Thank you netGalley for letting me review this book.


There are a few collection on this poetry that I really did enjoy and a few that I think was okay, just a little bit inconsistent when it comes to the switching of collections and in terms of the writing.

Overall, this was a pretty good read.

She Holds a Cosmos illustrated by Karolin Schnoor offers touching poems about the nature of parenthood and being a mother. It is beautifully written and would make a wonderful gift for a parent or child.

I don’t normally review books without trying to take a snazzy photo of them first, but this book is its own work of art so instead I’m sharing some of the illustrations in it.
She Holds A Cosmos, Poems On Motherhood, is a collection of poems by a variety of authors with a foreword by Kimiko Hahn, and illustrated by Karolin Schnoor.
The anthology explores themes on motherhood from a variety of different voices: reluctant mothers, blissful mothers, and often, mothers afraid they’re not good enough. Overwhelmingly, there is a feeling of survival as your body and world are completely turned upside down, and I really felt that!
I love this line in the foreword in particular “when one is not permitted creativity, just expressing oneself is radical”.
Motherhood is all consuming, permission to fully be yourself is often withheld by virtue of just not having the time or mental space to do so, so it feels like an exploration of motherhood in poetic format is even more necessary than it would be in any other medium.
This would be a great option for any new mums (or older mums too!).
It’s a short but beautiful anthology, definitely one to get a physical copy of!
I’ve included a couple of my favourite poems if you want to swipe to read them.

With thanks to @netgalley for this advanced reader copy. She Holds A Cosmos is now available to buy.

A beautiful, earnest poetry collection covering all phases of motherhood. The poems are written by a number of women in a variety of styles. Gorgeous illustrations accompany the poems. Overall, a beautiful collection that would make a wonderful gift.

Thank you NetGalley and the publisher for providing this audiobook ARC.

I recommend this one to the moms out there. I am not a mother and did not connect with the poems that much, but I was able to grasp some of it. But I believe this one is for the mothers out there and that it will give them a lot.

‘She holds a Cosmos’ is a beautiful collection of poems about motherhood edited by Mallory Farrugia. Illustrations are by Karolin Schnoor and foreword by Kimiko Hahn.

The collection features over 25 emotional poems displaying joys and struggles of mother’s journey. Varied poets adeptly describe the highs and lows of motherhood.

Experiencing motherhood in a dream year/s before and holding and seeing her future child twenty years later is passionately portrayed in these lines:
‘A year ago, two, I dreamed I held a
Mirror to your unborn face and saw you
In the warped watery glass, not as a child
But as you will be twenty years from now’

A very thoughtful expression of her child inheriting earth shown here:

‘My child shall inherit earth
I swallow grains at dusk
Sweet with dew’

The intricacy of saying ‘goodbye’ and never knowing whether it’s the last time well displayed in ‘You never know , when you say goodbye, if it’s the last time
Last time for who? For what? ‘.

Memorable lines need mentioning like:

‘We said she was a negative image of me because of her
Lightness

She is light and also passage, the glory in my cortex

Daughter where did you get all that goddess?’

Among my favorite are ‘Motherload’, ‘Sleep Darling’, ‘She as a painter’, ‘Mother’s Day’, ‘Foreign Body’.

The illustrations are vivid and vibrant making it more beautiful.

Thanks to NetGalley for the advanced copy.

This was such a beautiful book. The illustrations and the poems were just splendid. Absolutely loved it.

First of all, thank you to NetGalley for this ARC in exchange for an honest and unbiased review.
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Even though I’m not a mother myself, nor am I planning on being one in the next couple of years, I really did enjoy reading these beautiful poems. I really enjoy reading different perspectives and I really adored the way all the raw emotions were expressed and portrayed throughout these beautiful pieces of poetry.

As previously stated it’s hard to fully related to these poems, and I found it more relatable from the perspective of a daughter, rather than the mother, it truly makes you think and appreciate the feelings and love mother’s express, often without your own knowledge. The emotions almost leap out of the page at you, and is just so thought provoking and moving in many ways. You can truly feel the pain and grief of in some and the irrevocable and undying love conveyed overall, it’s really uplifting to read.

Not only are the poems themselves breathtaking but the illustrations throughout are just as charming. They feel really wholesome and uplifting.

Overall, although I am not a mother, I still felt very touched to read such beautiful perspectives into motherhood and would recommend this to any parent, soon to be parent or just someone who enjoys beautiful poetry as a whole.

I received an advanced readers copy of this book thanks to @netgalley.

I really enjoyed this book and the poetry and loved all of the illustrations. I want to print them and hang them all over my home. The first image is the cover I received and the second is another image for the book. The poems were elegant and beautiful and I would love to give this to new mothers or as a mother's day gift. I wish there are had been more poems, but I also like the idea of it being a small collection which would make it a nice gift.

I didn't love the introduction. I didn't think it had the right flow or tone as the rest of the book. I think that part could have been done better.

I appreciated this book but in the end didn’t enjoy it as much as I had hoped. I ended up DNF about halfway through.

The artwork was amazing. I was very intrigued when I first saw the graphic and the title.

However even if I liked some of the poems on motherhood and I have read others before this book, I could not truly say that the book reached the expectations I had. I liked more the introduction by Kimiko Hahn than some of the poems.

I thought this was an average read, I expected more philosophical or illusionary poetry. I think there was too much focus on motherhood as a biological sense especially when the book says that they are not intending to make it a biological function. I was not moved by any of the poems. So, I gave this book 3 stars because I thought it was average, not good but not bad.
Now the illustrations were amazing! My favorite part of this work was the illustrations. The illustrator did a fabulous job!

I did not like this book. It felt like it was trying wayyyy too hard. Some of the metaphors didn’t make sense and I just wasn’t a fan.

This book was sent to me as an ARC on NetGalley. However, all opinions are of my own.
This book is a re-collection of poems told through motherhood. The poems were written with love and tenderness and you could really understand the thoughts behind it. The illustrations throughout the book were beautiful too - I could imagine them as prints. Such a lovely book.

Many thanks to the author, publisher, and Netgalley for allowing me to review a digital arc of this book.

This is a beautiful book. With poems both new and classic, and an inclusive forward by Kimiko Hahn that assures us that mothering can be a verb, while not diminishing the complex lives of mothers, the reader is in good hands with this collection of diverse writers.

This little book of poems is exactly what my heart needed right now. The selection of poems honestly and tenderly described the highs and lows of motherhood, and some of the poems felt like a big hug during a time where I’ve felt increasingly overwhelmed in my role as a mother. The illustrations were charming and whimsical and I enjoyed them as much as the poetry. I did take the introduction with a grain of salt after reading reviews from others, and I do wish that there was more diversity in the selections, but nevertheless I already have a few people in mind that I would like to gift this book to when it is released, (myself included!) and I know it is a collection I will revisit often.

Thank you to Netgalley for this ARC in exchange for an honest review.

I really wanted to love this book - I loved the concept of delving deep into all the iterations of mother, mothering and motherhood.

However, as with some other reviewers have mentioned here, I too was put off a little by the introduction. It did not set the book up well.

I didn’t connect with many of these poems. Some felt very rambling and others just poorly written. The collection of poems could have been so much richer and diverse.

I’ve given this two stars, for a few snatched phrases that have lingered since. I’m also so aware that poetry is very subjective and what might have read poorly to me will have been beautiful to others.

I enjoyed this quite a bit. Wrapped in such tenderness and wisdom, each poem is a magical tribute to motherhood and to its accompanying joys, challenges, and complexities. I particularly liked that it emphasizes mother as a verb rather than circumscribing the word in a cage as something merely akin to biology and sex. Schnoor's beautiful illustrations made the experience more impactful and refreshing. The only problem with this is that it's too short. I would have liked it even better if the editor included some more poems. Nevertheless, this is a precious collection filled with so much poignancy and insight. For everyone who mothers, this one is for you.

Being a mother to an 18 month old and therefore stepping into motherhood fairly recently, I was excited to read this book. Whilst the illustrations are lovely and the concept of the book (ie poems related to motherhood /the journey of becoming a mother and what that might constitute) is great, the actual poems let down the concept. For me, the poems were just ok and I was disappointed. I wouldn’t recommend this book.

Hahn’s introduction threw me off the whole book with the talk about a male critic censoring the author’s work on motherhood