HOBBIES OVER COFFEE

Last year I fell in love with Kala Godin’s collection of poetry Witchcraft & Monsters. This year Kala is releasing her second collection and I was fortunate enough to be given an eARC of The Veil.

• Title :  The Veil
• Author : Kala Godin
• Genre :  Poetry
• Pages : 112
• Own/Borrowed/ARC :  eARC
• Publication Date :   October 31, 2020
• GoodReads Link /Synopsis :  In her second poetry collection, Kala Godin explores humanity, divinity, and the in-between places. The monsters and gods are still here, they’re just beyond The Veil…

The collection begins with a warning. Kala informs the readers ahead of time that when this collection was written, most of it was written during self isolation in Canada due to the pandemic and that it does contain mentions of the virus along with blood, gore, death and abuse.

The first couple of poems are pandemic focused. They vary from the mental, where the writer questions themselves about their illness status and insisting that they have to have got the virus to the constant news updates about new cases and new deaths during this time.

It than moves one to Part Two, The Human. These poems are full of aches and needs to be seen as the writer talks about the chronic pain they live with. It tackles not just the internal but the external as well.

When monsters are brought up, they write how its not something external that can come and ruin your life, but that sometimes monsters are already living within oneself. How quietly something can lay dormant within us before we realize that the monster we need to fight is internal. They go on to write about having to fight and slay these monsters and having to rise from what is left over, no matter what.

I am tired.

But always ready for the next war.

Queen of Eternal Disease : Part 2 from The Veil by Kala Godin

And this is just the tip of the iceberg in this wonderful collection in which Kala tackles self identity, the monsters around us, the lies we all tell ourselves and about those who rise to the challenges that life throws at them. But also a nod to the tender hearts that we all have and the need to be with others, to care for or be cared for.

I’m sorry,

For the way I so easily made homes,

Out of people.

Sometimes I confuse,

Two arms and a heartbeat,

For walls and a bedtime story.

Homes from The Veil by Kala Godin

Give me someone who won’t make a home out of me,

Build one with me instead.

Build Me a Home from The Veil by Kala Godin

The collection also contains small pieces of artwork and short stories. One of my favorite is This Is Your Gods in High School which takes the Greek Gods and place them in a modern high school and gives the reader a look into the issues they face and their place within this world. And the collection ends with Tale of the Tides, a short story about pirates that unknowingly take a mermaid upon their ship. A bloody good time.

While I enjoyed reading this collection the poems that touched about the pandemic were hard for me and I had to put the collection down multiple times. As someone who works in the medical field and had to continue, and still continue to work through the pandemic and have to see patients face to face on a daily basis, it just hit too close to home. Sometimes I had to put the collection as my anxiety would flair up and then return later to power though those and make it to the other poems.

With that aside, The Veil is unflinchingly real and a testament to how many times someone can rebuild themselves from the ashes left over from battles won, lost, lessons learned and experiences lived. It also is a manifest in letting the world know that they are here and they will not make themselves smaller to make others feel comfortable because :

I am made from the dangerous ocean,

And stardust.

I am here to Stay from The Veil by Kala Godin

Thank you again to Kala for providing me with an eARC in exchange for an honest review.

My Rating :