Open the pages of Butterfly Voyage. Walk your fingers and eyes right into its middle and let your mind get lost in delight in any direction.
This is a book of poetry carved out of malleable ingredients that are an imaginative wheelhouse for readers to take shelter in as he or she moves along inside the oceanic currents of the author’s journey to self.
In Butterfly Voyage, published in November 2018 by https://paperfieldspress.com, Australian based author/poet Bianca Bowers shares an odyssey where life feels like a continual process of transformation.
At almost every turn there is opportunity to follow the author into the natural world that drifts along with fluid narrative. It’s not a mistake I have reggae music playing in my headphones as I write this. That comforting skip and bounce beat with a voice floating along with it is what reading this book is like.
There’s a wide, deep well of flowing creativity inside the pages. A mix of natural and supernatural. Identification and deliverance from pain and self-loathing, crossings through misunderstandings, bridges to memories, islands of visions, illusions of time bent and then bent again, perceptions of what is and is not, places that amaze with described details, the seen and unseen of who a person thinks they are versus what they’ve been hiding themselves from.
In the end all the layers listed above lift the top off of the narrator’s carefully constructed canopy of safety. They fall and float to the forest floor, letting light in which follows behind and promotes growth. Each verse from beginning to end is rich, ambient, soulful, and textured.
At its centre the book is a conversation between the narrator, her mother’s voice, Leda, who seems to be her guardian dragon spirit, and Mother Nature, all seeking a newly open heart for her, and for balance between the author’s recognition and description of the features of dragon and butterfly. One goes with the other and is healthy and empowering.
I found my own self reflected back out to me as I followed along. That is the power of story and those parallel lines sank in deep as I, too, feel at home within the realms this book explores.
Read this book. If you do, you’ll read it again, as I did, and enjoy its fluid magnificence.
Well done, Ms. Bowers. Your drawing is on its way.
In Australia buy Butterfly Voyage at https://www.amazon.com.au/Butterfly-Voyage-Bianca-Bowers-ebook/dp/B07JXYMS5N/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1542409013&sr=8-1&keywords=butterfly+voyage%2C+bianca+bowers
In the U.S. purchase Butterfly Voyage at https://www.amazon.com/s?k=Bianca+Bowers+Butterfly+Voyage&ref=nb_sb_noss
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