Rating: 5 Stars
Release Date: September 5, 2022
Format: Ebook
Publisher: Mukana Press
This collection of poems by fifty-two African poets from thirty countries, offers extremely raw poems that do not flinch from exploring experiences, hopes, aspirations that are deeply personal yet shared. In this anthology, the poets subvert language, images and form to allow their stories to come to life.
Here poets remind us that human emotion(s) can be and are beautiful, the journey of self-discovery is as painful as it is cathartic.
TW: Mentions of Addiction, Alcoholism, Abuse, Body Shaming, Grief, Violence and war
This year I have been trying to read more poetry and understand the artform better. I would hear people get so emotional over poems and not understand why they had that reaction. Well, now I do.
There were poems in here that brought tears to my eyes, ones that broadened my understanding of the human spirit, ones that I connected with so much that I just had to pause and reflect. This has never been the case with me before with poetry and I loved that it has happened.
Old Love Skin is a wonderful compilation of poems featuring a diverse representation of voices from all around Africa. There were so many different voices, writing styles and topics each one of the poets chose to write about giving you a wide variety of options to choose from and connect with. With the variety, there were some that I did not love, but enough caused me to have such a reaction that I had to give this anthology 5 stars.
Final Thoughts: I have found some incredible new poets from this anthology, my favorite was Enough by Tatiana Natalie Kondo (banshee). This was a wonderful collection that I think anyone who is on the fence about poetry would enjoy and find something to connect with.
Disclaimer: Thank you Netgalley and Mukana Press for providing me with a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review. This does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review.
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