Look How Alive

At times gut wrenching, at times ecstatic and defiant, Look How Alive I Am is filled with vibrant poems, pulsing with the joy and the pain of living. Navigating love and loss, battles with depression, Alpine landscapes and buzzing cityscapes, Hollingsworth-Smith's debut book has a heartbeat.Lauren Hollingsworth-Smith's debut collection is an inquisitive and tender examination of the minefields of coming of age. Here the body is a site of conflict and reconciliation. We are gifted with honest testimonies that microscopically examine sexuality, sensuality, crushes, first love and mental health. Hollingsworth-Smith's scathing, yet refreshingly honest poetics brutally expose the impact of society's gender violence on the body. The poems evoke a haunting, where the body endures and navigates imperfections and vulnerabilities. Where a scathing woman resides within the poet's body and her caustic voice is a gripping melody that traps. Yet there is innocence here alongside reckless adventure,