Saturday 6 April 2019

Life + Love + Death by Hezron Henry #FreeBook


Life + Love + Death by Hezron Henry
Published by Tower Of Babel in June 2015.

One of my 2019 Mount TBR Challenge reads

How I got this book:
Downloaded the ebook from Smashwords

My rating: 3 of 5 stars


A compilation of 115 pages of poetry from the pen of Caribbean poet Hezron Henry. With poems laced with realism, honesty and reflection, he invites the reader into his mind as his poems depict experiences and perspectives of life intricately presented and unveiled in three acts. Act I: “The Interlude” speaks to a generation, inspiring liberation and a new perspective calling readers to be intellectually stimulated and seeks to inspire a movement of independent thinkers. Act II:“Rib Caged In/Paper Clouds” speaks of, to and through the emotion of the heart. Act III:“Conversations with my soul” is a depiction of the depth of the writer. He allows readers to explore his deepest thoughts, and navigate his inner being. He is bold, vulnerable, rational. This anthology caters to a wide variety of poetry lovers in a thought provoking expression of the cycle of life. Each segment speaks to a real audience. Poems are candidly written, yet subtly evoke sensitivity.

Life + Love + Death is the fourth of a group of poetry ebooks I downloaded via Smashwords last year. Each by a different global poet, the collections have depicted a wide range of views but frequently centring around universal themes of love, loss, and personal identity. Hezron Henry lives on the Turks and Caicos islands in the Caribbean and is also a talented visual artist (you can admire his art here).

I appreciated that Life + Love + Death is divided into three themed sections. The poems in each have been thoughtfully chosen to create a strong atmosphere together. Those of the first 'act' are powerfully motivational; the second act portrays romance and sexuality and feels the most personal; the third act takes in philosophy and perhaps most clearly shows us Henry's thoughts on life.

There are a number of references to the interchangeable terms of poet and rapper across this collection and I would have loved to experience several of the poems as an audio stream rather than through reading printed text. The work has a wonderful energy and I felt the poems had been composed to be spoken and performed. (I tried searching YouTube, but couldn't find any performance videos. Let me know if you spot any?)


Search Lit Flits for more:
Books by Hezron Henry / Poetry / Books from Turks and Caicos Islands

4 comments:

  1. Interesting. I like that it is broken into parts or themes.

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    1. Splitting the work into themed sections was a great idea

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  2. This sounds interesting. That's cool how it's split into acts. Although from your description, I wonder how different your experience might have been had this been an audiobook or performance.

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    Replies
    1. I feel some poetry cries out to be spoken rather than read and that is absolutely the case here

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