Gather Fierce Fairytales: Poems And Stories To Stir Your Soul Presented By Nikita Gill Visible In Softcover
I enjoy fairytale retellings and a couple of these had some nice turnsofphrases, which would get me thinking.
But mostly the content is on the affirmative, selfhelpy side, which I dont find appealing in my reading.
Though I appreciate their messages, these poems/stories turned out to be not my kind of thing.
"And darling I hope you remember
To kiss the ghosts goodnight
They are only older versions of you
That you have had to discard and forget.
. "
Nikita Gill is quickly becoming a favorite of mine, These poems are beautiful and empowering, and hearing the author read them was truly a delight! A bit too much feminism for my humble taste but a lot of it was actually nice and mostly wellbalanced.
Poetry Maybe. But I liked quite a lot of it, sois a given,
Q:
Maybe magic ends with me
and it will never cross your path
but I want you to remember
that survival is an art.
The world is falsehood
so you rely on your smarts,
Princes fail all the time,
Passion sometimes goes cold
And princesses on days of fortune
can turn straw into gold.
Kind kings become greedy
And dragons can have soft souls,
Fairies cast the wrong spells,
Mermaids can be drowned,
Goblins and trolls can be heroes
and giants can fall without a sound,
and even the darkest things can be defeated
once their names are spoken out loud.
c
Q:
So when you tell the story of Red Riding Hood, remember this too:
Her mother told her
she could grow up to be
anything she wanted to be,
so she grew up to become
the strongest of the strong,
the strangest of the strange,
the wildest of the wild,
the wolf leading the wolves.
c
Q:
Desperation turns people sour, and she now saw life as an open wound.
A shallow promise. A dark thing that should have loved her but instead tried to drown her, Her beauty fading, she recognized that she had failed to pass on her looks to her two daughters.
And now she knew how important it is for a woman to be beautiful, as it is the only currency she truly had in this world, she became even more bitter.
c
Q:
She listened to the roar of the thunderstorm,
She fell in love with the fragrance of petrichor,
She searched the night sky for shooting,
She planted flowers on her meagre windowsill
to brighten up her attic room every evening.
She hid away books with words that would
touch her slowly fraying soul, c
Q:
Ask me what I was praying for,
and I will tell you: a Fairy Godmother
who never appeared for me.
But that is what faith is, I was told,
Finding a reason to believe even when
no reason finds its way to you.
So I began to find her in odd places,
That time the car narrowly missed me,
That time the sea nearly drowned me but couldnt, c
Q:
But how else is a woman supposed to survive
if not by her wits c
Q:
And after the prince is thrown out, the moon dragon and the princess continue to share the day and night and live happily ever after.
c
Q:
You did not know that Athena is my patron saint, Hera is my deity.
c
Q:
Difficult Damsels
, . .
Not all girls are made of sugar
and spice and all things nice,
These are girls made of dark lace
and witchcraft and a little bit of vice.
These are damsels made of flawless fearlessness
made of more bravery than knights have ever seen.
These are princesses made of valour and poison alike
and they are here to hold court as your queens.
c
Q:
Once upon a time,
Matter dreamed up an idea,
It was a small hopeful dream
a thought with the wings of the fairy.
but as with all things full of hope
it would be terribly difficult to birth.
Several events needed to come together
in the millisecond of the time it took to build Earth.
It depended on ain,,chance of existing,
Ain,chance meeting between two beings,
An ancestral heritage that goes backbillion years
all the way to singlecelled organisms.
And only then can this idea be so finely crafted
into a gift with actual presence.
Imagine how much the universe must have loved
this thing to make it happen.
Imagine how many gave up their hearts
to bring this into fluid motion.
Does it make you curious
Make you wonder what could be so marvellous
That idea.
. . it was you.
You are the universes fairytale come true, c
Q:
The Fable in Thermodynamics
The first law of thermodynamics states this:
energy can neither be created nor destroyed.
Which is that everything around us is recycled energy:
you, me, your dog, those we love and those we avoid.
Which is to say that the energy that makes us
is as ancient as the beginning of time itself.
Which is to say that our bones could have been
fragmented together from the ashes of the library of Alexandria.
Which is to say our sinews and spine were crafted from the
end of a hundredyearold oak tree and our smiles a comet.
Which is to say our hearts could be Achilles spirit
when he battled at Troy, bringing his enemies down with it.
Which is to say, when we feel like life is overwhelming,
we must remember that were just sparks of energy borrowing skin.
That no matter how much this pain feels everlasting,
this is just the temporary fabric we are in.
c
Q:
I wonder where the wildest things go
when the devilled copse is no longer there.
c
Q:
Tell Me a Tale I Can Relate To
Where are the stories for the wicked girls,
the ones where they are told perfection is a lie
Where are the legends fashioned from nuance,
the ones that cause the hero and the villain to blur lines
Where are the myths for darker things,
the ones of us who were never snowwhite pure
Where are the lessons for naughty children,
the ones who want to be lost in the forest and folklore
If youre looking for secrets you will find them here,
these words have been resurrected from old fairytales ruins.
This is the place where those stories come to be reborn
and from the wreckage emerge things
more human than humans.
c Was pretty good until halfway through when I noticed it kept recycling its own ideas over and over again.
Also one story in here perpetuating the idea that women cannot be their own person while also being a wife and/or mother Yeah um fuck that
“A clever woman is more lethal than a freshly crafted magic wand, and that is why she is fear.
"
For some reason my review deleted itself so here it is again! Thank you to those who had liked and commented.
Spellbinding and magical! I loved “Wild Embers” by Nikita Gill and this book of poems was just as good!
Nikita Gill blends poetry and fairytale stories designed to empower and reimagine the tales we are told as children.
Imagine fairytales where the line between heroes and villains are blurred, where there is violence in supposed Prince Charmings, and where the girl is independent, brave and smart and can fight her own battles against monsters.
This book explored themes of abuse and selflove, how women as well as men can be toxic, and how it is your own business how you decide to heal and that healing and becoming yourself again is a form of magic in its own right.
The writing of this had me awestruck and there was so much magic throughout, the perfect blend of real life and fantasy.
The illustrations that accompanied these poems and stories were wonderful and Nikita Gill is a talented artist!
Will definitely reread this again when looking for magic in my life This book is STUNNING I absolutely love all the fairytales turned on their heads.
The language is great, all the selflove poems are fabulous, and I found so many good nuggets to remember for later.
Content warnings include abuse, mental illness, trauma, alcoholism, betrayal, abandonment, bullying and eating disorders.
In these short stories and poems youll find well known fairytales with insights into characters, backstories and different endings.
Sleeping Beauty doesnt wait for a Prince to awaken her she does it herself, Jack is willing to face a giant to escape his abusive mother, Tinkerbell embraces her anger.
My absolute favourite was this empowering gem:
Once Upon a Time IIEach time I read it I can feel myself sit up straighter and the resolve to rise up gets stronger.
But the universe never promised
you this would be easy,
after all, you are the hero here.
And heroes are meant
to be forged golden
from the blaze,
It is up to you to rise again
from the fragmented shards
your foes left of you.
You must lift a sword
with reborn strength and take on
the demons in your ribcage.
You must devastate the chains
every violent person
has brutally placed on you.
And you must show them all
how they were simply
characters in your story.
But you, you are the author
of this spellbinding tale
built of hope and bravery.
Out there may be monsters, my dear,
But in you still lives the dragon
you should always believe in,
I dont usually quote an entire poem but I had to here, I love it!
Towards the end of the book I began to wonder if the author had run out of fairytales and was simply fuelled by anger.
Poems like The Modernday Fairytale and Ode to the Catcaller Down the Street felt like I was suddenly reading another book altogether, one that wasnt enchanting and empowering, just mad.
Perhaps if there were two sections in the book the shift would have been easier to
process.
Some stories and poems fuelled my hope, showing me victims becoming survivors and villains humanised.
Others left a bitter aftertaste, Lifes like that though. While we want our happily ever after, its not guaranteed, When we think we have nothing left we find reserves of strength we didnt even know we possessed.
Some things life chooses for us but its our choices that define us,
Id give this book,but am rounding up, .