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When We're Awake At Night: Cover art by Indika Roseler
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
April 10, 2022
This.. This was quite possibly one of the best collection of poems I've read this year. It's raw. It's thought provoking. It's real. It's a feeling of genuine introspection and noticing growth. It's a feeling of introspection and seeing parts that still need healing. It's realising you're not alone as much as you've convinced yourself you deserve to be. It's taking a step back, taking a breath, and realising that you've made it through all of the times you didn't want to. It's realising that as broken as your heart may be, it still wants to keep you alive.
As dark as your mind feels, there's a moment of realisation that there's a beauty in the darkness you've always tried to hide from. Fear of the dark means fearing the unknown parts of yourself that keeps you from discovering the stars and galaxies within you.
Accepting the darkness doesn't mean giving up to let it consume you, it means consuming and getting to know the parts of yourself that hasn't been discovered or allowed to see the light.
The unknown is a terrifying and insightful place where you get to breakdown and fix, cut down and grow, see who you were, be who you are, and work on who you want to be.
I had moments where I couldn't distinguish between whether I was reliving a memory, or reading someone else's thoughts.
Thank you for this.
As dark as your mind feels, there's a moment of realisation that there's a beauty in the darkness you've always tried to hide from. Fear of the dark means fearing the unknown parts of yourself that keeps you from discovering the stars and galaxies within you.
Accepting the darkness doesn't mean giving up to let it consume you, it means consuming and getting to know the parts of yourself that hasn't been discovered or allowed to see the light.
The unknown is a terrifying and insightful place where you get to breakdown and fix, cut down and grow, see who you were, be who you are, and work on who you want to be.
I had moments where I couldn't distinguish between whether I was reliving a memory, or reading someone else's thoughts.
Thank you for this.
July 11, 2025
A fantastic and thought provoking poetry collection.
This had really relatable poems about living with depression and the ups and downs of the healing journey. Some of the later poems about learning that a lover cannot “fix” you (or at least that’s how I interpreted it) were especially poignant for me and reminded me of my relationship with my ex girlfriend.
I also appreciated the commentary on toxic masculinity, and the cost of being a sensitive soul in a world that doesn’t value that in men.
The reason that this didn’t hit the full 5* rating is that rhyming poetry doesn’t tend to work for me and there were a number in here.
Also if anyone has any advice on this I’d really appreciate it. The final poem is the phrase “‘Black lives matter’ and ‘all lives matter’ is racist rhetoric” repeated a bunch of times. I’ve thought about it and I assume the meaning of this is that he has criticisms of the way both of these slogans can be used to negatively impact the black community? For example, the BLM movement can be limited to performative activism and can be limited in its impact. And ‘all lives matter’ exclusively gets used to pretend that black people don’t face racism. Did other people view this differently?
This had really relatable poems about living with depression and the ups and downs of the healing journey. Some of the later poems about learning that a lover cannot “fix” you (or at least that’s how I interpreted it) were especially poignant for me and reminded me of my relationship with my ex girlfriend.
I also appreciated the commentary on toxic masculinity, and the cost of being a sensitive soul in a world that doesn’t value that in men.
The reason that this didn’t hit the full 5* rating is that rhyming poetry doesn’t tend to work for me and there were a number in here.
Also if anyone has any advice on this I’d really appreciate it. The final poem is the phrase “‘Black lives matter’ and ‘all lives matter’ is racist rhetoric” repeated a bunch of times. I’ve thought about it and I assume the meaning of this is that he has criticisms of the way both of these slogans can be used to negatively impact the black community? For example, the BLM movement can be limited to performative activism and can be limited in its impact. And ‘all lives matter’ exclusively gets used to pretend that black people don’t face racism. Did other people view this differently?
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews