Review by Jonathan Wilkins of "Mo(u)rning Rituals" by Heidi Slettedahl

This book is what it says, carefully hidden by brackets: a mourning for lost children, a mourning of the past.

Mo(u)rning Rituals is a heart-wrenching collection of poems that opens up the visceral hurt of childlessness. The directness and lack of flowery language open the reader up to the hurt and the challenges that the writer faced in a world fraught by the frailty of the body.

Slettedahl’s poems do not, however, wallow in self pity. Rather, they are real, they are funny, they are what they are - an exposé of the feelings that she has as a woman who does not have children but has a burning desire to do so, only to be defeated time and time again by her own body. We see the child that will never be there, we feel the heartache, the absence, the love that would have been showered upon the child if only they had existed. 

The poetry brought tears to my eyes; the sadness is ingrained in the writing. And there is more here too: the loss of the author's father, and her lost friendships. Loss and mourning pervade these pages.

But is the "Morning" a sign of hope? We can only hope so.

These are cathartic poems that hopefully bring some peace. For the reader, they fill us with pain and loss and empathy. We are there. We can share the grief and agony. Of course not completely - but the beauty of the words allows us an insight into her world. This is a world we need to understand as we face our lives and our own problems. These poems make us feel like we are not alone. 

About the reviewer
Jonathan Wilkins is 68. He is married to the gorgeous Annie with two wonderful sons. He was a teacher for twenty years, a Waterstones’ bookseller and coached women’s basketball for over thirty years before taking up writing seriously. Nowadays he takes notes for students with Special Needs at Leicester and Warwick Universities. He has had a work commissioned by the UK Arts Council and several pieces published traditionally as well as on-line. He has had poems in magazines and anthologies, art galleries, studios, museums and at Huddersfield Railway Station. He loves writing poetry. For his MA, he wrote a crime novel, Utrecht Snow. He followed it up with Utrecht Rain, and is now writing a third part. He is currently writing a crime series, Poppy Knows Best, set at the end of the Great War and into the early 1920s.

You can read more about Mo(u)rning Rituals by Heidi Slettedahl on Creative Writing at Leicester here.