Book Review
Title: Witchcraft and Monsters
Author: Kala Godin
Genre: Poetry Collection
Rating: *****
Review: So I don’t read poetry often but most collections I do read I end up enjoying and since this was fantasy based, I thought I’d take a chance on this. This collection is broken into five parts; Witchcraft, Fairytales, Bodies, Bad ideas, and Endings which was really intriguing for me. The first part Witchcraft was actually a lot darker than I was expecting but there are one or two light poems but not light as in happy but just a lighter kind of dark. My favourite poem in this part of the collection had to be Call me Sin because of the brilliantly vivid description it gives of the embodiment of Sin.
Part 2 is entitled Fairytales, and it a mash-up of Fairytales and mythology rolled into one. I loved a lot of poems in this section, so it is a three-way tie for favourite. I Hold Olympus in my Palm was the first one as it likens the reading to the Greek Gods in ways specific only to certain gods and evokes feelings of pride and importance which was interesting, to say the least. The second was The Big Book of Mythology which is also about the Greek Gods but rather than liken themselves to the God the person instead questions them, for example, the person questions why Hera stayed with Zeus when he was always in the bed of another and the simple answer is loyalty. I found this to be great as it does answer some questions, we have about the legends of the Gods but also makes them seem more human as they do have flaws and weaknesses. The last poem I really loved in this section of Man versus Beast and it the comparisons between this story and Beauty and the Beast is clear, but it throws a whole new perspective on the classic fairytale that I really enjoyed. I also have to mention Teeth and Flying, Teeth is a short poem on the fairy tale Red Riding Hood which manages to be both nostalgic and extremely creepy at the same time while Flying looks at the narcissistic God Apollo at it was perfection.
The third section is entitled Bodies, and it deals with the body, both illness and inflicted injuries. My favourite poems in this section were The Tale of a Gorgon, which deals with a woman who is in a wheelchair and how she likens herself to Medusa as she knows people feel that if they look at her, they will turn to stone and how this affects her. I also enjoyed Witching Hour which is about a person who is paralyzed in some form and the crushing panic they feel at waking up and not remembering they can’t move, the panic, fear and then crushing pain and disappointment felt so real it was amazing. I also have to give credit to Dear 17 which is a letter of sorts to the past version of this person and how they desperately tried to form themselves into a new person, but I also got the feeling that it was about self-harm as well.
The fourth section is entitled Bad Ideas, and this section focuses on the theme of lost love. The two poems I really have to talk about here are Pity was his Only Power which is about a relationship where the boy feels like he is a God that can own and possess the girl, but he doesn’t see the difference between boy and God, but she sees him for what he really is. This was just a striking poem empowering the girl to take advantage of this information she knows and leave him alone the way he deserves to be. Haunted Houses Look a Lot Like People is also a great poem as it turns the loss and aching of a newly lost love into a story about ghosts and haunted houses which just fit so well, and I think that everyone can relate to this in some way.
The final section is entitled Endings, this section is about endings and what comes after. The only poem I have to shout out in this section is Small Absolutes. It is about how some things in life, no matter how small seem like the biggest things in the universe and nothing will ever change that. I really liked this poem because despite the dark feeling of the whole collection this stood out as a tiny ray of sunlight just breaking through the cloud.
Overall, I really liked Witchcraft and Monsters and it is probably the best poetry collection I have read in a long time and I highly recommend you read it. It is short but so provoking that I couldn’t stop thinking about some of these poems for a long time afterward and I am sure that I will return to it again at some point in the future.
Buy it here:
Kindle Edition: amazon.co.uk amazon.com
Also see: Current Feels by Portia Mabaso Review
I received this review copy from NetGalley
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