A review by barrettbooks
If My Body Could Speak by Blythe Baird

challenging emotional reflective sad fast-paced

5.0

This is a really heavy book of poetry. It is moving and gorgeous but also features a lot of gasp out loud gut punch kind of moments where the pain is so raw that it's shocking. The poet is a survivor of both rape and disordered eating and many of the pieces in this collection deal with those topics explicitly and brutally. I loved this collection and I dog eared many pages but I would also recommend making sure you are in a good headspace to tackle it, and checking out the content warnings. That said, the book felt very powerful to me, in both its content that is specifically trauma related but also in its lighter content, such a lovely poem full of affirmations for star signs. If My Body Could Speak also explores the poet's queerness, a topic always appreciate writing on, and am particularly touched by the vulnerable and expansive medium of poetry. I do not know this poet, and I hope that this last part of my review doesn't sound patronizing, but I felt so proud of her while reading this book, which is so open and so loud about topics that people want you to stay silent about. This is a book about trauma but also about recovery, about asking your body for forgiveness for the harm you have done it and striving for peace from the harm others have done you, and the continual work of recovery and becoming and existing. I never have as much to say about poetry books but it is not because I love them less. I always finish good poetry books feeling honoured to have been allowed to have read them and that is how felt on finishing If My Body Could Speak.