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A review by ericaroseeberhart
Wild Embers: Poems of Rebellion, Fire and Beauty by Nikita Gill
4.0
The cover of this publication is absolutely beautiful. Simplistic yet colorful and meaningful. That's a straightforward opinion with very little sway. The content has a bit more variance.
Midway through the publication, it seemed the copyeditor fell asleep or quit. There were many minor errors in that area, words that were spelt correctly but surely were the incorrect words that were meant to be used. It caused me to back out of the poem and reread the sentence a second or third time, at first thinking I had somehow misread.
Beside that, a good bit of Gill's poetry reminds me so much of Amanda Lovelace--or perhaps Amanda Lovelace reminds me of Nikita Gill--I'm not sure who wrote their poetry first. At first this bothered me. I felt like it was plagiarism on each other. It came across like the two poets were given an assignment to write about fairy tale princesses, or witchcraft, or violation and they ended up with similar material. But then I thought twice about it. Maybe the similarities between these poets and so many "instapoets" of this modern day aren't a thing of plagiarism but a thing of the rise in feminism, the rise in strong voices and the #metoo movement.
Women, more than ever, are becoming more certain of their voices and opinions, they are more willing to share their experiences, and if there is anything we've learned over the past few years--at least for those who have been paying attention--is that more often than not, every woman you meet has had similar thoughts, traumas, and experiences. This constant thread that binds us comes out in the arts.
In some ways, it's similar to poetry of the past. When there were movements of romantic poetry, most poets wrote of romance and those romantic poems filled with love can easily be confused for the various authors of that time--but it was what was popular then. In the modern day, we are facing the outing of our darkest secrets and struggles, so that theme is regularly present in our art.
So while at times the similarities of Gill's poetry with other recently-published poets drew me out of the poem, I think it speaks of a greater issue that so many women, so, so many, have such similar experiences of bruises and blood and tears, but also of strength, power, and determination.
Midway through the publication, it seemed the copyeditor fell asleep or quit. There were many minor errors in that area, words that were spelt correctly but surely were the incorrect words that were meant to be used. It caused me to back out of the poem and reread the sentence a second or third time, at first thinking I had somehow misread.
Beside that, a good bit of Gill's poetry reminds me so much of Amanda Lovelace--or perhaps Amanda Lovelace reminds me of Nikita Gill--I'm not sure who wrote their poetry first. At first this bothered me. I felt like it was plagiarism on each other. It came across like the two poets were given an assignment to write about fairy tale princesses, or witchcraft, or violation and they ended up with similar material. But then I thought twice about it. Maybe the similarities between these poets and so many "instapoets" of this modern day aren't a thing of plagiarism but a thing of the rise in feminism, the rise in strong voices and the #metoo movement.
Women, more than ever, are becoming more certain of their voices and opinions, they are more willing to share their experiences, and if there is anything we've learned over the past few years--at least for those who have been paying attention--is that more often than not, every woman you meet has had similar thoughts, traumas, and experiences. This constant thread that binds us comes out in the arts.
In some ways, it's similar to poetry of the past. When there were movements of romantic poetry, most poets wrote of romance and those romantic poems filled with love can easily be confused for the various authors of that time--but it was what was popular then. In the modern day, we are facing the outing of our darkest secrets and struggles, so that theme is regularly present in our art.
So while at times the similarities of Gill's poetry with other recently-published poets drew me out of the poem, I think it speaks of a greater issue that so many women, so, so many, have such similar experiences of bruises and blood and tears, but also of strength, power, and determination.