Twitter Poet, Brian Bilston, to Release New Book this Summer

Poet Brian Bilston is often described as the “unofficial poet laureate of Twitter”. It all began when he shared his first poem on the social media site and headed out to see the actual poet laureate, at the time, Carol Ann Duffy who was doing a poetry recital in the area.

A few hours later, when he turned his phone back on after the event, his tweet had been shared hundreds of times and he had 200 new followers. Now, he has over 60,000 followers and regularly posts his brilliant poems not just on Twitter but across Instagram and Facebook too.

Bilston’s poems have perhaps attracted so much attention because they not only use clever word play but they also often experiment with shape too. For example, his Christmas poem about trees which shows the needles falling to the ground.

Brian Bilston’s first book, You Took the Last Bus Home, features the very first poem he shared on Twitter. His latest book, Diary of a Somebody, will not just feature poems, instead, it is a novel with a story of love and mystery which is interspersed with plenty of Bilston’s hilariously funny and brilliantly poignant poems.

Brian Bilston’s life is crumbling all around him. His ex-wife has a new man, who seems to be influencing Brian’s son Dylan. At work Brian is drowning in piles of paperwork and spreadsheets, so, he turns to poetry as his escape, deciding to write one poem every day for a year. However, when his arch-enemy Toby Salt, from the poetry group, goes missing, Brian is, of course, a top suspect in the investigation.

Diary of a Somebody is published by Picador in the UK and is due to be released on the 13th June 2019.

Brian Bilston, Diary of a Somebody