I was initially drawn to the cover, and the description was what really sold this book to me. However, I just wasn’t completely convinced by what I found inside. I don’t think the description totally matches the contents of the book, as it built my expectations way to high. I did enjoy a couple of poems, but overall, I really didn’t vibe with anything. I quess this collection just wasn’t for me.

Thank you to NetGalley and Interstellar Flight Press for providing me with an eARC in exchange for an honest review.

I enjoyed this far more than I thought I would. All of the poems individually are interesting, but reading them together creates an entire universe of dread and fantasy. It wasn't a long read but it was a wild ride.

A collection of haunting and dark poetry with an underlying fairytale component.
The cover and the description were what caught my attention but unfortunately, the book wasn't fully what the description had set it out to be.

Personally, I liked more of the first half and this collection has now made me eager to find more poetry books that have a darker theme. Though these were very short poems, I really liked "The Siren", "Marriage" and "The Darkness".

Although this book is a mix of poems that I found interesting and some that I didn't particularly like, it was still enjoyable. It is a very quick read (it took under an hour for me) and is worth a look at.

Thank you to Interstellar Flight Press, the author and NetGalley for an e-copy.

NetGalley and Interstellar Flight Press provided me with an eARC. All opinions are my own.

The Gravity of Existence is an extraordinary collection of poetry. At some times a gut-punch and at other times a testament to human thought and behavior, Sng has a talent for brevity.

Of the collection “The Gravity of Loss,” “Monstress,” “The Monsters at Home,” “Monsters,” and “Body Parts” moved me the most. The cadence and separation of verses on the page was reminiscent of a predator sneaking on its prey.

The persona poem sections, where Sng gives prominent fairy tale princesses (like Snow White, Sleeping Beauty, and Rapunzel) a voice with a horrific twist really spoke on topics of generational trauma, revenge, escape, and the cyclical role “damsel-in-distress” plays in relation to a woman’s age.

I am not particularly familiar with the horror poetry genre, but this made me want to explore this territory a little more.

I would like to start by saying this was likely not my taste to begin with. I found that the book didn't really match the expectations drawn up by the description - I think I was expecting Gothic decadence, prose-style poems that really explore new ideas regarding the Gothic monster, exploring what is 'other' in masterful Gothic settings. This isn't what Sng has done here and so, I think the description has let her down a little. If this had been described as satire, it might have performed better for me. Unfortunately, I found most of the collection under-developed, in concept rather than a fully formed publication. A lot of the tone reads sarcastic to me, especially the very short form poems that touch on traditional fairytales.

Again, I was just expecting something really lyrical, layered, decadent, and creepy but it just didn't meet my expectations. I think this collection did not suit me as a reader.

Christina Sng creates a collection of poems and microtales, some devastatingly sad, some astoundingly beautiful & others horrifying.

I was captured by “Sand Under a Microscope”, I love being by the ocean and always take time to scour for beach glass, minuscule shells and admire the tiny grains of sand.

While I wouldn’t necessarily classify this book as a traditional “horror” or “thriller” it is an interesting and imaginative, so definitely give it a read!

Thank you to NetGalley, the author, and Interstellar Flight Press for a copy.

I was interested in this poetry collection by Christina Sng due to the synopsis and cover: it looked like a haunting tale of dark poetry with many topics to explore. I looked forward to the fairytale component that contained my favourite poems. I enjoyed nearly every single poem from that portion.

Unfortunately, not every poem was a hit for me. The ones that did not connect are in the first portion of the book. Essentially, the content related to ghosts was a bit obscure and hard to comprehend. The poems are short, so each word matters. I found myself questioning how they pieced together.

Overall, I enjoyed several poems in the collection. I am likely to read Christina Sng’s work in the future.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for an advanced review copy. All opinions are my own.

Content Warnings: death, blood, grief.

An absolutely brilliant collection of tiny poems, each on a world or person or place in its own. Reading this is like turning a kaleidoscope of re-fashionings of old lore and tales over and over, every new sight a dazzler. Sng's writing is carefully curated, every word doing work, and is a delight to read and take apart to see the cleverness beneath. A must for anyone who likes poetry, dark stories, and smart, smart writing.

Christina Sng is the three-time Bram Stoker Award-winning author of A Collection of Nightmares (2017), A Collection of Dreamscapes (2020), Tortured Willows (2021), Elgin Award runner-up Astropoetry (2017), Elgin Award nominee An Assortment of Sky Things (2016), and haiku chapbooks A Constellation of Songs (2016) and Catku (2016). Her poetry, fiction, essays, and art appear in such venues as Fantastic Stories of the Imagination, Interstellar Flight Magazine, Penumbric, Southwest Review, and The Washington Post, and received many accolades, including the Jane Reichhold International Prize, The Pula Film Festival International Haiku Award, multiple nominations for the Rhysling Awards, the Dwarf Stars, the Pushcart Prize, the Elgin Award, and the Ladies of Horror Fiction Award, as well as honorable mentions in the Year's Best Fantasy and Horror, and the Best Horror of the Year. Christina was one of the recipients of the 2021 Ladies of Horror Fiction Writers Grant. Her essay “Final Girl: A Life in Horror” received a 2020 Bram Stoker nomination for Superior Achievement in Short Non-fiction and her first novelette Fury made its debut in the award-winning anthology Black Cranes: Tales of Unquiet Women (2020). Her newest book is The Gravity of Existence a collection of minimalist horror poetry.
The Gravity of Existence starts with known tropes and works towards creating short narratives of implied horror. Sng seems to be taking previously published speculative short form poems—scifaiku, horrorku, tanka, etc.—and making a narrative out of them. This would make them rensaku, a series of haiku in which meaning is dependent on previous poems and a title, and that concept could work if the individual poems are well crafted. That being said, more often than not, Sng has mixed weaker poems with stronger poems or, alternately, simply put a title on a short form poem, and the resulting collection is uneven.
Take, for example, the poem “Body Parts”. The opening stanza, presumably a previously published tanka, is
the wine
much sweeter
this year
all those corpses
in the vat
Not a perfect horror tanka, but certainly one that has the shock and horror that one would expect from a Japanese short form poem. However, the next stanza is
root cellar
the bodies age
nicely
which is a weak poem on its own with limited imagery or horror, and while the subject of cannibalism moves the poem forward, the individual parts detract from the sequence as a whole. This approach, combining four or five previously published poems into one longer poem, has potential, but it’s not fully realized or well-executed in this collection, and a lot of that has to do with understanding of the scifaiku form and how it works.
At other times, it seems like Sng is breaking away from the scifaiku form, but still working with stanzas of three lines, which makes for some confusion for the reader. This is particularly true for the section “Childhood Tales,” which features poems based on darker fairy tales. The first poem in the section is “Little Red in Haiku,” which labels itself as a haiku series. The rest of the section doesn’t label its poems as haiku or a series, but they are in three lines. So a poem like “Puss In Boots,” which reads
a cat walking upright
down the street wearing boots
now I’ve seen everything
appears to want to be a scifaiku with a fantasy/folklore slant, but it features none of the craft techniques of haiku, so it’s more of a humorous three-line poem. This could work, but the presentation is a bit off-putting and makes for a confusing and disconnected read for the reader.
Overall, The Gravity of Existence by Christina Sng is an interesting experiment by a talented writer that occasionally works. Sng is recognized as one of the premier horror poets, and has won awards both for her speculative poetry and her haiku and senryu. This book blends those genres together, attempting to make rensaku from them, but when the individual poems that make up those stanzas aren’t well-crafted or well-formed scifaiku or horrorku, then the resulting rensaku are uneven, as is the rest of the book. On top of that, Sng has included poems that seem to echo a scifaiku external form, but ignore all of the internal rules and aesthetics of scifaiku, resulting in clever three-line poems that draw attention to themselves. This is an important collection by a major author in the genre, and fans of horror poetry will not be overwhelmed, but not completely disappointed either.

I enjoyed some of the themes in this book, kind of dark and twisted. I don’t normally read poetry but I found this enjoyable. Although it isn’t my favourite genre, I liked the horror/creepy aspect to some of the poems and it created good imagery when I was reading them. It was a very fast read (read in around an hour). I also love the cover. Although I did enjoy it to an extent, I’m not a big poetry fan and it doesn’t resonate with me as much as a novel, which is why I have given it the star rating I have.

Although these are not suitable poems for me, I found the poetry collection interesting and I will certainly buy a copy. I liked the cover.

The title of this book drew me in as well as that gorgeous cover but I don't think I appreciated the pair of them enough until I read the book.

This is a collection of poems about loss and grief told in a horror tone. While I'm not a fan of the genre I found that it worked quite well here. Horror in poetry works! I never thought I'd be the one to say that.
I have to that though that I enjoyed the earlier poems more than those ones that came later. The book started out so strong, that I wished it kept it up till the end.

Overall, this was such an easy read that I finished it in one sitting. I had been struggling to read for a week and this book worked for me, for that I'll applaud it.

So, this was my fault because I have a history with not being the biggest fan of this modern poetry format. I’m not going to lie, I HAD to read this book because the cover was too beautiful, yes - I have a problem with judging a book by it’s cover. The description seemed promising too, I have been getting more into fairy tale, magical, and horror literature, which made me even more interested in reading this.

I love the overall themes and tones of this poetry collection. For the quick time of reading, it kept me in a speculative world with the inserts of real life, which was a juxtaposition I was interested in. Other than that, though, I found myself quite bored while reading. This was truly the format’s doing, I couldn’t stay engaged while reading this style. I’ve learned my lesson and now know to not pick these types of books up in the future.

My least favourite was “Childhood Tales” I didn’t understand the point, summarizing these classic stories with few words that don’t give much creativity or freshness, it just didn’t interest me. My favourite was “Ghost Stories” I love the haunting atmosphere, relatability, and realness to these. I adore especially the first two poems.

Thank you NetGalley and Interstellar Flight Press for providing an ARC in exchange for an honest review. ❀

I hate giving poetry low ratings, because it is so subjective, and this could understandably be someone's favourite collection, but it just wasn't for me.
I liked the concept, and thought there were some good poems in here, but for me, most of these poems were read like words with little to them.
For someone with more of an interest in sci fi and the future, there may be more here, but it wasn't for me.
(I must say though that this cover is beautiful)

I requested this one because it might be an upcoming title I would like to review on my Youtube Channel. However, after reading the first several chapters I have determined that this book does not suit my tastes. So I decided to DNF this one.

This is a set of several short dark poems. While I enjoyed reading some, they felt more like interesting writing prompts than fully fledged poems to me. I didn't particularly gain anything from the fairytale haikus.

It's a nice little book, but not really for me.

Many thanks to Christina Sng, NetGalley, and Interstellar Flight Press for this copy.

4/5 stars

TWs: Death, blood, gore, grief, trauma

A small poetry collection that gave me inspiration to write stories about monsters and people in towers, much more than spoke to me about life. I really enjoyed it and I hope to read more from the author in the future. Some of my favourite poems were 'Escape', 'A Better World', 'Fears', 'Electroconvulsive Therapy Session One' and 'The Graveyard'.

Thank you to NetGalley for providing an arc of this collection in exchange for a review!

As someone who does not often read poetry, I was slightly worried when beginning this collection that I would be overwhelmed and confused by the prose and style of this book. Fortunately, I was very pleasantly surprised! Sng has a gorgeous writing style that manages to pack a lot of punch in short poems that still do not feel overwhelming.

This collection showcases poems on horrors, fairy tales, sci-fi, and relatable contemporary experiences all at once. This collection also manages to capture the unique grief of living when others do not, and of grieving your own future while still alive. I particularly loved the focus on monsters and the dichotomy of them being both protectors and those doing harm. I truly wish some of these poems were longer as I would have loved to learn more about the world that Sng has crafted, and I will certainly be checking out more of her work in the future.

A collection of poems that create an intriguing story surrounding fairy tales, sci-fi, and monsters. Inspirational. The perfect addition for the horror section of your bookshelf.

I don't get it. There are some interesting concepts here, but half the poems in this book are too short to be considered haikus, don't have consistent syllabic rules, and don't have much to say. The section focused on fairytales brings up nothing new and is so limited in its style that the ild things it says aren't interesting either. The most promising point is the section that focuses on snippets from a sci-fi story, an ark and the end of the world, and if the collection was able to focus more on these ideas, or the author had decided that very short form poetry was not the way to go with that story, we could have really gotten something out of it. Unfortunately I'm left confused and wanting.