I read this collection first shortly after its publication in 2014 and it's stayed with me after so many years. I recently re-read it and it remains moving and engaging. Daley-Ward succeeds at many elements contemporary poets attempt but often fail or execute in very pedestrian ways, whether it's form, language or topics. She succeeds in making ordinary language vibrant, to make it pulse with purpose and depth to create a living image or a honest emotion and uses form to snap you out of your mundane expectations of words and phrases you've heard a million times. This presentation has a deceptive simplicity to it, giving her poetry an accessibility and down-to-earth sense that contemporary poetry often strives for, that in the work of less skilled poets can be painfully dull, while also being art that has sincere power to pull you out of yourself. Daley-Ward knows her own voice as a poet and it's worth listening to. ( )

Heart-breakingly beautiful writing,visuals, and storytelling. Loved her sexual expression and the familiarity of cultures, the pain and love of family. So much of the duality we are raised with. So much of the silent aches and struggles of simply being and of living. Thank you. ( )

A lot of recent poetry leaves me cold and it's been a long time since I read poetry that had a sense of narrative as well as lyricism. This volume startled me by telling very complete stories with very compelling characters within its verses. It's not pretentious at all, it's just good writing that happens to be poetry

Definitely worth reading . ( )

I am incredibly picky with my poetry.
This book hit the mark with every single poem, whether they were pages long or haiku short.
Daley-Ward's word choices and rhythms made her poems beautiful even if the subjects were heartbreaking at times. She wrote about family, relationships and the world in a way that was tender and wise. Hardships do not have to make you hard. Even though most of my experiences differ from hers, I could feel myself healing as I read her words. There are similarities in all human experience and I really could feel it in this poetry.
Read it. ( )

“Bone. Visceral. Close to. Stark.”

These are the few sparse words on the back of Yrsa Daley-Ward’s poetry collection. A woman of Nigerian and Jamaican heritage, she grew up in the north of England and has a wonderful accent to match.

I thought her poetry collection might be something similar to Teaching My Mother How to Give Birth by Warsan Shire, but where Shire’s work is raw, Daley-Ward’s poetry is vulnerable and feminine.

I have mixed feelings about this collection. I loved a few of the poems, I really felt their words and prose sink into my bones, but for others, their meaning escaped me like sand slipping through my fingers. The poems are all well-written, well-polished but they lacked the emotional punch that I love in poetry collections.

For me, poetry can be more emotional, more powerful because it doesn’t have to stick to conventions as much as a novel or short story does.

I really enjoyed some of her longer poems, which surprised me. Usually I struggle with poems that are over a few pages long and often will take breaks in between stanzas when reading, but her longer poems were some of the most compelling. ‘some kind of man’ was beautiful and melancholy and moving and almost had me in tears.

I also really liked reading about her fictionalised life — growing up in a very strict, Seventh Day Adventist home, she navigates the difficult matter of faith with ease, asking questions, answering them, allowing them to be echoed.

What I perhaps appreciated most of all is her history, her identity. West-Indian and West-African foods, language, names are all beautifully seamlessly integrated into the finer details of Northern British life. I am soon to be an immigrant myself and I often struggle with the dual nature of my identity — except that it’s not about dualities, it’s about being able to construct an identity from both sides of the equation.

Was this what I expected? No. Was I initially a little disappointed? Yes, but once I’d let go of my expectations and really settled into the book I read it a lot more easily after that.

So, while this collection wasn’t exactly what I expected it would be, I still really liked reading it and would definitely read more of her work. I can tell by her poetry that she has such a beautiful spirit and I’m looking forward to seeing more of her.

(cw: rape, sexual assault, domestic violence) ( )