Special Edition: Seaweed Sky review

Clockwork Books’ favourite poet and all-round mensch, Ruth Everson, read Seaweed Sky by Sarah Godsell and had this to say about the book:

"... a colourful canvas of deep, heart poetry."

Clockwork Books’ favourite poet and all-round mensch, Ruth Everson, read Seaweed Sky by Sarah Godsell and had this to say about the book:

Wingbeats

Hanging in the air
A bee hovers motionless
Held between seasons
Soon, he’ll be eaten by wind
Now, wingbeats are everything

– Sarah Godsell

“Sarah Godsell’s poetry collection, Seaweed Sky, is a colorful canvas of deep, heart poetry. Godsell presents her reader with an unflinching insight into an intimate world where relationships balance on the edges of her words.

There are gentle moments but the overarching theme seems to be the struggle to define herself and her world. It is this which reaches beyond the internal landscape of the poet to draw in the reader, asking us to confront our own ragged edges.

In her own words, she wants to ‘gather/ Strong women onto my skirts/ And stampede’. This is an important feminist text and I could not help but want to ride those skirts and respond to her call.

The images are precise, at times delicate, at times psychedelic. Godsell’s ability to present her fragility with courage and to mine her heart with the scalpel of intellect, makes this an exciting and demanding work of art.”

Ruth Everson is a performance poet, speaker and writer. She has worked at festivals and events all over SA as well as in China, Egypt, Swaziland and Botswana. Ruth’s anthology Landscapes of Courage is a collection of poems that span much of her life, and, Ruth says, “What each poem has in common is courage: the courage to look at the world through the sharp lens of the poet’s eye; the courage to write the barbed-wire lines; to use tears as ink and the courage to dance with words.”