emkoshka's review
3.0
After discovering the subversive joy of Carol Ann Duffy's slick verse, I'm challenging myself to read more poetry these days. Happily, most collections are short enough to read either in one sitting or in the course of a day. I read this one during breakfast today, having yesterday finished a non-fiction book about asylum seeker boats sinking in the Mediterranean; this seemed an appropriate follow-up! I also recently visited the Titanic Belfast museum and was blown away by the way the story of SS Titanic was told there. I wish I could say that this collection had a similar impact (haha) on me, but I was left unmoved. Part of the problem was the nature of the poetry; if you're going to write freeform, give it rhythm and rhyme and stellar imagery not just the veneer of verse when really it's prose broken into sentence chunks. I will credit Nickerson with bringing to life some different voices and perspectives though; I liked 'The Boy in Lifeboat No. 14' and 'The Young Widow' in particular.
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