Five Under Five

‘ReGen’ establishes its superiority over previous generations in a compelling new anthology

Five Under Five: Five ReGen Poets, by Jim de Pfeffel and J. A. Smith (eds.)
de Pfeffel Books, 20 pp, £75.00, January 2018

As far back as 2007, Facebook guru Mark Zuckerberg stated an obvious truth that has subsequently come to define our era: “Young people are just smarter.” Poet Alexander Pope has alluded to the existence of facts that are “oft[en]... thought, but ne’[v]er so well expressed.” Ne’[v]er, until Zuckerberg’s bold and compelling declaration, had it been openly acknowledged that younger means better.

Refreshingly, the new Five Under Five anthology isn’t ashamed to revel in the vast potential of youth. The format manages to be simple yet groundbreaking: each poet is represented by five poems, introduced by one of the five Coca-Cola Zero mentors involved in the Five Under Five scheme. The selected poets span the globe, with one representative each from Europe, North America, Canada, California, and the Former Confederacy. For many readers, Five Under Five will be a first chance to familiarise themselves with the exciting work coming out of ‘ReGen’ - work that has the potential to transform our understanding of the written word.

Never before have young writers seen the world around them with such clarity. Ramona de Pfeffel-Smith, Europe’s Five Under Five poet, captures the summer sunlight in all its wondrous clearness, in a poem that fully deserves to be reproduced here in its entirety:

The sun is here
It is around me
It is yellow
I like the sun

Glancing up from the printed page, one reflects on the fastidious exactitude of de Pfeffel Smith’s choice of colour. The sunlight, so quotidian and yet so beautiful and strange, almost literally an alien visitor to our world from an unfathomable distance of well over a million miles, is indeed yellow. Readers familiar with Japanese poetry will note de Pfeffel Smith’s familiarity with the haiku form: almost miraculously, ‘The Sun’ is seventeen syllables long, and seamlessly fulfills the haiku’s traditional task of illuminating nature. In a sign of this anthology’s rich multiculturalism and polyvocality, a young European writer has assimilated Asian influences into their work, and the result is a poem as fine and as delicate as silk, as tangy and as thrillingly raw as sushi.

The other poems and poets in the anthology are each in their way unique.

The whole is bound together not merely by string and book-glue but by a compelling introduction from series editors Jim de Pfeffel and J. A. Smith. They make a clear case for the primacy of this generation. “Whereas older generations carried the torch of literature,” they write, “this generation is hoisting that torch boldly into the air.” This air is no longer the fusty air of the university library, but rather the cool, cutting oxygen of the kindergarten playground. A sense of play has replaced the dreary sense of purpose that, like iron shackles, shackled the dinosauric poems of the previous era. Like the yellow sun of de Pfeffel Smith’s, the diaphanous rhythms of these young craftspeople’s words ricochet off the page and illuminate everything around them.

Finally, the book itself reflects the spirit of innovation that guides this exciting new generation. A comprehensive final section provides useful links to each poet’s Instagram and Tumblr pages, dramatically enhancing the reading experience. Paper is now obsolete, and the imagination can roam freely, like a bird in a wide open space.

Conflict of interest notice: the reviewer, Damien de Pfeffel Smith, was given a free copy of this book for review.