Art is a Waste of Time – Zarina Macha

 

 

Blurb:   ‘Art is a Waste of Time’ is the first collection of poems published by Zarina Macha.

Containing around 70 poems, Macha has written extensively in styles of satire, confessionalism and free verse. This body of work contains poems Macha wrote between the years 2013 and 2018, capturing a teenage girl’s growth into a young woman.

Macha has also included a small segment of poems she wrote as a child in the year 2007 at the back of the book.

Macha’s debut fictional book Every Last Psycho: A Collection of Two Novellas was released earlier this year.

 

 

 

This is an extensive collection of poetry containing a little of everything.

The poems are in alphabetical order by title, creating a random feel as we move between styles and subjects.  The overall impression is one of an intimate immersion in the chaotic thoughts and feelings of the word artist from whom the ideas flow, freely and openly.

Zarina Macha’s love of word play and her raw honesty shine through in every page of her writing, singing in vivid imagery and erratic rhythms, alliteration and profanity.

In one poem we may get flowery, romantic verse with intricate imagery and in the next, strong, bold and direct prose-poetry, visceral and earthy.

The poems span years and therefore the topics covered are equally varied, but there is a running theme of womanhood:  women’s love, women’s pain, women’s experience and women’s bodies.  These impressions are intermixed with everything else from romantic love, race, religion, sex and (more than once) Game of Thrones!

Overall this is a strong, diverse collection that I recommend to fans of modern poetry.  The inclusion of a few poems written in her childhood is a fun bonus from the author at the end.

 

If you read my poetry

If you read my poetry
If you heard my songs
you would understand me a lot better
than if we stood
face to face
side by side
shoulder to shoulder
you would see the cracks
in a mask so carefully built
sealed to protect a fragile heart
from tumbling down the cliff
draining a frothy waterfall
welled up a leaky dam
that mooches up and down streets
slumped into rounded shadows.

– Zarina Macha, Art is a Waste of Time

 

Find more from Zarina Macha at her blog here or follow her on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and YouTube.

Art is a Waste of Time is available on Amazon now, along with Macha’s debut novellas, Every Last Psycho (check out my review from back in July).