,’ This poem pretty much makes the book for me. I love Springsteen, and I also love the way in which Hilborn writes. It’s conversational, and reads like a spiel of his thoughts. I like the story behind the book too. Hilborn wrote much of the poems while on the road, performing his poems. Hilborn also writes that the audiences helped shape his poems, so this book has had many editors. It’s why these poems do have an encompassing feeling of life lived. The subjects explored are nostalgia, sex, ‘it’s pretty hard to make
someone orgasm when you’re trying
to remember what you paid
for the couch,’
pets, being sixteen, and mental health. Hilborn writes a couple of poems about suicide, and the conflicting nature of it. ‘that place is called the world, and
if you want to live it’s really
the only option. You could choose not to,
but then
where would you get really great sandwiches or listen to Springsteen
with the windows down?’
I love sandwiches as much as I do Springsteen, so interesting viewpoints here.
In poem Welcome to Wall Drug, the words ‘whoever designed this place
was clearly very mentally ill, or
at least in my head,
so in my head it’s great to see that a crazy person
can put together something
so successful and beloved,’
are the exact same words I would return back to Hilborn, he does this with The Future for me. Two of my very favourite poems in this book are the title poem, which just had me shook, and Me, but Happy. This poem has become one of my favourite poems ever written by anyone, ‘I want to thank you for making all the love songs mean something again,’

Thank you NetGalley and the publisher for a chance to review this poetry collection!

As I was scrolling through NetGalley, looking for some poetry to read, I came across "The Future" by Neil Hilborn. Before I requested I had a look at some of the author's other poetry to see if it would be something I would like and I watched his performance of "OCD" on youtube and I was hooked. I instantly download the title onto my kindle and finished within a couple of hours.

This poetry collection deals with the main themes of; mental health, travel, relationships and music.

Favourite poems:
"The Door"
"Lake"
"For Henry, Who Has Just gone."
"The Future"
"I don't need to have a better day, I need to feel better about this one."

I actually went on Youtube and listened to Neil Hilborn perform some of the poems from this collection and they were incredible performances.

Why I didn't rate this 5 stars: While I loved a lot of the poems, some I didn't love or feel a connection too. I think it's important to feel something when reading poetry and you obviously won't feel connected to everything because everyone feels and takes away something unique with poetry, that is one of the reasons I love it so much.

"I know tomorrow is going to come because I've seen it. Sunrise is going to come, all you have to do is wake up."

So I discovered Hilborn’s work after watching him perform The Future a couple of years back and the poem had stayed with me ever since. I sought out more of Hilborn’s work and fell in love with his first collection, Our Numbered Days.

I don’t know why The Future just didn’t click with me. There were a few poems that were good, the titular poem of course being one of his most outstanding pieces, but the rest of the collection fell kind of flat. Hilborn’s musings about depression, love, and loss are still present, such as in How Do You Sleep with an IV In? There were some that were significantly more hopeful, with reasons why to keep on living such as the desire to have children and finding peace with himself which makes me so happy to see his progress as he comes to terms with his depression.

I still can’t pinpoint what didn’t resonate with me with this collection. I suppose it was that many of the poems were about Hilborn’s travels on the road as he toured, there was a lot of humor or poems that just didn’t make a lot of sense to me. I wasn’t sure exactly what I was reading which happened in his last collection as well but not to this degree. It’s still a decent collection that many will appreciate, it just wasn’t for me.

Close to being a solid 4/5.
Neil Hilborn is fun to read, and this being National Poetry Month I really wanted to read more poetry. Some of the poems in here will definitely stick with me, some not so much. On that note, there is a lot of emotion that radiates through these lines. Depression, suicidal thoughts, death, punk, sex, and a pet mouse. If you're a fan of poetry and are familiar with Neil Hilborn I strongly suggest you give this one a read. You won't be disappointed!

Not at all what I was expecting, but I loved it. I'll definitely recommend this collection of poetry.