#BlogTour The Love Virus by Eleni Cay

It's a pleasure to take part in the BlogTour for The Love Virus by Eleni Cay. For bonus features go to Eleni-cay.com it contains links to poems, videos and music that accompany her debut novel “The Love Virus”.

The e-book can be downloaded for free from all major retailers.  If you can afford to donate, please consider donating to Overcoming MS , or a charity of your choice. 

About the Author

Eleni Cay is a Slovakian-born poet living in Norway. Her award-winning first collection was published by Parthian Books and her second poetry collection ‘Love Algorithm’ is forthcoming by Eyewear Press. Eleni’s debut novel ‘The Love Virus’ was published in spring 2020.

Follow @EleniCay on Twitter, on Goodreads, on Amazon,Visit eleni-cay.com, Buy The Love Virus

About the book

When Katie finds out that her increasingly unresponsive legs and extreme fatigue is due to Multiple Sclerosis, she rides an emotional rollercoaster – anger, denial and fear – when faced with a wheelchair-bound existence. She puts her studies at Oxford on hold, and she splits up from her fiancé, Mark, even though she still loves him.

While undergoing treatment, Katie is diagnosed with MS2 – a virus that paralyses the mind. In hospital, Katie has to cope with her irritating bedfellows who argue constantly, and where she is treated by Dr Andrews, a handsome psychologist. The closer she gets to him however, the worse her pain becomes. Compounding Katie’s struggle is Mark, who returns to her bedside day after day. Once Katie begins Dr Andrews’ new experimental MS2 treatment, Mark can’t recognise her anymore. He begins to wonder if Katie will ever be cured.

Review

Although this kind of sails under the YA genre category I think this is a read that readers both young and old will be able to relate to. The subject matter doesn't change much in relation to age.

It's a powerful piece of writing. Provocative, excruciatingly detailed when it comes to moments full of embarrassment. Moments everyone else takes for granted. How Katie is betrayed by her body, which culminates in fear, rejection, and a feeling of having no control. Feeling full of doubt, because loved ones act out of pity. 'I felt more loved by her when I was miserable and in pain' - little shots like that between the mundane moments are what make this an emotionally charged response. Sway, sway - wham upside the head. Softly, softly - screams of pain.

I don't think the blurb does the content enough justice. It's far from just a story about a young woman who becomes a prisoner to a disease. It's far more than that. I wonder what a theatrical stage interpretation of this piece would look like.

This is an interesting one. It's a story written entirely in lyrical prose. It might not be everyone's cup of tea when it comes to style. You tend to get readers who want a story or want to read poetry.

I have to say I liked it, perhaps because it has a Shakespearean sonnet vibe, but more because Cay brings a compelling narrative to the table.

It's honest and doesn't pull any punches, especially when it comes to pain, pain management and having a sexual relationship with the physical and psychological limitations of an autoimmune disease. It's a speculative exploration of voice and words.

Buy The Love Virus at Amazon Uk or go to Goodreads for any other retailer. Publisher: Stavanger Poetry Society; pub date 16 April 2020. Buy at Amazon com. Click here for the links to Buy The Love Virus from Rakuten/Kobo, Angus and Robertson Bookworld, Barnes and Noble

Watch the booktrailer - The Love Virus

#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.

#BlogTour Love Like Blood by Sascha Aurora Akhtar

Today it's a pleasure to take part on the Blogtour Love Like Blood by Sascha Aurora Akhtar.

About the Author
Sascha Aurora Akhtar feels deeply connected to her ancestral roots in Lancashire, South Yorkshire and Pakistan.

Her first poetry collection was The Grimoire of Grimalkin (Salt, 2007), followed by 199 Japanese Names for Japanese Trees (Shearsman, 2016) & the first of its kind a deck of Poetry cards with fine art Only Dying Sparkles (ZimZalla 2018). In 2019, she has published The Whimsy Of Dank Ju-Ju (Emma Press 2019) & #LoveLikeBlood (Knives, Forks & Spoons Press 2019).

Her fiction has appeared in BlazeVox, Tears In The Fence, The Learned Pig, Anti-Heroin Chic, and Storgy. Sascha has performed internationally at festivals such as the Poetry International Festival in Rotterdam, Avantgarde Festival in Hamburg, and Southbank Centre’s Meltdown festival in London, curated by Yoko Ono.

Follow @AkhtarSascha on Twitter, on Goodreads, Meet Sascha Aurora Akhtar on poetryinternational.org, Buy Love Like Blood

About the book
With #LoveLikeBlood, which is the title of a very famous song Love Like Blood by 80's stalwarts Killing Joke, Sascha Akhtar takes her poetic journey back to her origins. The first poem in the book is called GirlChild of the 80's to send the tone straight from the beginning. She IS in fact an 80's child & wants others to know this, with the names of the Barbie dolls specifically from the 80's mentioned in the poem.

This collection of poems is meant to contain the poet's life - a legacy of mental imbalance, undiagnosed aspergers for most of her life - through language. 'I believe all of my life- from my father leaving when I was 4, to a legacy of abuse ( physical & emotional), a history of mental illness but striking out anyway on my own- leaving Pakistan, leaving America all of it alone - has been rupture and that is what this poetry collection contains: rupture, deep emotions & process but also alchemy & 'becoming' ( the poet is also a meditation guide & healer which was prompted through her own healing). The dedication reads: This book is dedicated to You, for there is no ‘I’ except in You
& the same love runs through our veins. Like blood

Review
A child or teen of the eighties will hear the rebel yell of the title of this book. The song speaks to and awakens the soul of the searcher, the seeker and the fighter. The poems are indicative of a poet with a soul searching for answers and connection.

The book contains the following poems: Girl Child of the Eighties, Love Like Blood, Nekyia of the Cataphiles, Ejaculate As a Noun, Ida Hexe, Sometimes the sun, Intimacy, Camino de Cadaveres, Machine-o-mancy: Found Poem, Spring Aspie Remix, Post-Colonial Theory, Anatomy of a Car - Crash, L'aeroport, In Utero, Heartwood, Nocturnal Emissions, Freak Beach, The Others,Mevlevi in a Gas Mask, Texted Plein-Air Poem on Bond Street Spliced W/Communist Manifesto, The Rape of Nanking by Men, Comforted by Rape, Harringay Train Station, Synaesthesia, poetry, Thangka Number 1 Bardo, 3:15, Retractable Patio Awning Systems, Line, Autobiographia, Poems for Eliot and A Year in Clouds.

Whilst the contents or listing the contents of the book may seem arbitrary they also, when viewed as a whole give the reader a certain idea of what to expect or not to expect. Just the titles speak of an almost inspirational Blitzschlag and experience. Akhtar feels in the moment - writes in the moment. Grabbing those thoughts in mid inspiration and grasping them tightly in case something visceral eludes her. The constant grasp and throwing down of words is mirrored in the way her poetry is portrayed.

There is no collusion with the norm. No rhyme or notion of order. Imagine her, the artist, with a paintbrush or even a hand dipped in paint throwing her words on the blank canvas. Sometimes she screams them, throws with a volatile motion and other times they are laid carefully onto the page.

It's experimental poetry - I would even go as far as to call it speculative poetry, because it doesn't adhere to norms or boundaries either spatially, emotionally or from a literary point of view.

Her poetry is an experience. No, let me rephrase that thought. Each poem is an experience in itself. The titles are doors asking, demanding, inviting and challenging the reader to come on inside and partake in her words as they themselves become the interior of her design.

Step inside and let the poet show you where her rooms and words collide with yours and mine.

Buy Love Like Blood at Amazon Uk. Publisher: Knives, Forks and Spoons Press - Paperback. Release date November 2019 - £12.00. Buy at Amazon com. Buy at Knives, Forks and Spoons Press.