BOOK OF THE MONTH : JUNE 2026 : ‘DAYGLO : THE POLY STYRENE STORY’ by CELESTE BELL & ZOE HOWE

This particular book was published in March 2019.  The reason for it taking more than seven years to be reviewed on this blog is simple – I never owned a copy until a few weeks ago when I was generously given the book as a gift, purely out of friendship.

I’ll open with the blurb from the publisher:-

Poly Styrene was a singer-songwriter, an artist, a free-thinker, a post-modern style pioneer and a lifelong spiritual seeker: a true punk icon. But this rebel queen with the cheeky grin was also a latter-day pop artist with a wickedly perceptive gift for satirising the world around her – her brightly coloured, playful aesthetic sharply at odds with the stark monochrome style and nihilism of punk.

Here, for the first time, the vibrant jigsaw of Poly’s inspiring and often moving story has been lovingly pieced together by her daughter, singer-songwriter Celeste Bell, and writer/artist Zoe Howe. From growing up mixed-race in Brixton in the 1960s, to being at the forefront of the emerging punk scene with X-Ray Spex in the 1970s, to finding faith with the Hare Krishna movement, to balancing single motherhood with a solo music career and often debilitating mental health issues, the book honestly and openly explores Poly’s exceptional life, up until her untimely passing in 2011.

Up until 2020, my knowledge of Poly was very minimal – I could have told you she found fame in the punk era with X-Ray Spex; that she later became part of the Hare Krishna movement; there was a comeback gig in the late 00s which got great reviews; and that she died young in her early 50s from cancer, a few months after one of her contemporaries, Ari Up, had also succumbed at a young age to that dreadful disease.

This guest posting by flimflamfan, who it turns out was a real uberfan, provided me with a bit more context in terms of how much more (and yet how little) music there had been other than the one album from the punk era.  The following year, I did get to see the documentary Poly Styrene: I Am a Cliché, in which her life and times, and the journey to India after her death.   It is only now, after reading the book, do I realise that it goes hand-in-hand with the film, with the screenplay credited to Celeste Bell and Zoe Howe, the co-authors of Dayglo, but without any question, the book is far more enlightening.

Dayglo is very much an oral history, based on interviews with those who knew and loved Poly whether personally or through music, and is lavishly illustrated across its 192 pages, with an oversized hardback giving it the look of a coffee-table book.  The unusual style of using constantly changing voices, with most people ‘speaking’ in short bursts, made for a very engaging read, and yes, it did feel as it was akin to a well-paced documentary, one which paused occasionally at all the right places to allow the reader to reflect on things.

The joyful use of brightly coloured photos, illustrations and flyers/posters from the era, all of which seem have been lovingly curated over the decades by Celeste, are a further delight as the reader has no idea what is going to come next with each turning of the page.  More often than not, the particularly difficult passages of narrative, in which Poly’s ongoing struggles with her mental health are told candidly, are followed by the most gorgeous and surprising photographs, illustrating just how often the light and dark went hand-in-hand and offering a sharp reminder of how incredibly complex it is for families, loved ones and friends to cope with someone with a bipolar personality.

Poly was quite a unique and unconventional person, and it seems very fitting that her story has been told in this unique and unconventional way rather than as a straightforward biography.  It was a book I finished the book in two sittings, which is my way of saying that I couldn’t put it down, and am only sad that I had to wait all these years to read it.   It also made me sigh out loud more than once….wondering what Poly, if she was still with us, would make of a world that many of her lyrics seemed to predict

I am a poseur and I don’t care
I like to make people stare
I am a poseur and I don’t care
I like to make people stare
Exhibition is the name
Voyeurism is the game
Stereoscopic is the show
Viewing time makes it grow

mp3: X-Ray Spex – I Am A Poseur

From the album Germfree Adolescents, released in November 1978.  Poly was barely out of her teens when she penned it.

JC