This beautiful book of poetry, so very very personal to the author, opens to and offers the world a chance to recognise and express themselves. As I started to read I felt the pull of the words as they connected to me and took on meaning. It covers regret, sorrow, fear, and hope, almost becoming a story as it covers a period in Natalie Ann Holborrow’s life when death and birth visits her family. She writes with an empathetic yet realistic eloquence, understanding of the cycle of life yet expressing full emotions. She is so acutely aware of the dangers of living of feeling of loving, it hurts. I was able to taste the bitter, swallow the biting regret, and allow them access. And yet, there were the moments of light, still shadowed, yet they are in existence. Oh how I sighed on finding You Won’t Always Recognise Hope When You See Her, her existence was welcome and heartfelt. Sitting as a reminder of how poetry, with the quickest of darts can pierce and penetrate thoughts and feelings, this has been chosen not only as a Liz Pick of the Month, but also a LoveReading Star Book. Little Universe sits as a reminder of the beauty of emotion, whether in sorrow or love, and with sensitive fluency opens a door to the expression of feelings.
The poems in Natalie Ann Holborow's Little Universe are an exploration of tumultuous human emotions and nature's ever-present rhythms. Lives bustle within a busy hospital's walls, humming against the Gower landscape that stretches beyond its windows. The tiny worlds of a wide cast unfold as they deal with their own emergencies, losses, recoveries, hopes and histories.
Natalie Ann Holborow is a winner of the Terry Hetherington Award and the Robin Reeves Prize and has been shortlisted and commended for the Bridport Prize, the National Poetry Competition, the Hippocrates Prize for Poetry and Medicine, and the Cursed Murphy Spoken Word Award among others. She is the author of the poetry collections And Suddenly You Find Yourself, Small – both listed as Best Poetry Collections of the Year by Wales Arts Review – and, with Mari Ellis Dunning, the collaborative poetry pamphlet The Wrong Side of the Looking Glass. Little Universe is her third full collection. Natalie lives in Swansea, is a proud patron of local charity The Leon Heart Fund, and runs marathons to raise funds.
