Of Iscariot by Chiseche: A review

Book Review

Iscariot by Chiseche

Chiseche has a new chap book Iscariot coming out in June and I had the honour of being one of the first people to read it. I loved her first book Girls With Sky In The Eyes and had a coffee chat with her about it which you can read here..,

Having loved her first work I was curious what her second book would be like.

ISCARIOT

In my head Iscariot means the betrayer, after the black sheep of the disciples Judas Iscariot who betrayed Jesus for thirty pieces of silver…

The book opens with the following haunting line

To all things broken and bent

Then you get to the contents page …

Each poem is short and striking and toward the end you will realise it might not just be 24 poems there’s one stories hidden within the words and the characters, connected.

Iscariot is a poignant chapbook of poetry that will have you questioning if the author is trying to tell you something by not telling you that they are telling you, it’s one of those things that will have you wishing you could sit down with the Chiseche and ask, “whose story is this?”

Words

Such poor, poor instruments

The title poem Iscariot is another enigmatic work on the theme of betrayal which underlines this book ending with following line

And so, my beloved

What you will do

What you were damned to do

Do quickly

The poem memory seems to hint on our dark past, the slavery chains and abuse and maybe the purpose of the book is to be remembered, the broken things we were and are…

We did not ask to be beautiful

As so, it was not given

We asked to be remembered

And we will

We will

And in between some of the poems you will find bonus italicized strings of words a poem within poems.

Maybe I am reading too much into the book it seems to caution:

The final poem We are takes us back to the opening poem titled We Are and like the Ouroboros  concludes everything yet right back we started

We are not right, we are not wrong

You won’t stop us singing our song

With these last words…fill the halls of your hearts

We are

We are

We just are

I have questions and you will too, I have theories and so will you, look out for this chapbook coming out in June, and yes it will be FREE as per Chiseche’s past tradition and then we can exchange theories and questions……

…And I promise you, the time you took to read this review, if you double it, then double that, that’s about how long it takes to read this chapbook ^_^ so drop a comment and I will make sure you know when its available then we can continue this conversation…  about the house, the river, the path, the secret of the lights, the stranger, the angel, the girl who dances, oh and the cat with many lives and Iscariot…. ♥♥♥♥

~B

In the meantime you can follow Chiseche on twitter: @chisechesays and check out her blog LiliDreamer when the book is available; you can click the button below: