Horrific Confection by Juliet Cook

 

What da cover says:  Juliet Cook’s first full-length poetry collection–HORRIFIC CONFECTION–is now available as a BlazeVOX ebook.

Dripping with a darkly delectable cover designed by artist Christen Baer.

Oozing with my hideously succulent choking hazards posing as consumables.

It is FREE to read and download (a small print run will be creeping onto the scene later for those who might desire to hold it or lick it or spit on it).

Dig in if you dare and feel free to let me know how it tastes.

XO. Juliet Cook

What I says: This is a dark collection of poetry focusing on childhood fears, eating disorders, body dysmorphia and…..cake. Well that is the feeling I get from reading this, it leaves a lot to the reader’s imagination, how you read certain lines in each poem can change the whole poem completely, it’s all very clever.

The book seems to span a great distance, with early poems showing childhood fears and being in awe of her mum, and then in later poems the poet has grown up and is writing about sex and her own baby (which I think may or may not have flippers).

Two of my favourite poems in this collection were Dollophile, one incredibly dark poem, I ended up coming back to this one for a re-read.  The second poem is called Fever and is here as a sample for you to read:

The life-sized Raggedy Ann doll
had blurry hands, no fingers.
White oven mitts had been grafted onto her wrists.
Her knotty red mouth
held me transfixed. Her dirty yarn
began to twitch until she spilled out
of the rocking chair, sagged to the floor,
then straightened up and leapt
toward my bed. Slow motion ticking
clogged my head and my voice
was a hiss, the rustle of a finger-stained dress.
The dark space from the bottom of my dust ruffle
to the floor grew wider until I couldn’t see
what was creeping up. Muffled
by a heaving pillow, cotton
pressed into my ears and when I turned
toward the rocking chair again–
it was me with my mouth sewn shut, my eyes glued
to bleeding digits, stiff-moving
new fingers on a rag doll dangling over the edge
of her tussled bed.

Finally the thing that made me check out this book, the cover, it is stunning and easily makes the top 10 of my favourite covers.

This book is available to read as a pdf and can be downloaded HERE>

Advertisement