Poem Review: Harry Baker’s “Dinosaur Love”

by Nick McClure

Harry Baker is a British poet who rose to fame when he claimed victory as the “World Slam Poetry Champion” in 2012. He is very recognizable due to his fascinating use of repetition in a lot of his work. Today I will be looking at and reviewing on of his most viral poems of all time “Dinosaur Love”.

This is a poem that one could share with a significant other, it has a very charming and emotional way of getting the point across that whoever the reader is at the time loves the person they may share it with. Harry uses lines like “I’ll always have your back” and one of my favorites with “I want to love you like a t-rex, with a tiny brain and a massive heart”. I personally love that line because it can be easily interpreted for anyone and what Harry is saying is, he may not be the smartest person around, but his love is unconditional. When it comes to his repetition in the work, he circles back to the line “I want to say I love you” multiple times in this poem, almost like songs reverting back to the verses a few times. I like this because it keeps a good steady theme to it, not just random rhyming for a few minutes.

I personally like the way Baker writes these poems, for the reader that may have no prior experience with his work I will say he tends to write all of his poems in this charming but still serious poems. He has a good mixture of seriousness, passion and youth in his work. One thing I will add though is this poem isn’t done justice just by reading it, if you want the full experience you must watch a video of his performances of it, it is totally different than any other poets I have read in my time.

Overall, I would rate this poem a 4/5 on my personal scale! I chose this because it has a lot of fun aspects to it and I feel that almost all ages could enjoy something like this. The only reason it ranked 4/5 is because it is almost impossible to fully understand the emotion of Baker in this poem just by reading it. Not all of his work is this way but this poem along with a couple other are. I would recommend Harry Baker and this poem to anybody that needs a good smile, his poems are very uplifting in my opinion and I hope that as a reader of this review it encourages you to explore the world of slam poetry!

References:
Baker, H. (2014). The Sunshine Kid. Portishead: Burning Eye Books.