A review by ellies_book_corner
A Gift Of Rivers by Kate Foley

3.0

I had had Kate Foley's 8th poetry collection waiting on my bedside table for a while, and what spurred me on to pick it up was an episode of The Stacks (a book podcast), which was a discussion on poetry and how we might approach it. This collection is described as being "made from meeting, migration and marriage: poems reflecting the journey of one poet and her wife, across linguistic and cultural boundaries".

I'm glad I listened to the podcast episode first, because I was able to approach this in a different way to how I would normally approach poetry, including reading each poem aloud (several times) to experience the way the language felt. That was really helpful because there were poems in there that I didn't "get"/seemed like a string of sentences with no overall meaning, yet I was still able to enjoy certain phrases, the way some of the sentences rolled through my mouth and their rhythm, and I needed to hear that.

There were 5 poems that I really liked, and know I will go back to, and they definitely made this short collection well worth the read. I absolutely loved the extract "from The Silver Rembrandt" - it had a real meaning for me and I so identified with the feeling of being 'drunk' on your surroundings, when at an LGBT gathering. It evoked the feelings I had the first time I went out with the LGBT society at University - I was dizzy with it, drinking in the sight of so many more bi women and lesbians than I had ever seen before all crowded into this small space, desperately trying to soak up every sensation and commit it to memory 🌈

I also appreciated the religious references throughout, having been raised Catholic for the my first 12-ish years, and the lovely cover!