A review by eren_reads
Blood Feather by Patrick McGuinness

reflective

3.5

This poetry collection is split into three parts. The first part of the collection primarily focuses on the themes of identity and mother-child relationships. The second part felt slightly less coherent to me, delving into commentary on creating poetry, the significance of place, death and love. Then the final part focuses on tying identity with the significance of place.

I found this collection to be most effective when it was talking about identity and how it links to language. 

Here are some excerpts from some of my favourite poems in this collection:

Little castles of milk teeth,
lined up to guard the helpless tongue -
 
sometimes dry as the clapper of a bell 
sometimes fat and lashing in its ditch -
 
it's where you kept the language you arrived with.
You hid it all that time and now it's gone.
- In the Englishman's Home

The new accent is a brace,
doing its slow work on your mouth.
At night you take it out to let your tongue
go dreaming outside its cage.
-New Accent