You've never seen a doomsday like it

This book, another [see other two] poetry collection by Kate Garrett, is as punchy as it is liberating in its core philosophical attitudes. The poems here are apocalyptic, not in the fire & brimstone cliché sense but in the original meaning of the word - apocalypses being uncoverings of new or hidden knowledge. Variably these unveilings can be of kinds which may upend, uproot or uplift our entire hitherto lives: old habits forgottenly conquered, old chains burst free from, old ignorant darkness lit by the fires of sight and reality - however things might turn out in the longer term, it makes these heavings no less intimidating or uncertain a thing or time to pass through, and here Kate dances the twisting line between fortuitous or calamitous change with a shrewdness and learnedness that is truly exhilarating. Short as it is, I took a while to read this for that very reason.

Stickleback

This booklet is a mini-collection of four poems by Kate Garrett, exploring the joys, pains, and oddnesses of being pregnant with a child you know is suffering congenitally from a heart condition. Not something as a wombless person I'm ever going to experience but as I myself was born with a similar defect to Kate's youngest* it was a stimulatingly empathic read and I've gifted the booklet to my mother having finished it - she's not a big poetry reader but I reckon she'll find much of comfort and sympathy in there too.

* Kate, among the million other awesome things she does in & for the poetry world, runs a blog compiling pieces broadly about these themes to raise money for children who need heart-related healthcare. I've been lucky enough to not only survive my ills of birth so far but had a poem titled Salvation published here, which uses my condition as a run-on metaphor to talk about my spiritual wellbeing and journeys therein.

the Saint of Milk and Flames

This book, a collection of poetry by the fantastic Kate Garrett,* is among my favourites of recent reading. I read the whole thing in one sitting while on a family holiday, going back during that same long weekend to re-read certain poems over a third or seventh time.** Its themes are broad and deep, touching on faiths lost and wavering and refound, the human challenges of self-realization as mother or daughter, the isolations and solidarities found in disability and disappointment - ultimately there is a strong vein of hopeful healingness throughout and the subtleties herein should prompt most discerning readers to reexamine their lives through lenses of everyday myth, reverent grief and life-affirming love.

* To whom apparently I am 'grand-padawan', she having mentor-inspired my own primary mentor-inspiration in the spoken word world Kinsman.

** Including possibly my favourite of Kate's poems that I've read thus far - Everyone needs a friend when the world begins to end, which for my money sums up the beauty of poetic community in these strange dark times better than anything.