One of my favourite kinds of poetry collections — one which takes ordinary language and elevates it and twists it beyond original recognition into something new. Proving the malleability of syllables and phonemes, Barwin's collection is a sterling follow-up to their debut.

I liked the book, but it was very weird for me to read. Maybe it's my deafness playing into this but I don't know. There was some humor in the poetry. There were some animals in the poetry but towards the end, I got lost. I did not understand any of it. To me this book is very good in the beginning and middle. End...lost me totally.

I received a free copy of the book and is voluntarily writing a review

3.5/5

"clocks were flowers/some spoke of love" (-after "gute nacht" from Winterteisse by Wilhem Muller).

This poetry collection confused me, for the most part. This annoys me in novels, but not in poetry collections; I think the point of poetry is to not always be completely understood. Barwin's poetry resembles Lewis Carroll's poetry or modern and post-modern expressionist art. It is not so much a narrative as a collection of thoughts, a kind of following of the author's feelings and thoughts and memories.
There were some poems that were easier to read than others, and a few had truly brilliant and beautiful lines, but I also found it hard to connect with some of them. Again, I expect this in a poetry collection, and I'm glad it was present. Not all poems will relate with all people.
Overall, I thought it was a well-done, modern poetry collection. Even with its nods to the past, including ancient Greek poets and characters, a reference to the Silmarillion, and other literary acknowledgements, it felt very much like an expressionist collection.

You would probably like this collection if you are a fan of: Picasso, linear thought processes, Lewis Carroll's poetry.

I feel like this collection is very hit and miss and unfortunately for me, this was a miss.

The collection, I felt was more of an exploration into what poetry could be rather than poems with meaning. Poetry is very personal to the reader and writer except here I didn't feel that way.

When I read at the end that some of the poems were translated pieces of work that were made by putting the poem through google translate over and over and eventually coming back to English. While I admire what Barwin attempted to do I feel like here it just didn't work.

I love the potential of this but I'm not too keen on the execution.

There are some vivid and thought provoking lines and images in this collection. Barwin can also write clever little snips of humour (I think). Nature runs throughout and there is a reflection on poetry and poets with many poems titled "After (insert poem title) by (insert poet).

This is a big collection for a single poet and is a combination of previously published pieces which is another contributing (but not the major factor) in why this feels very disjointed. "The Land of Health" was probably the section I enjoyed the most and the pieces here are more prose than poetry and are clever little bites of fun.

However, I found a great deal of this impenetrable. The sort of poetry that if I was to use in a classroom would have my students throwing down their pens in frustration and me perhaps agreeing that - yeah I don't really get the meaning here over lots of poetic words.

Then at the end of the book I read: "Many of these poems were achieved in part by 'translating' a poem by running it many times from one distant related language into another using Google translate and the finally back into English" and that certainly explained things.

Really enjoyed reading this. Poems were beautifully written and some was very deep hitting hard either emotion. First I've read from this author but would like to read more.

This collection of poems was solid and different. I personally wasn’t able to get into the style too much. I just didn’t feel like I was connection to the poems on the level I want to when reading poetry. I know some people that may enjoy this, though.

Thank you NetGalley for the chance to read and review this!

I’m really sorry but this wasn’t to my taste at all! I wish the poet good luck, and I hope I appreciate them one day. I didn’t like the first poem and then several fishes can walk on the land really put me off. I don’t understand the point of phases or errata either.

Couldnt make head nor tails of what was happening in this collection. Seemed to be a collection of words in no partcular order that was incredibly difficult to fathom. Admittedly, may be just above my head, but far too experimental for my tastes