Kate Garrett’s poetry chapbook takes us on a magical journey of self doubt, rejection, and uncertainty, through darkness and ultimately to a place where she takes back her agency and the mastery of her own fate.
Review
I would like to thank the author and the publisher for the ARC in return for an honest review.
I don’t claim to always understand poetry, but I have a passion to keep learning, so I was delighted to be offered the chance to review this collection. For me it is important that a poem speaks to me as a reader and all the stunning poems by Kate Garrett certainly did!
I loved them all, especially the deeply moving, This Mortal Coil, which took me back to the loss of family members from quite an early age. I often struggle to give a voice to my sense of loss, but this poet has with great power, gentle words and imagery built a picture and that has given a voice to long supressed emotions.
before their vacant spaces
[of static spark, of echo-hollow]
Make your solid shape unbearable
What greater compliment to pay a poet, than to say you have with a few lines summed up the loss of those long past, but who still linger with us when we look at an empty chair or any vacant space they once filled with laughter and love.
Although This Mortal Coil connected with me the most, all the poems have an equal emotional impact. They sparkle with an understanding of all those events that shape us, parenthood, birth, loss and life at its most effervescent.
I would like to thank Kate Garrett for writing such a wonderful collection of poems, full of wisdom and images, which will stay with me for a long time. They are all rooted in the beauty of a language that dates back to Shakespeare’s creative wonder Puck. Given life by a poet of great talent and vision.
You can purchase this collection of Poetry from Amazon
About the author
Kate Garrett is a writer, mum, editor, witch, horror fan, history buff, and amateur folklorist, among other things, who changes her hair colour more often than some people change their underpants…
Her poetry and flash fiction have been widely published online and in print, and she is the author of several books. Her recent poetry pamphlets include You’ve never seen a doomsday like it (Indigo Dreams Publishing, June 2017), Losing interest in the sound of petrichor (The Black Light Engine Room Press, January 2018), and Land and Sea and Turning (CWP Collective/Dark Particle Press, August 2018).
Her first full-length poetry collection, The saint of milk and flames, was published by Rhythm & Bones Press in April 2019. And her seventh chapbook To Feed My Woodland Bones [A Changeling’s Tale] will be published in September 2019 by Animal Heart Press.
Kate has a BA (Hons) in Creative Writing (first class honours) from Sheffield Hallam University, and plans to do an MA in history or heritage (and possibly a PhD in folklore studies) once her babies are a little older.
Kate’s poetry has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize, Best of the Net, and The Density of Salt was longlisted for best pamphlet in the Saboteur Awards 2016. She is the founding editor of several journals +/or presses.
She is a married mother of five human children and one cat-child, and lives in Sheffield, where she walks the winding rivers and always inhabits a between place in her heart.
You can learn more about Kate Garrett on her website http://www.kategarrettwrites.co.uk and follow her on Twitter @mskateybell
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