Book Review: A Little Feral by Maria Giesbrecht

I received an advance copy of this book thanks to the publisher. All opinions are my own. Book is on sale now.

I love when I get an offer of an ARC that is exactly up my alley. I’m always interested in the dissection of a religious upbringing and to see it done in poetic format with an emphasis on femininity is extremely satisfying to me. It is a deliberate choice to call this collection A Little Feral, pulling as it does at the threads of a conservative religious background. In comparison, everything about a single woman living life seems, well, a little bit feral. (And how great is that cover? It captures the collection precisely.)

Giesbrecht’s poems are short and punchy. They are set firmly in the real world, there’s very little of the mystical to them, instead grounding each sentence in the physical realm. There are clotheslines and rain clouds, eyelashes and liquor bottles. Giesbrecht uses these physical details to show us a world, a family, but also to create a sense of childlike instability. Several of the poems depict alcohol abuse and an unpredictable, sometimes violent father figure. This father figure sometimes seems to double for a god-like figure, someone all-consuming.

Looking back over the poems after I finished the book, I wonder if the religious imagery would be as clear to someone raised entirely outside of religion or particularly outside of conservative Christianity. I think the parallels of family and Christianity that Giesbrecht draws are strong but I also found myself looking for them as soon as I read that she had a conservative Mennonite background. I’d be curious to learn what other readers see on the page.

Overall, an impressive collection and a poet I will look for again.

It’s been three years and I still have the French

keyboard enabled on my phone. Occasionally,

when I comment on poems on the internet,

it autocorrects love to liberté.

• Love leaves leftovers, Maria Giesbrecht