Alternate Endings

by Erin Bolens

Alternate Endings is a collection of poems made of worry and hope. With wit and warmth, Erin looks for the beginnings in endings as she confides her stories of living, loving, feeling and fretting. These are poems with big hearts and wry smiles. They are hugs for the days when it's all a bit much and energy for the days that you can change the world.

Genres: Poetry

60 pages, Paperback

Published July 9, 2020

Reviews

[River Snowdrop · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is everything I want my poetry to be. This book made me laugh and cry and feel grateful that poetry exists and that we get to experience it.

[Kaisa Winter · Rating 5 out of 5]

Warm and funny poems and prose about everything from the mundane to the life-changing. Full of colourful and unexpected metaphors. Reading this book feels like talking to a dear friend.

[Mistypane611 · Rating 5 out of 5]

"I am many things on different days;let me enjoy everything always and savour whatever little piece of now I have on my tongue." From joyful to so sad I had to out this down for a while, fantastic collection.

[Kirsty Taylor · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of my favourite poetry books. There is nothing quite like poetry that feels like a warm hug but also at points a reality check slap in the face. Erin's poetry makes me belly laugh and also feel a lump at the back of my throat. I also adore this cover art and ended up bookmarking so many of the pages as I couldn't pick just one favourite poem from this collection.

[Ellie Butler Church · Rating 5 out of 5]

Alternative Endings by Erin Bolens was a delightfully refreshing poetry collection, a well-needed comfort read from Our Women’s Writes.

In a distinctly British tone, Bolens' words offer a poetic hug in some dreary situations. Most have an upbeat tone with lines of humour sneaking into the subject matters that cover life, death, love and heartbreak. You know, the extremes that make us emotionally reel. But those poems level you with tenderness with a kind of dead-pan honesty and humour.

It retells painful stories with a comedic tinge as if you’ve healed and are able to laugh about it later, or able to consider a completely different perspective. It validates worries, angers and life’s ironies between its lines. The Worry Doll poems were perhaps the most relatable to me, their poetic free verse reeling off how one dark-cloud of anxiety can reach out to bud so many smaller anxieties in seemingly unrelated areas of your life.

My Rating: 5 stars!
These poems certainly spoke to me and I know this collection will be one that I reach for when I need some comfort. It’s everyday but important and packed full of comfort.

[Tabitha · Rating 5 out of 5]

Beautifully written, hilarious, full of poems that leave me simultaneously grinning with tears in my eyes.

[Helena · Rating 5 out of 5]

I wanted to dog ear every page.

[Curtis · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was refreshing. Bolens writes truthfully, slicing through modernity with a razor-sharp humility and honesty. She says what we all think, our little worries and little struggles, offering a raw comfort when reading. I really liked how contemporary and modernist it was. It wasn’t wordy, or obnoxiously poetic, but glints in its own conversationalist style. In doing so, it feeds you little handfuls of laughter, tiny moments of joy and humanity that really encapsulate what it means to be a person. I was trying to include a quote or excerpt; however, by severing these poems into some sort of butchered anatomy, I realised these poems are their own bodies of work. They have to be enjoyed in the whole; experienced and understood. They are like little journeys, and I really loved that.

[Gretel · Rating 3 out of 5]

An uneven collection with moments of brilliance. Bolens is adept at articulating how anxiety feels.

[S · Rating 5 out of 5]

Really beautiful poetry, some of which made me laugh out loud and some made me stop to think... Thoroughly enjoyed it and will read it again for sure!