Your Soul Is a River

I kept finding amazing quotes on Pinterest by Nikita Gill. I finally looked up how to get my hands on a collection of her work and I am completely blown away.This collection of poetry spoke to my mind, body, and spirit. I cant wait to read it again...and again...and likely again.

This book breathes magic in the form of poetry. The poetry has a strong tone of wisdom coming out fromthe words. In my opinion, this book is empowering and uplifting. Even though there are some downs in the emotions of the poems, that’s showing the reality of life and I find it beautiful.Kudos to the author for the format/design as well, it is so striking at first glance and the contrast between light and dark plays out very well both in terms of color and imagery. I think there is also a depth behind the poetry that can always be explored by the reader.The only reason I wouldn’t give it five stars is that I did lose some attention midway through the book and found myself being able to predict the kind of poem that would come next and things didn’t jump out at me so much as in the beginning of the book. However, that may be because I’m a bit tired this morning and unable to focus fully as yet.Overall, this was a wonderful read and worth the money for me!

Deep and heart-felt, this collection of poems felt like someone reaching past the scars and into my soul and showing me the beauty within. Gorgeous poetry.I didn't like the Kindle formatting, because I couldn't highlight things, and the font was smaller, but I won't let that take away from my rating of the content.

This collection is intense and real. It's inspiring and heart breaking. Overall, it is a reminder that none of us are too broken to heal

Tomorrow or today or always is your dayYou are a warriorYou are someone who teaches the sand to be moistYou teach the rain to be parchedYou show a ninth color to the rainbowYou are here when here is lostI recently wrote to a my friend Marlon James that i miss him just like -Purple misses Prince-And with that power i want to celebrate youBecause you are of all colors and colors are a range of being... that’s how much i learn fromYou. So thank you for your day of birth.20th of June of 2020YoursLeopoldo

Absolutely beautiful and heartbreaking. Nikita has a way of making your heart stop or skip a beat with just a sentence. She is an artist in the way she strings words and phrases together to create a master piece that is this book.

I go back to this book over and over again to reread poems. The word-crafting and economy of words is remarkable. Thought provoking and touching. I recommend.

My 17 year old granddaughter wanted "Your Soul Is A River" for Christmas and is enjoying reading this book. I believe she would highly recommend it.

I discovered Nikita Gill on Facebook. Someone posted an image of one of her poems. There was no title and no author's name. I had to hunt her down via Google. I bought this book on Kindle and pre-ordered the paperback version of "Wild Embers" which has now arrived. And then I found her on Twitter. For personal reasons I won't go into here, I have been in Trauma Recovery for over a year. When my heart gets too heavy and too dark, this book has been a light guiding me back to myself. It has strength and softness and wisdom and light in its pages. It won't be everyone's cup of tea (what is?) but I found it healing and restorative.

At the risk of sounding like a small child instead of a fully fledged adult attempting to undertake adulting on the regular, all I have to say is: Nikita Gill is my favourite. And she's my favourite because even when her collections don't hit me straight away, as this one didn't, it takes only a handful of incredible poems for me to slip straight back down that rabbit hole.The poems within "Your Soul Is A River" are a real mixed bag of emotions and themes. They start off largely about the universe and human existence and are relatively philosophical which fails to have much impact for me, and swiftly move into grief, lose, love, self-worth and guilt. It's not uncommon for guilt or grief to feature in feminist poetry such as this, but Nikita Gill really hones in on what it truly feels like to carry guilt unnecessarily. She also doesn't shy away from the less frequently portrayed deserved grief - humans are expected to make some mistakes after all and her acknowledgement that even good people mess up was great. Quite often feminist poetry is empowering, as it should be, but points the finger at someone else; it's refreshing to see a number of poems which encourage people to see their faults, accept them, but also apologise for them. Ultimately there isn't always just one victim, and she captures this well.Gill also perfectly captures what it means to grieve for someone/something you've lost - even if it was bad for you. I loved how she conveyed that there is something to be gained from experiences, even negative or painful ones. I haven't seen this done before and I think there's actually a really big place for this in modern poetry which currently feels under-explored."Your Soul Is A River" does a number of things which other collections of the same nature do as well, but it also addresses a number of insightful ideas which those collections don't do so well. I like that Nikita Gill is a little different but, more importantly, that a number of her poems were deeply personal and impactful for me this time. Definitely worth a read.

I loved so many poems in this collection. Usually I find the odd line in an entire book that resonates with me - here, I found something to relate to on almost every page. I would have highlighted the heck out of every line if it weren't for the fact that the format didn't allow it (minor complaint, but the ebook was designed so that the poems were impossible to highlight, like the kindle recognised them as images rather than words? A bit frustrating, as I like to highlight poignant lines in poems and there were so many things I'd have liked to be able to find later.)The collection was broken up into sections, with all the poems in each section pertaining to that subject. My favourites were 'The Cosmos' and 'The Storm'; the poems about stars and space were so beautiful. I did however find that this started to get a little bit tedious by the end as so many of the poems dealt with such similar ideas, they felt very same-y, if that makes sense. I also caught the odd instance where the exact same line was reused, and while I understand the temptation of recycling a line you're particularly proud of, I also feel it pulled me out of the poem a little as I knew I'd read that same line a few pages before.Overall I really liked this collection, there were some beautiful poems and the speaker definitely conveyed some wonderfully raw emotions within her works. Would recommend.

I was disappointed in this. From the description I thought it was going to be an expressive, uplifting series of poems on trauma recovery and the title promised lyricism, similar to Rupi Kaur or Audre Lorde. What I got felt like the poetry version of Adele songs; depressing, sickly sweet and narrowly focused on the pain of breakups only. The language was disappointing too, it felt clunky and no pun intended, really didn’t flow well together; it almost had the dry tone of instructions instead of poetry. Try the above two instead or the incredible Vladimir Mayakovsky, far more cheerful and rewarding.

I was underwhelmed by this poetry collection. I was expecting a constant rush of feelings when reading but that didn’t occur always. Your Soul is a River is such a compelling title. I was instantly drawn in. My main criticism is that the poems became repetitive in some sections as if I was reading an alternative version of a poem in this collection. However, at the same time, I rather loved the repetition of some of the motifs, but I'm conflicted so it's 3 stars for me.