I would like to thank the author for a copy of this collection in exchange for a fair and honest review

Publisher - Femmesocial Press

Published -

Price - £11.00

Mythologies by Petra Palkovacsova is a reference to the recent trends in publishing; rewritings of classical myths. Although the collection does not focus on mythology, it deals with fairy tale deconstruction. The poems are experimental in both their form and context. Most of these poems are directly spins on specific fairy tales such as Pinocchio, Goldilocks and the Three Bears, Little Red Riding Hood and others. These stories offered an amazing connection between ecocriticism and trauma through their link to childhood and natural settings. Palkovacsova produced works that are often driven by strong feelings, and mental overstimulation as she would not like to limit herself to negative emotions only. The artist believes that one of her roles as a poet is recreating this overstimulation faithfully. By writing about it, the artist creates safe spaces for the readers to meditate on self-understanding and cherishing the role of community and its impact on effective healing from trauma.

Stories, songs and poems are all often intersted in mhyths of some kind from child ballads to epic verse pemes they created variation of stories to make audiences think and react. In Petra Palkovacsova’s poetry collection Mythologies we have a facsinating short collection of poems that deliver just that,

The collection starts with the haunting ‘A Diary of A Houseperson’ where each verse starts with some simple image but in a few lines ends in disturbing violent images that we soon realise are the horrible reality that our storyteller has to live each day. A powerful disturbing tale unfolds and leads the reader undecided.

Fairy tales appear in ‘Just Right’ with an alarming version of Goldilocks and Three Bears here moved to a dangerous future version of Epping forest, with little and debris from fast food painted in images and our baby-bear tormented by images of what crowds did to his mother. Its another uncomfortable tale of families lost in the future.

The collection often plays with format and form of poems. In ‘Dwell’ a tale of loss and violence unfolds in short sentences spilling across he page in sweeping patterns. Full of natural images such as eggs, rivers, bees and our narrator meet a stag-man there is a moment of love and counting of freckles of faces but love is often just temporary and it ends very much a kind person dumped by a selfish person.

Then in more shorter percussive verse liens dotted across the page we have ‘Pinocchio Story’ but here Figaro is part of a grouop that tortures the wooden boy, the blue fairy carries a whip so its a dark comedy of scene.

In Simba we have a play on the Lion King but hgere the charcetr is demale and loves to laugh with the hyenas. Here though she wants postcards from her grandma and loves to write rather than join the family of solidiers, scientists and nurses of her family. Is Simba really human here, constantly challenged on where she comes from? The poem plays with language and the name Simba to give it an unsuual set of beats

With ‘Papi Wolf’ we have a tale of a boy that all girls were warned to avoid. Papi has a reputation among the young girls at school and the tale is here playing with the idea of a wolf and sexual teenager but here a girl named PP has the measure of him and magic can sometimes destroy the greedy.

In ‘Swans And Other Stories’ (written with Katerina Koulouri) again verse format is played with and the idea here is two voices as the verses form of a mother and daughter swan (or possibly human-swan) where they debate the love of the father who may have ran away and a fractured dynamic between the two women unfolds.

Off ‘In The Gingerbread-Man’s Toilet’ we have Gretel crossing the path of gingerbread-men JD Woolwich but here a modern tale of beer, Samsungs and a pub filled with predatory men but here she realises that she has the power and teeth to see her attackers off,

These are all short tales but the quick bursts of often shocking brutal imagery or emotions do make them an interesting collection to ponder upon. Worth a look!