Monday 27 December 2021

Danielle Wong : part four

What other poetry books have been reading lately?

I came across Andrea Gibson last year on Spotify, reading several of her poems. Each of the poems was filled with an incredible amount of passion. It was that passion that made me decide to buy her latest book You Better Be Lightning. It is a beautiful book, filled with empathy, understanding, encouragement, and love. Two of my favorite poems in that book are “Acceptance Speech after Setting the World Record in Goosebumps” and “Instead of Depression”; she lists facts in “Acceptance Speech” that really do leave you with goosebumps and I have to agree with her that we could remove the stigma of depression by phrasing the situation differently, focussing on what you need to do to get better, such as rest, rather than just give a label that many people cannot understand.

I have also been reading Resistance: Righteous Rage in the Age of #METOO, which is an anthology of poets discussing the trauma of abuse. The poems in there are powerful. When I sit with it, I can only read a few poems at a time. Each one of them stops me in my tracks and sends me off wondering about the horrible experiences many people have.

There are some chapbooks I have been reading from Yavanika Press. still lifes by Ron Scully is an incredible chapbook of short poems with gorgeous art. where the roots are, edited by Shloka Shankar, is a wonderful collection of short form poetry. Each one of these poems is proof of the power of words that make you stop and think.

I also read a lot of poetry from literary journals like Room, Vallum Mag, The Pine Cone Review, Tipton Journal, and many others.

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