I don’t read a lot of poetry, that’s probably important to say first, but I entered the giveaway for Katherine Lawrence’s NEVER MIND because I like history, I loved the Little House on the Prairie series, and this book was described as a collection of poems from the perspective of a pioneer woman on the Canadian prairie. It was history, it was fiction, it was outside my comfort zone… so I wanted it.
And I was happy to get it.
Thrilled to read it.
Lawrence relied on non-fiction historical sources to inspire poems that range from the flowery words of an idealist woman leaving England for newer and better things, to the frustrating short lines about a husband and a land not being what she expected, to the dark words of a woman as her children suffer and cause her to suffer, and even to poetic conversations between two oxen as they ruminate on what they see their mistress do.
The collection is short, some of the poems almost painfully short. It tells the full-circle story of a woman on the Canadian prairie.
I love this book.
(I received a copy of NEVER MIND through the Goodreads First Reads giveaways in exchange for an honest and original review.)
