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Perhaps we were all tall children then, playing games on asphalt under alien stars, the heat boiling up through the cracks.
Named after a line in an outtake from his 1996 album 1.Outside, ‘Who Am I Supposed To Be Driving?’ is a collection of ekphrastic poems written in response to thirteen of David Bowie’s albums, from 1969’s Space Oddity to 2016’s Blackstar. The ultimate changeling, Bowie wrote songs that led us into landscapes as various and exotic as the characters he created to sing them.
These poems aren’t a critique. They’re not a biography. They’re not an attempt to paraphrase or explain the music which inspired them. Instead, they’re an exploration of the emotions the work creates, and the lost worlds from which these iconic albums first emerged.
Or perhaps they’re just the abstract thoughts of a flight controller, working the night shift, wishing Major Tom would return.
With concise words and deft phrasing, Clare O'Brien captures the essence of Bowie, conjuring sound and vision all the way from Major Tom to Blackstar. Her poetry weaves worlds within us, reminding us not only of what we have lost but of what still remains. A stunning tribute to a mighty talent.
L.G. Thomson,
Author of ‘Boyle’s Law’
Clare O'Brien has given us a collection that is nostalgic and melancholic, but also visceral and uplifting. There is deep emotion here, forcing upwards like ‘the heat boiling up through the cracks, ’ and whilst we cannot know the meaning of every line to the poet, or fully grasp every beautiful lyric, through the sometimes cryptic we are invited to go deeper, explore further, like a Star Man breaking the bonds of gravity. Yes, there’s something wonderfully ethereal about poems such as Portrait in Flesh, and Your Face in Mine, but Spark the Fusion is physical and sharp to the senses, whilst Electric Blue fizzes like a fuse connecting the classical world to the transient world of fame and celebrity.
Reading this collection feels almost voyeuristic, as though we are intruding on O'Brien’s deepest secrets. But this is surely the point, and it’s down to the poet’s gift with language that our curiosity is piqued. We cannot look away. O'Brien weaves a spell, and the reader yearns for more.
Who Am I Supposed To Be Driving is an intriguing and starkly beautiful tribute to the music of David Bowie, and just as Bowie invited us to take those wonderful leaps with him, so Clare O'Brien entices us to explore the artist’s music, and indeed his journey, through the lens of her own emotional response to them.
In this collection, the poet has given us a poignant reminder of the power of music to inspire us, to move us, but also, of its capacity to shape the darker corners of our minds.
Giles Kristian, Sunday Times bestselling author of Lancelot.
