These cookies ensure basic functionalities and security features of the website, anonymously. Necessary cookies are absolutely essential for the website to function properly. “I require all our incoming poetry students-in the MFA I direct-to buy and read this book.” How to Read a Poemuses images like the mouse, the hive, the switch (from the Billy Collins poem)-to guide readers into new ways of understanding poems. Post by Glynn Young, author of the novels Dancing Priest and A Light Shining, and Poetry at Work. Photo by Smabs Sputzer, Creative Commons, via Flickr. Poetry in the Social Media Age: An Interview with Nikita Gill by The Culture Trip

But it does provide an almost visual representation of what that popularity looks like, a strong combination of cultural issues, imagery, and brevity. Wild Embers won’t explain how or why someone becomes popular on social media. While not included in this collection, Gill’s reading of an earlier poem, “When Your Daughter Asks,” provides a good example of the brevity, visual impact, and theme of many of her poems. The other turns to the women of Greek mythology, and considers Helen of Troy, Aphrodite, Artemis, Athena, Persephone, Hera, and Demeter. One reinterprets the heroines of fairy tales, Grimm’s and Disney’s, to provide a different understanding of Sleeping Beauty, Belle, Snow White, Cinderella, Little Red Riding Hood, and Alice in Wonderland. The collection includes two notable series of poems. Gill mirrors the feelings and experiences of many young people, especially young women, as they deal with relationships (good, bad, and indifferent) and love. If there is a unifying theme to Wild Embers, it is one combining feminism with common emotional feelings. The brevity is conducive for posting on Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, and other social channels. And all of that comes to the fore in her more recent work, a collection of poetry, Wild Embers: Poems of Rebellion, Fire, and Beauty, comprising 131 mostly short poems. Her work has an especially strong sense of the visual, employing simple yet powerful images.

A London-based poet, writer, visual artist, and photographer, Gill blends poetry, stories, and myths and legends in her writing.

Wild Embers by Nikita Gill