This collection starts with an introduction from Robert Montgomery where he says that for him, new poetry in English, should be free of the English language itself. He finds Greta's work to be this way. I would agree with him that the words that she uses and the imaginary she tries to project in the reader's mind is something out of the ordinary. However, the disadvantage of breaking away from normal writing is that it distances the people who love reading in it. A collection about motherhood, female identity, parenthood, I was fascinated by the concept but the poems themselves appeared disjoint to me.

The book is divided into four sections with each section housing its own collection of poems. I could not make sense of many of the poems, never mind relate them to the bigger theme. I am not even sure if the way I interpreted the poems I could understand were even supposed to be that way! There is one that I think talks about the possibility of dying at childbirth but as complicated as it is, I have no way of saying if that is what I wanted to take away from it or was the poem really about that? Come to think of it, something that leaves so much room for interpretation is unique in itself. I am usually able to visualize what is going on, and feel the sentiments being conveyed in poems, but this collection only brought that about ever so often.

Overall, this was a unique experience. I am thankful to the publisher and author for making an ARC available via NetGalley.

Thanks to the publisher for directly reaching out to read this one. I thought this was much longer than a typical book of poetry, but overall still good. Bellamacina writes in a style I have not come across yet, but I loved it and I really enjoyed the length of her poems (being not too long). One of my favorites was 'Clear Water'.

Not really my style of poetry, I am not really the target audience I don’t think, or at least if it’s aimed at tomorrow’s women how about we focus a little less on pregnancy, maternity etc, yes I get women have babies but it’s not our sole purpose. I just didn’t find any kind of connection with the poems, nothing resonated with me and this is rare, some just didn’t make sense. Not for me sorry.

Thanks to netgalley and the publisher for a free copy for an honest opinion

First poetry collection of 2020 and I have to say: I was definitely not a fan.

For as much as I found some (the real minority) of sentences somewhat pretty, the great majority of these poems alienated me. This was an alienating experience and surely not a good one.

The metaphors just did not make sense to me, and I even found that some were repeated a bit too much. So they even lost their unicity pretty quick.

I could not relate to the struggle and the feelings depicted for (I think) two main reasons.
1. Some parts were simply not for me. There was a part in this collection that was centered around pregnancy, and I’m just not the targeted audience for this topic.
2. The metaphors (as I have mentioned) were complete nonsense.

Now, let me further discuss this.
I say the metaphors were nonsense because, to me, it felt as if the author put two words that they sounded beautifully together but that, in reality, they were anything but beautiful. They actually made no sense whatsoever.
I was more focused on understanding the metaphors and the overall feeling of the poem than actually enjoying the reading experience. And what a frustrating experience this was.
Also because, honestly, the metaphors I did understand were rather average, cliché and definitely not ground breaking.

So, all in all this was a complete and utter flop for me.
I did not enjoy it in the slightest and I found myself confused and detached.

When I started reading Greta Bellamacina's Tomorrow's Woman, I did so with high expectations. I'm not entirely sure why exactly was I this excited for it. I guess the fact that the book promised to revolve around femininity, motherhood, gender identity and other social issues along with love.

However, by the time I was done with it, I was deeply disappointed. The poems didn't resonate well with me. There were so many times, in fact, when I wanted to throw my phone away because I couldn't bear to read them any longer. Yet, I persisted in the hopes that the "beauty" of the poems would come out soon. It never did. And I was left feeling like a broken person.

It isn't that the poems weren't bold or written in an exploratory voice, as the blurb promises. They were like that, but they just didn't give out those emotions. Nothing in this book was as you expected and that bothered me a lot. Now I'm not saying that the book is trash. I'm certain there may be people who would be overjoyed after reading it. All I'm saying is that I didn't find Tomorrow's Woman to be enough.

I'm sorry but unfortunately these poems really didn't resonate with me at all. I found a lot of them overly cryptic and just didn't 'get it'. Unfortunately it's just not a style of poetry that I could personally enjoy.