Lambs with Manes of Lions by Laura Kestrel

Lambs with Manes of Lions is the debut collection from poet Laura Kestrel. This anthology of poetry focuses very heavily on life as a twenty-something in this day and age, as well as addressing equality and feminism.

Although this is a collection of poems, throughout the book there are also pieces that take on more of a prose feel, although they still retain a poetic undertone which means the style shift isn’t jarring. Quite the opposite, in fact, as I found the poetic prose to be a welcome change. I’ve never been a fan of just reading poetry in large doses, and these prose interjections helped to counter this and I found myself enjoying and finishing the collection, almost without realising I had done, and then wanting to go back through it and explore some of the poems further.

One piece in particular resonated with me: ‘Feminism Realism.’ What started as a female empowerment poem quickly became more of a generalised equality message; it looked at both sides of the gender injustice coin, highlighting so many of the real challenges that are faced in the world today because of gender. This was put forward by Kestrel in a very eloquent, yet straightforward way.

The entire collection is well-written and well-constructed. There’s an adept use of inline rhyming and the rhythm and flow that Laura managed to put onto the page makes each poem a joy to read. Individually, every poem works, and together they fit to infer an overarching theme.

I’m not the biggest fan of poetry that is written on the page, personally, as generally speaking I prefer to listen to poetry than to read it. Having said that, I thoroughly enjoyed reading through the collection and will definitely be revisiting it from time to time to further digest the words. I would definitely recommend this to people who enjoy reading poetry, but also I feel that it would also be a good book for people who aren’t sure whether they’d like reading poetry to try.