Trista Mateer

(Full disclosure: I received a free e-ARC for review through Edelweiss. Content warning for mental health issues, including anxiety and depression.)

misery has swallowed
enough of me / it must be full

Small ghost haunts her own life. She is positively bedeviled by anxiety, depression, unanswered emails, piles of dirty laundry, and existential angst. She is a collection of insecurities and unease. She's so transparent she's not sure if she exists at all; giving Gloria Burgle. (You know, the show more police detective in FARGO who never met a motion sensor she could trigger.)

But small ghost is still here. She might not be thriving, but she's surviving. She's going to therapy, and trying to do better. Be better. Manifest into something - someone - real. Small ghost is (possibly) you, and (definitely) me. She is a symptom, and maybe also a remedy, for these anxious, uncertain, MAGA-COVID-climate-change-live-streamed-genocide-billionaires-should-not-exist-and-yet-they-do times.

SMALL GHOST started out as a chapbook in 2015 and has evolved into a collection of poetry and art that's as piercing as it is adorable (albeit melancholily - melancholically? - so). By the end of the book you'll likely find that you want to give small ghost a hug. Surprise!: she is you. show less

Thank you to Trista Mateer, Central Avenue Publishing, and NetGalley for allowing me the extreme pleasure of access to an advanced reader copy of “Honeybee” for an honest review.

I was so pleased when I accepted to review this newest piece by Trista Mateer (who I'd been quietly starting to follow in the vein of Amanda Lovelace, Nikita Gil, Lang Leav, and R.H. Sin). This was a soul- and gut-wrenching travel through the land of heartbreak experienced both as a common occurrence (of love) show more and that of a bisexual woman, skimming the surface of her place in the world, in her own life, in the eyes of her family, and in the eyes of the family of her beloved.

There is so much raw passion, pain, and beauty in this text and I will be acquiring a copy for those of my friends who are, also, aficionados of the current classic wave of confessional poetry. I am incredibly pleased with all of this and looking forward to my recently acquired Dragonhearts and her forthcoming text, Aphrodite Made Me Do It). show less

Summer 2019 (Netgalley, Kindle);

Thank you to Trista Mateer, Central Avenue Publishing, and NetGalley for allowing me the extreme pleasure of access to an advanced reader copy of “Aphrodite Made Me Do It" for an honest review.

I jumped at this arc when it was both poetry and Aphrodite related, and then had the great pleasure of discovering it was Trista Mateer's poetry. This was a rich, biting book full of the reclamation of past and future women. I was really pleased to see some of show more Aphrodite's beginnings addressed, and with such anger toward the future, toward the controlling, cleaning up, and rewriting of women. I was absolutely not expecting the references/appearances of Eve and Pandora and Helen, each of which made the message and the links in the chain of this being done over and over to women through the writing even clearer.

The combination of healing and reclaiming of self, through the past, through love, through healing, was gorgeous. The confessional poetry style, overshot at times with lists and poetic prose kept me involved and invested in all the topics as they continued to be built on across the small text.

I cannot wait to buy a copy of this for myself and a friend of mine who loves all things poetry & Aphrodite. show less

This review is based on an ARC I received from the publishers in exchange for an honest review.

I loved this poetry collection! The prose weaves together mythology and self discovery and empowerment in the most beautiful way -- intertwining Aphrodite's tales and the author's own experiences. My favourite passages were those about how men have forced a certain narrative for women in Greek mythos, and it being rewritten by Aphrodite's words.

"I was given agency only when my actions could make me show more seem spiteful and shallow."

The poems about the author's trauma were also very powerful and hit close to home. Trista Mateer has an ability to put words to experiences often unspeakable. This was my first poetry collection I've read by Mateer but I'm definitely interested in her others.

Trigger warning for: rape, sexual assault, homophobia (full list of trigger warnings are provided at the beginning of the collection). show less