Book Review: Lord of the Butterflies by Andrea Gibson

I’ve received an Advanced Review Copy from Net Galley in exchange for honest review. I had an immediate connection with both the title and the cover.

Andrea Gibson is a spoken-word poet and I was sceptical that text could capture the magic of epic performances—it does. Reflecting the nature of spoken-word poetry, most poems were longer than to what I’m used to reading in journals. It’s harder work to have a five-page poem (on Kindle) that is continuously, word by word, attention grabbing. In addition, Andrea has mastered the art of indentation and line-breaks, each placed intentionally and adding meaning. (Side note: such indentation is even harder to pull off on e-books, but the copy sent to my Kindle was precisely formatted.)

The poetry included several works on queer identity, personal relationships and mass shootings. From the first poem, I found myself highlighting verses because they’re the kind I’d want to read over and over again. In Orlando, which is a poem about queer safe spaces and the Pulse nightclub shooting, Andrea writes:

“even life is like funeral practice:
half of us already dead
to our families before we die,
half of us still on our knees
trying to crawl
into the family photo.”

I could write a whole essay inspired by this verse, but still, the verse speaks best for itself.

One thing I tend to do in reviews of poetry collections is mentioning my preferred piece. With Lord of the Butterflies, I realised this was going to be an impossible task. By the first third of the collection, I had marked the following: Photoshopping My Sister’s Mugshot, Ode to the Public Panic Attack, Gender in the Key of Lyme Disease. After that, I stopped noting down, for it felt pointless to provide an index list to all the poems.

The raw honesty and vulnerability in the poetry made this collection an incredible experience. I was most touched by those pieces talking about her sister. I’m somewhat speechless, not having words in the English vocabulary that could explain; and perhaps the best way for me to convey this experience is to tell you: read Lord of the Butterflies.

P.S. I’m listening to Andrea’s spoken-word album Hey Galaxy on Spotify while writing this review, and I’m beyond wowed—astonished of how well the poems are brought to life. If you haven’t heard of Andrea Gibson, do yourself a favour and look them up.

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Sources and Links:

Book: Lord of the Butterflies
Book Cover: Goodreads
Book Review: Jeremy Mifsud
Header Photograph: Cristina Gottardi