
Member Reviews

I first came across Nikita Gill's work when I was in college and instantly connected with her words. Following her on Instagram is a treat because I get to immerse myself in her words. Wild Embers was a great edition to her books and contained many poems I loved.

Wild Embers is an incredible collection of poems and prose focused on the topics of love, heartbreak, forgiveness, mental illness, feminism, Hope, healing, trauma, pain, domestic violence, abuse, and, most importantly, self care. Nikita Gill has created a must read for all women fighting the battles of their daily lives, especially those who may have forgotten that they are courageous and powerful, a force to be reckoned with.

Basically, it is a well-rounded book of poetry. There was only like five poems I did not read but skim so that to me says that the sparks I was ingesting lit a fire within me that I felt the burn within each sinew of my bones.
And I remembered my identity: a supernova burning bright to discover pathways and planets uncharted, in order to make a new way for those that come after me.

FREAKING LOVED IT.
I adore Nakita Gill's poetry.
Wild Embers was everything I imagined and more.

Poetry comes in many forms. There are poems spanning many pages, and some a mere few lines. Some with rhyming words being the highlight and some others simple- and hard hitting.
When I picked this book, I expected the same as I have been experiencing in most other books. Short poems, mere four liners...some meaning a lot, some making little sense at all.
But was Wild Embers that?
I was pleasantly surprised by the quality of writing and creativity that has gone into this book 😍.. From poetry about the universe, love, self love and empowerment- it's got a mix of everything. There are some poems that left a lasting mark on me and am totally going to go back to them time and again.
The poems are anything but half hearted. They are impactful and mesmerising.
While I assumed the ones initially were going to be my favourites, the poems about leading ladies from fairytales and Goddesses stole my heart 😍.. It's a great read for any woman and it resonates deeply with conflicting ideas instilled by society. It is a poetic awakening as it shows us the shallow side of what the society has been feeding us.
It isn't a brutal, it isn't here to make a splash and vanish. But create ripples that will leave a deep impact on the reader.
Overall, this book was a breath of fresh air after a lot of "pop poetry". .

I love Nikita Gill and this lived up to my expectations. Her poetry always shakes you and stays with you time after you are done reading

Beautifully written! Loved the poetry. Her words are beautiful and strong. I will definitely be reading more of her books. I voluntarily read and reviewed an Advanced Reader Copy of this book from Netgalley.

I am absolutely in love with this collection. From the beginning, Nikita Gill drew me in. From her poems on fairy tales and Greek mythology to the “present day” (though, let’s be honest, they all interconnect and are relatable beyond imagination), I was hooked. I will definitely be suggesting this collection to others, and I eagerly await what’s next.

I loved the cover and title of this, and was even really into the first few poems, which used a lot of science and outerspace metaphor to discuss bodies. But then the poems switched over into a trauma, psychology, not-really-poetry mode. At least, not literary poetry. If this is going to a be new thing in the world of Instagram and Tumblr poets who are really employing words to deal with trauma (and wow is the word trauma mentioned in this volume a lot, a lot, a lot)... well I think this is okay. But I don't know that it is poetry, exactly.
Fans of Rupi Kaur may like this (but some like Kaur that don't like others like her). Maybe the true test is if you liked both Kaur and The Princess Saves Herself in this One, then this is probably the book for you.
At the same time I don't want to blame the author or publisher for not meeting my expectations when there isn't really another thing to call it at this point. But I recommend creating that genre moving forward to help us readers separate out the therapy poetry from the other types.

An excellent and surprising new collection from one of my favorite authors. My favorite portion is where she retold story tells and traditional profiles of Greek Gods.

Wow. The beauty of this book is indescribable. The metaphors, the messages, the raw truth of it all is beyond beautiful. Every woman should read this poetry collection. I loved it so much that I'll definitely be buying the paperback sometime. What an amazing writer.

This collection of poems is full of self love, strength and reminders that you are stronger than you think. There are lots of nods to space and how miniscule we all actually are. Reminders that what happens to you shouldn't define you.
It's a very nice collection for people on the path of learning how to love themselves.

There's a reason Nikita Gill has become such a force as a social media poet. Her poems are full of mantras of self-love and can give you strength you didn't know you had. Gill has a wonderful way of taking trauma and turning it into a place for growth and hope. This collection feels like a love letter to the reader. It would make a great gift to a teen or young adult woman that doesn't yet recognize her own power.

With her sophomore poetry collection, Nikita Gill has provided us with a much-needed dose of self-love, resilience, feminism and beauty. This is a deeply evocative and powerful collection that will resonate with a lot of us. I especially loved her feminist retellings of fairytales and Greek mythology. I loved this book and it is easily one of the best poetry collections I've read this year.

Wild Embers was beautiful! Seriously. I'm really glad I'm getting into poetry, because through reading it, I find a lot about myself as an individual. Poetry does, after all, push you to open yourself up and look inside. Seriously, ya'll. Nikita Gill should be on your radar, because she really writes some lovely stuff.
Before requesting to read this, I knew going in that I was going to compare Gill to my two favorite poets: Emily Dickinson, and Erin Hanson. Both, vastly different, appeal to me in wondrous ways, and are my forever "go to" poets. Therefore, I knew that Gill would have some serious competition - and I worried that I would end up being harsh with my rating. However, it's safe to say, that Gill nearly lived up to their talent - and I was pleasantly surprised.
The biggest aspects that took away from her writing was, for one, the fact that I felt like I'd read her ideas before. Nothing seemed original. And while this might also be the case with Erin Hanson's poetry, hers touches me in a personal way. I did not get that feeling from these poems...unfortunately.
Otherwise, I thought this was a well-written collection of poetry. I will definitely read more of her, in the future!

“She is alone. | And oh | how brilliantly she shines.”
We are the blood
of the witches
you thought were dead.
We carry witchcraft in our bones
whilst the magic still sings
inside our heads.
When the witch hunters
imprisoned our ancestors
when they tried to burn the magic away.
Someone should have
warned them
that magic cannot be tamed.
Because you cannot burn away
what has always
been aflame.
(“Witch”)
It is the law of the universe
that even ghosts understand
as long as they matter to someone
they still exist and in your heart
they stand.
(“Ghost Story”)
I really wanted to love this collection of poetry more than I did – although this isn’t to suggest that I didn’t enjoy it. Nikita Gill’s poetry is powerful, passionate, and fiercely feminist. With Wild Embers, she fans the flames of rebellion – against a culture so steeped in misogyny and sexism that it’s taken as the norm, the default, the air we breathe – and at a time when we need it, desperately. Whether reimaging sexist fairy tales and myths or challenging abusers – including her own – Gill’s words cut deep, to the bone. They’re also accessible and satisfying, in a way that poetry isn’t always.
Yet she often employs similar imagery and themes, such that the poems start to feel a little repetitive by the final quarter of the book. Less might be more here. Also, I wish she’d taken the idea of giving each part its own unique theme and run with it a little harder. The first section is so clearly about humanity’s relationship to the cosmos, the starstuff that coalesces in our atoms and spirits … and yet, with the exception of parts III and VI (fairy tales and mythology, respectively), she mostly abandons themes (or at least more apparent ones) after so skillfully priming her audience for them.
Overall, though, it’s a valuable collection of poetry, raw and full of hope and resistance.
Contents
Cover
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Untitled I
Miracle
Multiverse
The Meaning of a Day
The Possibility in Impossibility
Growth
Dark Matter
Venus
The Sun and the Moon
Dark Days
Your Heart is not a Hospital
A Conversation with My Mental Illness
Unlearning
Black Hole
Ghost Story
Lonely
Endings
Untitled II
Witch
Magic
Dragon’s Breath
Sorcery
With Love From Midnight
The Art of Unmissing
Wolves
Your Trauma
When Love Dies
Burning
Why I am Magic
The Well Spoken Heart
Conjuring
Wolf and Woman
Anger
Learned Helplessness
An Ocean Called Healing
Baptism
Graveyards and Gardens
Your Torment Has Meaning
The Bones of Trauma
Homes
Forgiveness
Reminders about Healing
Toxic People
Reminiscences
Memories
Love and the Moon
Reinvention
I Love You
Statistics
For Her
Untitled III
Sleeping Beauty
Belle
Ariel
Snow White
Cinderella
Little Red Riding Hood
Alice in Wonderland
Heroes
Girls of the Wild
Untitled IV
Who You Are
The Epiphany
Loving What is Broken
The Becoming
When the Monster Calls
Survival
Journey
Boys will be Boys
Three Sentences
Hostage
Silence
Untitled V
The Truth about Art
Fire
Wild
Weathered
Why She Stayed
Her Skin
You are Everything
Desecration
Mythology
Untitled VI
Helen
Aphrodite
Artemis
Athena
Persephone
Hera
Demeter
Untitled VII
Too Much
Daughters
Courage
Son
Self Care
Let Go
Secret Language
Fossilised Love
Hunted
Primitive
Precipice of Loss
Reset
Surviving
Therapy
Small Magic
Temporary
Pandora’s Box
Temple
Questions to Ask Yourself
Value
Pieces
Time
Belonging
Haunted
Nurture
Blossom
My Monsters
Never Forget
Fuel
Three Versions of You
Earth
Planets and Stars
Bedtime Stories
Acknowledgements
About the Author
Newsletters

There are stars glittering
inside you
that have never been
handled.
It is no surprise that Nikita Gill, Instagram poetry sensation, has released a collection of poetry focused on female empowerment. Gill is recognized for her short, powerful poetry that liken women to wolves, storms, and protective anger against the forces that seek to harm and destroy us. Wilder Embers has poetry for the mind and body, giving readers powerful verses about self-love and breaking the chains we've been locked into. The poems are fairly short and quick, the longest being about the Princesses of fairy tales. I really enjoyed the poems about witches, magic, and mythology. I might have cried a bit in the "chapter" that references wolves hidden in your soul. They were so powerful and so true, talking of the strength a woman finds to question the trauma and darkness they've endured. That's my kind of poetry. It's inspiring and empowering, the kind of rebellious poetry you want to read instead of those poems about being sick for love.
We carry witchcraft in our
bones
whilst the magic still sings
inside our heads.
Wild Embers is a poetry novel that has something for every emotion you may be feeling. You can pick it up, flip to a page and read something that speaks to you, that moves you, that really means something for you. Reading it all in order though? That is something I don't suggest doing. It gets repetitive, especially when a couple of the poems sound identical or like extensions of one another. I wish some of the first poems, especially those centered around space, would have been dispersed through out the book.
Take everything that
tries to destroy you
curse you,
and turn it
into something beautiful
by incantation.
Ultimately, I really enjoyed Wild Embers. It is a powerful self-care focused collection of poems that are all about strength as a female, healing, inspiration, and breaking the molds of time-honored expectations that can be found in fairy tales.

I absolutely loved the writing and the subject of this collection. Nikita Gill is one of my favourite modern poets, this is the second book I read from her and I have to say that her writihng improved very much. Her poems also had more substance and the fact that she included a section where she speaks of fairy-tales and how they are toxic to our society, how we should recreate them to create more feminist narratives is amazing!!
I don’t know about you, but I mostly loved fairy-tales because of how magical they seemed, how everyone got what they wished for in the end. I never stopped and thought as a child about how problematic they are, how girls seem to be there only to get a man, be submissive, give up on their families and their hobbies and everything else just to marry off to someone who might never see them as equals. (We’re not going to include Mulan in here because she’s a badass queen and not Anastasia either).
Also, there’s another section on goddesses and wow!!! So much mythology appreciation, so much Artemis & Athena worshipping and Zeus bashing because Hera really should have dropped his cheating, abusive ass. Nikita Gill was very creative while doing this collection. It feels like a love letter to every woman, teaching us how to lose ties with people that only seem to harm us, showing us role-models, showing us what are some harmful concepts that keep us from growing up.
I was pretty blown away by Wild Embers and I totally recommend you to read it!!! Please do it because I don’t think you’d regret the choice (especially if you’re a feminist).

If I could, I would give this collection 6 stars.
In the last couple of years, I have been trying to expand my reading outwards. NetGalley has been a great way to try out some things that I might not have read otherwise.
One area that I've been working on is poetry. I've read several collections, some of which did not work for me, and some did to varying degrees.
Wild Embers falls into the category of not just working for me, but blowing me away. In fact, by the time I was a quarter of the way through the collection, I had bought Nikita Gill's previous collection. By the time I was half-way through, I knew I was going to be buying a copy when the book hit the stores last week. And when it did hit the stores, I bought three copies: one for myself, and two that will be going into Christmas gifts for the two teenaged girls on my list.
The poems were beautiful. They mostly had a feminist bent, but will great imagery. The first section had poems interpreting life through astronomy. There was a section that had different takes on fairy tale characters, done as prose examinations instead of standard poetry. Another section similarly looked at women of Greek mythology.
This was the first poetry collection I've read since my first Mary Oliver collection that made me sit back and say 'yesssss'.
Seriously, though, I want to rave about this collection to every woman I know, and strangers on the bus. I want to buy a stack of copies and give them to everyone who will take one. I can't wait to see what Nikita Gill does next.

This collection missed its mark with me. Please don't discard it based on those words. I am curious to pick this up at a later date when my mood is different, but right now it was not what I needed.