My poetry collection, MARGINALIA TO STONE BIRD, has received its first reviews.

Nerds of a Feather published a review by Charles Payseur, their first speculative poetry review:

Marginalia to Stone Bird is a testament to how speculative poetry can succeed in capturing voice and plot and movement and feeling while still tackling big ideas and personal truths. The collection crafts a sort of map of forms and intents, a tour of what speculative poetry can be. From magic realism to high fantasy to far off-world science fiction, the poems range far and wide while maintaining a circling consistency, an interest in language and oppression and voice and freedom.

Charles elaborates further in his Goodreads review:

I really can’t say enough about the organization of the collection, with each section growing more comfortable with the strange, the unearthly, with form becoming looser and more and more speculative elements creeping in so that, by the end, the verse is dominated by fantasy and science fiction, by sweeping epics ripe with world building and tight plotting and complex morality.

And finally, this week Strange Horizons published a review of MARGINALIA in form of a conversation between Karen Burnham and Sofia Samatar. Here’s an excerpt:

KB: There’s a lot to be said about how Lemberg is able to take starkly contrasting images and language and make them work together in interesting ways. As you mentioned, there’s history, autobiography, mysticism, and fantasy all juxtaposed […]

SS: This is so interesting and important, I think—the poems are very carefully organized. It’s the organization that makes Marginalia feel like a book, a complete argument rather than a “collected poems of Rose Lemberg.” And you’re right, those pieces set in the same world are not clumped together, but their influence grows toward the end of the book. It feels more like a tapestry than a collage—rather than separate components set beside each other, there are threads that travel through the whole, but certain colors are stronger in some places. Or maybe it’s like a piece of music, with themes that are repeated with variations, and grow and dominate in different movements.

I am really thrilled with these reactions.

We are running a Goodreads Giveaway for two signed copies of the book; it runs until February 3rd. I hope you enter!