DIAMOND-TOUGH POETRY -- RELEASED TODAY BY BEWRITE BOOKS

STICK FIGURES by KIRSTEN HOLMES

From BeWrite Books Poetry Editor Sam Smith

Presented with Kirsten Holme’s collection, Stick Figures, I beheld a persona equal parts fragility and hardness, the fragility being Kirsten Holmes’ human vulnerability, the hardness being her exceptional ability to stand off, look with held-open eyes at what has passed, and then to hammer out these, at times ‘hard’ poems. And they’re diamond hard ... each dense with imagery, multi-faceted jewels. To read them is to light up your mind.

Ward 7 Room 415B

Last Month
she was a tanned cadaver
ketamined and raped
in hourly circadian rhythms.
They sunk their lines into her
fishing for wet dreams.

Today
she is skinned in white,
leads a drip stand, doglike
in ascending circles
to insanity
using her scars as ladders.

Some life has leaked from her.

Kirsten Holmes

Stick Figures is a tantalizing debut. The poems are confident, elusive, anguished and have the strength to immediately engage and hold the imagination. Great imagery, a readable and intriguing collection. Gus Ferguson (Editor of poetry journal Carapace)

Kirsten Holmes was born and still lives in South Africa. She started writing poetry at twenty-one, more or less the same age at which she discovered despair. She learned everything she knows about poetry from her mentor who died in 2004. She worked as a freelance writer for Cosmopolitan and Marie Claire and continues to write the occasional feature.

Available in paperback from all online bookstores or on order from your local brick and mortar bookshop, and in all digital formats from all major online ebooks stores. Also available from the BOOKSTORE SECTION of BeWrite books in paperback and Mobi, ePub and PDF editions.

Those wondering how poetry with its sometimes eccentric layout might like to see STICK FIGURES demonstrated in this short video by Tony Szmuk.

Author; Kirsten Holmes. Editor: Sam Smith. Cover, internal design and technical preparation for print and digital editions: Tony Szmuk. Published internationally in print and digital formats by BEWRITE BOOKS.