Under Her Skin

Sadie Hartmann

Rating: really liked it
This is a gorgeous, lush, magical book. Starting with that Lynne Hansen cover art, to the floral edges on the interior pages, and then poem after poem after poem from one beautiful woman to the next. I found that reading two or three here and there throughout the day was my favorite way to enjoy this collection. There’s a real who’s who list of favorites featured as well as some new voices and even some poetry from friends I had made on bookstagram. A real delight all the way through. Under Her Skin is a must have for your dark poetry collection. Don’t miss it

Holly (The GrimDragon)

Rating: really liked it
"When you turn yourself
inside out like that
I don't know how
to hold you" ~Miriam H. Harrison, When You

I'M IN THIS!!!

Full transparency, even without my obvious bias, I would have still given this ALL THE ACHINGLY BEAUTIFUL STARS!

I am incredibly honored to have a piece in this glorious anthology of fiercely talented badass poets!

Candace Nola

Rating: really liked it
Under Her Skin is an astounding collection of poetry written by a stellar line-up of talent. The poems are haunting, dark, deeply layered, and emotional. Rage, fury, sadness, hurt, devastation, and rejection fill the pages with the highly personal scars of the authors that bled across every page within. I have never read a more intense collection of words, clawed from the depths of raw emotion, than this one.
I cannot choose a favorite as each one resonated somewhere in my soul, as my scars were made just a little lighter with each shared within. I have felt all these things, and I carry my pain deep in my heart like many of these authors. You will have many favorites here, as each one finds one of your scars and makes it ache just a little less.
Besides the poetry within, the book is beautifully designed, both inside and out. This is one for the shelves, to be read, and read again, to be shared and to be admired.
5 Stars.

aninha

Rating: really liked it
Thank you NetGalley for this!

This book was tough to read. It's filled with all the feelings a woman feels during her life - all the pressure, all the pain, all the suffering. It's such an horror to read, but never ceases from being the truth.

Audrey

Rating: really liked it
one of my fave books omg

Stephanie

Rating: really liked it
I recieved an ARC in exchange for my honest review.

The poetry in this volume is amazing but not exactly as advertised by the description. I went into this collection expecting horror/spooky stories told through a women's lens but instead encountered the average topics of dangerous beauty standards and duplicitous gender norms. While the writing itself is easily worth a 5-star rating, the collection as a whole failed self-imposed expectations.

Callum McLaughlin

Rating: really liked it
In principle, this sounds like a perfect read for me: an anthology of poetry by women in horror, exploring their experiences of gender and identity. It’s possible my own high expectations contributed to my ultimate lukewarm response, but sadly I felt there was little here to push the boundaries of either horror or feminist writing.

I definitely appreciate how inclusive the project is, with cis, trans, and non-binary femmes representing various facets of womanhood. While there are some definite gems peppered throughout (I particularly admire pieces that focus on the horror women often inflict upon their own bodies as a result of societal pressures), I never felt particularly inspired to seek out more work from any of the featured writers. Beyond that, most of the pieces blur together somewhat due to repetition in tone and imagery. It feels cohesive as a collection of works in that respect, but lacking in dynamism.

I love what the book wants to achieve, and there are certainly glimmers of success on that front, but sadly the selection feels too bloated and one-note in its perspective and approach.

Thank you to the publisher for a free advanced copy in exchange for an honest review.

Ave Reads ♡

Rating: really liked it
first and foremost, I'd like to express my gratitude to Netgalley for providing me with an e-ARC of this copy.

Disclaimer: This review is solely based on my own opinion.

I'm a huge fan of poetry books, but this poetry ebook didn't help me feel as If I was reading poetry. It's almost as though I can state that the majority of the poetry weren't intended to myself. I had high hopes, but they were unfortunately disappointed by the end.

Bel Riddle

Rating: really liked it
Being a super fan of the monstrous, and given the description of this book and the mention of body horror, I was hyped to read this women and non-binary femmes horror poetry collection.
Sadly, I find few and small horror poems in this book.
It enrolls pretty well with the new wave of women poetry, that talks about pain and gender roles and beauty standards and how men has wrong us. But it doesn’t bring anything new; the poems are all very similar to some I have already read two years ago when Kaur and Lovelace boomed (or bloomed). It certainly adds little to the horror genre. And it’s mostly merged with the repudiation of societal norms and beauty ideals.
Some poems where really good; or at least were what the premise promised. (We, by Morgan Sylvia; metamorphosis by Marceau; Something that needs destroyed by Crate; and What the dead girl is trying to say… by King-Miller, among others). Most of them acutely following the proposition of horror themes.
Unsatisfactory I was hoping to read a new surge of women in horror, in every aspect of it (spaces that have been denied to us for centuries), but I guess we are still limited to the horror that the patriarchy plunges into our own bodies.

Indre

Rating: really liked it
I really enjoyed this collection of very feminist poetry. Some of them went over my head, but a lot of them made me stop and think. I loved how each one was about women and sacrifices we make, whether it is for our children or society, or even our lovers.

It is a beautiful and haunting collection, that I will be sharing with my friends and other women. To hopefully make them stop and think about each choice we make in life,

Lucsbooks

Rating: really liked it
My favourite thing about Under Her Skin was that it could have been used as an exclusionist space but instead chose to welcome all kinds of women and femme authors and it was so much the better for that. The editors understood that if you are a woman, then you are very familiar with the feeling of horror now and historically and that is present throughout all kinds of art that women were part of creating and divulging to larger masses which this poetry collection truly honoured. That diversity was also present when it came to the geographical origins and current homes of the contributors so this book featured all kinds of female experience, from body image to motherhood or simply the danger of existing in the world as a woman.

Thank you to NetGalley and Black Spot Books for this DRC.

Becky Spratford

Rating: really liked it
Review in the April 2022 issue of Library Journal.

Three Words That Describe This Book: lyrical, body horror, thought provoking

DRAFT REVIEW:

Award winning author Linda Addison perfectly sets the stage in the final words of her introduction, “…we were never the Final Girl. We are the Witch, the Myth, the giver of Life, feared.” beckoning readers to enter this thought provoking, poetry anthology featuring seventy different women– cis, trans, and non binary femmess– with poems that focus their terrifying gaze on Body Horror, in particular and being a woman, in general. These are powerful poems, their range in subject matter, style, level of fear and gore, all of it as wide and varied as the range of how women experience the horrific truth of their lives. While the table of content is filled with recognizable names such as Cynthia Pelayo, Stephanie Wytovich, and Lee Murry, two entries that stand out are "Harm" by Emily Ruth Verone and "Beautiful" by L. Marie Wood, visceral poems, that pack an emotional punch, and yet, they also hold a beauty, truth and lyricism that cannot be denied; a message carried with strength by the entire volume.

Verdict: Poetry is an excellent format for probing the dark emotions that define Horror, and this anthology, and its evocative cover, will entice readers to engage with dozens of fierce and chilling voices, just be prepared to add more Horror poetry and new authors to your collections as a result.


NOTES:
Poetry has been on a steady increase in popularity over the last 5 years and Horror poetry especially has been outstanding. It is a great format to express the emotions that make horror.

This anthology is excellent and not just because of some of the big names in Horror poetry represented within-- Cynthia Pelayo, Linda Addison, Stephanie Wytovich, Lee Murry, Sara Tantlinger,

But it is not about the specific women whose works have been included, it is about women regaining the power of their lives and their stories in their own words. Being a woman is terrifying in many ways and together these poems express the full range of that truth. The range of poems is a wide and varied as the range of how women experience their life. I appreciated that.

Ones that caught me off guard: The very short--"Harm"-- by Emily Ruth Verone and "Beautiful" by L. Marie Wood. Both are powerful, visceral body horror, but with a lyricism and emotion that evokes everything this anthology is trying to do and say.

Cassie Daley

Rating: really liked it
I've been reading a lot of "dark poetry" in recent years, this is definitely going to be up there among my most highly recommended collections. There's a lot here from so many unique voices writing about so many different parts of what being a woman can mean - loved it. The body horror here isn't always something you find in poetry, and it was handled so well. I also really appreciated the inclusivity of the authors & the topics - another thing you don't see a lot of, although I'm happy to see that landscape start to change little by little, even if it can never be fast enough.

Overall a stunning collection, one I'm very glad to have on my shelves. And that COVER! Wow! So so gorgeous.

Liv Sol Lilith Oschlag

Rating: really liked it
I think my expectations were a bit too high going into this poetry collection. Knowing what it intended to do, I expected to be blown away, horrified, perhaps disgusted, and that this content would provoke a lot of introspective thought on my part as a female reader. I anticipated something like the emotions I went through reading the short stories in "Her Body and Other Parties" by Carmen Maria Machado—visceral dread, trauma release and unease, heightened by the fact that the horror in those stories comes in large part from how they relate to existing in a female body. As it turned out, I counted only a handful of poems in "Under Her Skin" as having any such impact on me whatsoever, which is, in the end, a disappointment to me. Again: my expectations were perhaps a bit too high.

However, poetry and how it affects you is very subjective, and it is important to keep your biases in mind reading a collection such as this. Especially when it comes to poetry which springs from diverse voices where the poets' lived experiences may differ wildly from your own. For example, many of the poems had themes of pregnancy, womanhood as it pertains to fertility, and motherhood—themes which I just do not relate to at all. They are an important part of many people's lives, though, and I recognize that those works just weren't written for me—and that is okay! They might be perfect and feel very resonant to another reader.

Beyond that, though, other poems I regretfully had issues with because they were just too vague for me. I love symbolism, but it needs to be rooted in some sort of clear intent, and here, at times I struggled to understand what the writer was trying to convey, as though the direction was somehow "off".
Others felt too shallow to me; I wanted the poems to cut deeper into the themes they centered around, because there is so much potential in the concept of cis and trans women and non-binary folks expressing their own personal horror, but I felt like a great number of the poems didn't deliver on their promise. At times, they felt repetitive.
Some of the ones I enjoyed the least read to me like the writer had formulated their phrases from a list of words that they thought sounded cool or beautiful, and those poems ended up saying nothing but "look at these pretty words" to me, which left me feeling empty.

Now a superficial note: the cover art is absolutely gorgeous, but the small drawings inside felt a bit... rushed? They could have benefited from more work. And there could have been more drawings, for that matter—they seemed kind of unevenly scattered throughout the collection, and that made them feel a bit like they were just thrown in there at the last second. This is just my opinion, but I felt like the drawings would have worked better and felt more organic to the content if they had had a more purposeful placement; perhaps if the poems came in some kind of thematic order, and the drawings separated the different themes like subtle chapter markers. I don't know. Just... as they were, I might as well have done without them.

In essence, I think mileage will probably vary with this collection. It might well be a five star read to you, and that will depend on what experiences, biases and preferences in writing that you bring to your reading experience. I would say to anyone curious, give it a chance—you might love it. For me, though, while I am sad to give it two stars as I truly respect the intention of what it was going for, in the end it just didn't give me what I wanted from it.

Helen

Rating: really liked it
I received a free copy of this book from Netgalley in exchange for an honest review—as always, thanks so much to Netgalley for sending this to me.

It’s been a long while since I’ve read a poetry collection I’ve really loved, so I was excited to sink my teeth into this one. I tend to find that when reading a compilation like this, you always find a few gems, and I was hoping I’d discover some new poets to check out.

The themes of this collection were fascinating—the concept of the experiences of women and femmes told through the lens of torture and gore and body horror really spoke to me, as I feel like there’s a lot of inherent horror and the macabre in what we think of as the female/feminine experience. There was a lot of interesting and evocative imagery in this collection that made it a really uneasy read, in a good way. I think it knew what it was trying to do and in some ways delivered very well.

That being said, I was pretty underwhelmed with most of the poems. A lot of it is probably due to personal preference, as I have a pretty specific poetic style and voice that I’m fond of and many of the poems here felt very accessible and approachable and pared down. My personal preference these days is for poetry that messes with my head a little bit, that really plays with shape and form, poetry that doesn’t let me in too willingly. I feel like especially given the subject matter, it would have been interesting to see things lean further in that direction. I also felt that most of the best poems were saved for the end, meaning that I spent most of the book feeling distinctly ‘meh’ before there were a handful of works at the end that really spoke to me. Of course, in every poetry collection there will be some that work for every individual reader better than others, but for me the book really saved the best until last and it was a little too late to make up for it.

I also did find there were a lot of repetitive themes, which on one hand is understandable as I feel like certain topics that we largely associate with womanhood/femininity (pregnancy, motherhood, transformation during puberty, sexual assault etc.) naturally bring up these kinds of images. (I’m not really sure how best to describe this. I don’t want to be exclusionary here—to be clear, these are not exclusively female experiences, there are lots of things that go into being a woman and my intention is not to exclude anyone to whom these things don’t apply, and there were other topics in this collection as well, these ones in particular just stood out to me.) To a certain extent I was expecting some topics to come up repeatedly, and certain images and things like that. Blood, violence, gore, body horror. I did, however, feel like a lot of the poems felt very similar. You could give ten poets a prompt and have them do entirely different things with it, but here it felt like a lot of the poems were very close to one another and there wasn’t as much distinction in some of the voices. I suppose if you think of the book as a collective experience then that cohesion works well, however. It’s clear a lot of these feelings are shared by many people and there’s definitely a sense of connectedness in the book.

To sum up, this was an interesting collection, I really liked the theme and there were a lot of harrowing and unnerving and uncanny works in here, but I don’t think any of the poems massively stood out to me, and I didn’t have strong feelings about it on the whole. 3 stars.