Night Sky with Exit Wounds by Ocean Vuong (Review)

Hi there everyone! I hope you're all doing well! Here is a review I did as part of my uni studies, critiquing Ocean Vuong's award-winning poetry collection "Night Sky with Exit Wounds". Enjoy!

A Poem For My Granddad

So today marks the second year anniversary of the death of my Granddad Jimmy. For these past two years I've told myself that I will write a poem in honour of him, but I couldn't get anything worthy (to me) written down that would justify as THE poem. But over these past few weeks I've honed my poetry skills and managed to get it all down. I've edited it to death for an assignment at uni and now I feel, on his death anniversary, that it is time to let this poem off into the world for others to view, to gain some form of catharsis, and let this be the send-off I've been attempting for the past 2 years. I love you Granddad Jimmy. Though you're gone you have given me a new lease on life over these past 2 years, and you've helped me become a better writer, a better poet, and overall, a better person. I hope you enjoy this piece.

World Mental Health Day Poem

Okay, I know it's a bit of a late one, seeing as how World Mental Health Day was last Thursday, however, I took that day as a day to restart an old lyric of mine into a poem, and voila! Here it is! Everybody deals with Mental Health, some worse than others, and depression is a thing, mental illness is a thing, suicide is a thing - there is no hiding behind taboos and so on, so here it is in black and white. For those of you who want to know where the title came from, I was once referred to as Bittersweet in college, when I looked up the definition, I thought, "yeah, this applies to me to some level." Then this same person once said that my main issue is that I think too much like a robot, and that I should start spending my time thinking more like a human being. "Android" was one of my nicknames that this person would use - not in a mean way - whenever we met up. And finally I placed "Suicide" in there, because I've had to deal with this word so much in my time, due to the state of my mental health and where it's at, and where it can get to. I've confronted myself, and friends in regard to the state of my mental health and how I've had these thoughts and feelings; it's a large, integral part of who I am as a person. Sometimes this admission of suicidal thoughts has gone one way, sometimes another, with people, but I made it a conscious choice to include it in this poem, especially it's title, because we need to break taboos like these in order to help everyone. Make it World Mental Health for forever, not just one day out of the year. Let's work to make everyday a World Mental Health Day. Thank you, and as always, enjoy.

Meet Me in Montauk

Hello people of WordPress! Back here with another poem, this one coming from a creative piece I did in first year for a poem. I've since updated it and here it is! This one is based on the superb (Anti?) Romantic-Comedy Drama, Eternal Sunshine of The Spotless Mind, starring Jim Carrey and Kate Winslet - if you haven't already watched this masterpiece, I suggest you go and check it out! Anyway, as usual I hope you enjoy my work!

Wallflower Seed

Okay, so I haven't been blogging/active recently due to the demand of attention for my uni assignments and work (I have just started second year) - however, I have been working on some new ideas, and some of the work being demanded out of me via uni assignments could be deemed as worthy for publishing on here, after the fact. Anyway, here is one of my poems from first year, edited to its latest draft form, first committed to poetic form at a Halloween Party in 2017. Enjoy!

A Sign of the Times

Long time no see! I've been working on some new material for the following months, however I am back at university, having just finished my first week of second year, so much of my time will be spent on new assignments and whatnot - however, some of these assignments can feed into this blog, such as creative pieces etc. Anyhow, here is a new poem I have been working on for quite a while now: "A Sign of the Times."

Attention To Detail (1)

This is just the start of a series of blog posts entitled "Attention To Detail". This series will take a look at five different films and an obscure piece of trivia that you may, or may not know about said film! So, yeah, take a look and see if there's anything interesting that you find!