One of the joys of having author friends is when I read their works for the first time. It’s lovely to discover that not only are they nice people, but also very talented writers. I have so much awe for poets and was delighted to find Patrice has poems that speak to me on my level. I tentatively picked up this book as I find poetry hard to get into. Not necessarily pretentious, but they use imagery I struggle to understand. I managed to pass the poetry subject at university, but that was more because of my great classmates rather than due to my own skills. So it was a pleasant surprise to find I could understand these poems.
Each poem is this microcosm of beauty, and the poems as a whole take us through the story of an early colonist to Mars. It starts with a girl of 18 being seduced by a recruiter and leads us gently through leaving Earth, reaching Mars and finally Mars being terraformed.
This book would work as a science fiction story, but it’s brilliant as poetry. If I was any good I would have written these few words as poetry, sadly I am not Patrice. When I do my vlog about this book I plan on reading out just one poem as an illustration of how good it is. The imagery is stark, but beautiful. I found myself empathising with the Woman and grieving when sad things happened.