M M

I'm not going to be over-dramatic and say 'if I could give this book zero stars I would,' because that is not strictly true. Whilst the vast majority of this book does a grandiose disservice to the world of contemporary poetry, I have to admit that some of the content has potentiel, dare I say, even merit (although this is only a handful of the 150 odd 'poems.') I am very irritated that Gabbie made money from this book, when there are so many brilliant poets struggling to get a book deal. I say this because a lot of her poems (and she does admit this) feel very rushed - like they were written to meet a deadline. She makes little use of language and the way she writes is very surface level. What makes this even more frustrating is that her ideas are somewhat credible! For example, in 'Sleep,' she literally only talks about why she likes to sleep. She could have explored the connotations of sleep with death/ mental health issues and ideas of escaping the real world. Instead, she resorts to cheap, infantile ideas and a basic rhyme scheme. Not worth the full price by any stretch of the imagination. I got a third hand copy for an extracurricular assignment. There's plenty on Amazon for just over £1.