 Oh, Megan! You're a hero! Hello. Oh, I just put my hair in my face. Hello, it's Megan from The Future here because I just realised when sitting down to edit this that I never actually filmed an intro. But quickly before I actually get into what the video is about, I just wanted to let you all know that I am doing a poll over on my Twitter for what I should do for my 1K celebration when we eventually reach that. The mind boggles, like... I really can't believe I'm even anything close to that number. But yeah, I wanted you all to have a say in what I do. So the link will be down below in the bio if you wanted to check that out and go have a vote. Now, in today's video, we have a really special experience when I meet Charlie Cox, who is a British pirate. She is one of my favourite poets ever. Her first poetry collection, She Must Be Mad, was one of my favourite books this year so far. And I've mentioned it a few times on my channel. And in the studio, I had an opportunity to go to a book signing and a poetry reading for her next collection, which is out now, which is Validate Me. And yeah, it was really, really great. So I just wanted to share that in a video for you guys. So yeah, go vote down below and I hope you enjoy the rest of this video. So I'm just about to leave for the event. I think I've filmed like a little bit before this, explained to you. But I've got my copy. I am in a time rush. No one says that, but yes. Which is why I don't want to say and I'm panicking. And look at that. Oh my god, no, I can't even go out in public looking like this. But I've got no time to... It's because I had to put more makeup on top of my really existing makeup because I didn't have time coming up from uni to do my whole makeup again. And that's so embarrassing. That's so embarrassing. I can't. Anyway, when I go get a sign, woo! I went to a very expensive hotel every morning and nursed a cup of coffee for about eight hours, constantly refilling up with drinks that I had in my bag so they just assumed that I'd reordered and they hadn't noticed. And it got to a point where I just sort of felt like a local. I'd really convinced myself to be on the realms of lying, but maybe it was true. And one particular day I was really sad. Really, really sad. And had sort of bypassed everyone there and thought, you know, I'm just going to go and sit in the smoking area all day and keep the curtain closed and try and work out what the fuck's wrong with me. And then someone ruined it but also made it a little bit better. You can't walk the bar and head for the screen. Take off your sunglasses, a sigh, a relief. Just mumbles of others, a curtain between. Sat entirely alone, unmasked with huge swollen eyes, feeling uncomfortably alive, feeling finally seen. By no one but you, a sigh, a relief, finally seen. It's grim and it's snotty. It reeks of sweat and of sleep. It curdles within you a rotten green pang and then, from out of the barrier, a stranger puts out his hand. You shrug off, reluctant. He's killing your moment. But actually there, he's properly showing you it. London, his voice swells. You must be an actress. Not quite, you reply, though. This is definitely acting. But your beauty, that accent, what's your success? I guess today I've finally got out of bed. That's all there is. Everything else is a mess. Kid, he says, look, this guy's pulled straight from a film. You've got yourself here. I saw you come over to hide, head bowed as you walked. I'm going to talk and I'll give it to you straight. You don't need to smile for the room but put one on your face because what you feel inside is the best art that you'll make. It's all yours to keep, but it's getting you down because you've been giving it out instead of giving it a chance to gruminate. I'm so glad I wasn't growing up in the digital age because I've learnt that it's all much too easy to fade when you're forced to dine out on gesture, giving meals for those who weren't meant to take. I don't know if they're happy as forest or whatever. So I walked in and you were like, I was like, you don't like fan. I'm super boring. I don't believe you've not even had half a second. What's your name? Megan. Hi, Megan. Hi, Megan. Did you enjoy that? I really enjoyed it. Sure. Positive. Positive. Yay. I've been a fan of your project ever since. It seems like such a niche for ever since. Oh my god, yeah. She's such a good egg. It's not so bad that she's not to come to my house or my mother's house to be sweaty as day. Yeah. It's too like an interview. So your family's like, I can feel my skin sticking to my organs. We don't really want to talk. I hope you enjoy it. It's a total outpouring of my usual idiocy. So it's like, I've pre-ordered it. Oh, yes! I was like, I'm ready, boys. I'm ready. Oh, Megan! You're a hero. I don't know how to react. I mean, I do. Like with the biggest smile in the world. I'm... Oh my god. See, I was right. I knew that you were a good one. Thank you, thank you, thank you. Yeah, of course you can. So I just got home. She was so lovely. The event was incredible. I'm so excited to read this tomorrow. I think I'm just going to like read the whole thing tomorrow because all the poems I was just like... Wow. Yeah, she was lovely. She was so lovely. And we spoke for ages. She said I was like a ball of warmth. She was like... I noticed like she looked to me quite often when she was reading stuff out. Like not in like a... Oh, she was looking at me way, but like... I just felt like I was trying to be like encouraging, you know? We spoke about Ariel because she's in Ariel's documentary about poetry, if you've seen that. That's how I found out about her. It says, Megan, you're a total babe of brilliance and deliciousness. All my love, Charlie. Isn't she just... I feel like I haven't expressed to you how great it was meeting her and how kind she was and how like just great it was talking to her. And like getting up to fight with her at the end was so nice. That's definitely a step up from my meeting Jess Phillips because I didn't do well there, but Charlie was just like... We just got each other, you know? We just... I don't know what to say. Wow, that was so cool. That was so cool. Okay, bye. It's the next day and I tweeted last night that I wanted to read it all in one sitting today, but my schedule doesn't want that. So I've only had time today to read the first section. It's split into four sections, which are objectify me, love me, suffocate me, validate me. And so my thinking is I'm essentially going to check in with you after each of those, tell you which was my favorite poem in the section and then we'll do like a final wrap up at the end. I read the first section, which was objectify me. I really enjoyed it. I really love her prose section, so it's a mix of... So there's just like the poems, poems, poems, and then there's like these little, little, little... Just couple liners on those gray pages. Some of the ones on gray pages are a bit longer than that. That is one of the shorter ones. Then we've got poems that take up like two pages instead of the one. Have a bigger header. I don't know why that is. But then we have prose sections that are kind of, you know, like written like a mini story. I really enjoyed The Walking Center, which is a piece of prose. I feel like I related to it because she was talking about like being convinced something's wrong with you health-wise and that was something I struggled a lot with. During the first year of uni and I'm like trying to make sure it doesn't happen again. But in terms of my favorite poem from the piece, it would probably be hashtag spawn, which is the second to last poem in the piece. And it's essentially about how sexuality and advertising used to be a lot more overt, I guess, and obvious with page three, with the, you know, TV adverts, stuff like that. But now it's all hidden in the Instagram sponsorships, the protein powders, the skinny teas, you know, that kind of thing. I'm going to really outfeed quickly. I hope she doesn't mind. I'm not going to do as good a job reading it as she did reading her own poems last night. Are we ready? Sit down, relax. It used to be tits nestled in headlines, a break from the crude, flipped to page three, check out the nude. It used to be lips sucking on flakes, want a dose of arousal, skip to the ad breaks. It used to be legs on bonnets of cars, should only be seen on the right arm. It used to be trashy, demeaning and brutal. It all seemed so brazen, so obvious, so futile. We gained it all back, I felt so empowered, until I realized sex still sells. But this time to me, young girls, vitamins and whey powder, clothes that don't fit, on the bodies they sit, cinched in and smoothed, hungry eye glares removed, just sexy and tiny, sexy and tiny, soft, life and shiny. Love you all back this morning. Thank you, thank you. It's really good, it's really good. I was worried that, you know, it wasn't going to live up to the first one. I always worried that with any author after reading a piece of their work that you loved so much, whether it be fiction, whether it be non-fiction or whether it be poetry, you always feel that fear. But also meeting her and having such a great experience meeting her, I felt like that doubled. I felt, I felt like, oh, I have to love this now, because it was so lovely. So the next section is Love Me. So I will let you know what I think. I'll let you know what I think of that once I've read it, and that'll be when I check it back with you next. So it's the next day and I just finished the second section, which is Love Me. Parts of this just broke my heart. She's been through a lot of, like, romantic situations that she writes about that I have never been through. So, like, I can't relate. But it's still, it's really upsetting. You really, really, like, feel for her, but also, like, feel for their pretty common experiences. So it makes me really feel for everyone else that has to go through that shit. And in terms of my favorite poem from this section, hang on, let me have a think. Oh, I really liked Glowing. So, um, are we glowing? Glowing is kind of just sort of an idea of how it's set out, like, the format of it. The first couple lines are, um, aligned, like, on the right of the page, and then the rest are aligned just on the left. When you wake, your eyes are drawn to the screen, and I imagine all the people before us who didn't have these things, who'd have lazed and lounged and gazed, touched and smiled and yawned and snaked. I don't need your hand in the street. I don't need our parents to meet. I don't need six months as a feat. I just want to know all that's between us, beneath the sheets, in your eyes and mine, our legs intertwined, instead of waking up to you on your sodding phone. One thing I like about Charlie Cox's poetry is that she's really funny, um, amidst all the kind of really tough, uh, topics that she tackles. I really like humour in poetry, and she really does that so, so well. I haven't really encountered another poet that does it as well as she does. So, I think that poem's like a good, uh, demonstration of how she tackles these difficult topics, whilst still being humorous and funny. So, I'm gonna go out to a seminar now, and then I'm gonna come home and read the last two sections and give you my final thoughts on this, but I am just loving it so far. So, I finished it. I know I was supposed to be checking in, like, every section, but I just didn't want to stop reading, so I just read it all. I gave it five stars. I think if I was to recommend Charlie's poetry to you, it would be to explain, essentially, it's all about love, relationships, friendships, mental health, relationships with yourself, and in this one, particularly the relationship with online, and how that's affected so many of us. As I was saying before, I love the prose sections so much. I love so many of the poems. I thought this one was laid out really well. It was laid out in a bit of a different way to the last one, and you could definitely see there's like a step-up made there as well. But the poetry is just so beautiful, and it really is for like the modern young person, I feel like. I don't think there's a lot of poetry writing about experience as a young person, particularly in the UK, but worldwide as well, the pressures that you feel, and even if they're pressures that you necessarily go through yourself, for example, like when she was talking about difficulty in like kind of transient relationships as a young person, like that's also something I relate to, necessarily, but it makes you understand a lot more the people around you and the kind of society that you're in. So it's such an important read, and if you're into poetry or wanting to get more into poetry, I'd really recommend picking this up. As always, I just want to say a big thank you for coming here and supporting my channel, and yeah, I just feel so, so lucky to be getting to talk to you about different kinds of books and just general books, whatever. I don't know what I'm saying, but thank you, thank you, thank you as always for being here, subscribe if you're new and if you haven't before, and yeah, hopefully I will see you soon with another video. Bye!