A Collection of Dreamscapes

In light of April being National Poetry Month I was going to make an effort to read more poetry. However with the emotional stresses that COVID19 brought on for me I did not really pursue any reading goals as much as I found myself falling into doing some more mood reading.  For me mood reading means that I am pulling off books from my shelf and buying books that seem to fit the state of mind I am in (which frankly has been all over the map for me) and just losing myself in a book. When I am reading for a goal I am often trying to do something like narrow in on an author or theme in my TBR pile,  learn something new, read a book club selection or pick up an ARC that I promised I’d review. While these categories are not necessarily mutually exclusive from each other a lot of times what it boils down to for me is that mood reading is more about the reading that I do to lose myself in my imagination and goal reading often is more about building community or professional development. 

 So when I was offered the opportunity to obtain an advanced readers copy of A Collection of Dreamscapes by Christina Sng in exchange for a review this was exactly the middle ground I needed. It provided the kind of dark escapism that I was craving and the motivation of promising to write a review. I was excited about this opportunity because I adored her other book A Collection of Nightmares and would have purchased this book on my own.

The collection is divided up into various sections: The Love Song of Allegra, Fairy Tales, All the Monsters In the World, Capacity of Violence and Myths and Dreamscapes.  Each of the poems were appropriately categorized. However as I read this entire collection I got the sensation of the magic of slipping into a dream that was reminiscent of a dark fairy tale.  In fact, when I read of the poems in the middle of the night it provoked nightmares as it stirred something in that state between a sleep and awake.   The skillful combination of lyricism and narration that fleshed out these images made this collection irresistible!  It did not feel like the kind of collection that I needed to give myself the goal to complete be reading as it delightfully brought me to thedark corners of my imagination.

Thank you Raw Dog Screaming Press for providing me this ARC

I will also be posting a modified version of this review on Goodreads