Review: Somebody Give This Heart a Pen

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Rating: ★★★★★

I received an ARC of this book for free from the publisher (Candlewick Press) in exchange for an honest review. 

This book of poetry was written by a performance poet and it shows! 

I’ve never read a collection by a performance poet before, so it took a little getting used to at first. But once I got the hang of it, I loved it! Just reading the poems on paper doesn’t do it justice.  I actually ended up watching some of her performances on YouTube, including a few of the poems from this book. She really is a talent! 

I had a lot of favorites, especially from the Break section. My favorites were:

• Excerpt from a Letter to My Little Black Girl (pg 12)
• the leaders won’t (pg 23)
• Fearmongering (pg 25)
• Risky Nostalgia (pg 41)
• How We Got Here, Part 20 (pg 49)
• Whipped on You (pg 54)
• Trust Issues (pg 58)
• Slow Sky, Move On By (pg 63) 
• Scary Everyone (pg 64)
• Fidgeting (pg 66)
• Let Hurt (pg 68)
• from God (pg 81) 
• When to Write (pg 98)

I loved how authentic her poems felt. I could feel her emotions and experiences very vividly. I liked that some of the poems touched upon being black in the UK. In “the leaders won’t,” she name checks Black British people (Damilola, Stephen Lawrences, and Mark Duggan specifically) who were all killed in racially motivated attacks. #BlackLivesMatter everywhere. Being an American I had not heard of these deaths before so I’m so glad she said their names. 

Overall, this was a phenomenal collection and I look forward to seeing what else Sophia Thakur puts out. 

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Below are some of the poems from the book performed by Sophia Thakur herself!

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