#BlogTour How to Carry Fire by Christina Thatcher

Today it's a pleasure to take part in the BlogTour How to Carry Fire by Christina Thatcher.

About the Author
Shortlisted for the Bare Fiction Debut Poetry  Collection Competition in 2015 and a winner in the Terry Hetherington Award for Young Writers in 2016, Christina Thatcher’s poetry and short stories have featured in over 40 publications including The London Magazine, Planet Magazine, And Other Poems, Acumen and The Interpreter’s House. Her first collection, More than you were, was published by Parthian Books in 2017.

Follow @writetoempower @parthianbooks on Twitter, on Goodreads, Visit christinathatcher.com, Buy How to Carry Fire

About the book
How to Carry Fire was born from the ashes of family addiction. Beginning with the burning down of her childhood home, Thatcher explores how fire can both destroy and cleanse. Her work recognises embers everywhere: in farmhouses, heroin needles, poisonous salamanders.

Thatcher reveals how fire is internalised and disclosed through anxiety, addiction, passion and love. Underneath and among the flames runs the American and Welsh landscapes – locations which, like fire itself, offer up experiences which mesmerise, burn and purify. This poignant second collection reminds us of how the most dangerous and volatile fires can forge us – even long after the flames have died down.

Review
Poetry is very much a form of art - written art. It is also, when you leave aside structure, an absolutely subjective experience, regardless of whether it is performed for you or read by oneself. The base reaction to words, phrases and even sound is an experience each person owns, which is why I am highly sceptical of third parties evaluating an interpretation of a poem. I mean this more in an academic sense.

You can evaluate if I have recognised stanza, line length or other technical things - what you can't do is decide what I should be experiencing or how I interpret a poem. Although the author owns their own emotions, truth and their words, even they don't know how your own frame of references will experience their words.

This book contains over sixty poems. Word-art that speaks to the pain, the trauma, the fear and disappointment felt over decades. Words thrust upon paper in an attempt to understand, confront and eventually heal.

Arson - what does happen when life infuses you with fire? The kind you can't control as it controls every part of you. You feel, breathe and live it. An anonymous silent partner feeding your internal turmoil.

Most Days - almost an ode to a specific type of body dysmorphia linked to flashbacks. Severe trauma causing an out of body experience. Injuries heal, but scars are constant travelling companions in our lives.

Thatcher takes a sharp knife, draws it slowly down her arm and opens her vein to show her readers her fire, her pain that lives just below the surface and the demons she has tried to silence during her lifetime. Her poetry is a release, a reminder and hopefully also a rescue.

Buy How to Carry Fire at Amazon Uk or go to Goodreads for any other retailer. Publisher: Parthian Books; pub date 1 April 2020 Paperback / Poetry - £9.00. Buy at Amazon com.