I loved this first installment of this book. The mix of poetry and essays was perfection. I have read a few other works by a few of the authors in this and they all lived up to the hype in my mind.

This was a great poetry book. I always absolutely enjoy work from the Central Avenue group of poets and I can't wait to read more in the near future. I highly recommend it.

this collection of poetry couldn't keep my interest. I was quite bored and I did not like it at all. I was not a fan

Overall I enjoyed the book but I could see how others may be underwhelmed by the contents. It may not be for everyone but for the person that loves this style of writing, its pretty great.

I thought this book was interesting, but could not find my footing nor was I really engaged. Perhaps it's just a consequence of the time, but I have to DNF this one all the same. Nevertheless, thanks for allowing me to read in advance — I really love the cover!

I hoped to enjoy this collection in which authors get assigned random poets and must write a short story inspired by them, but I ended up being underwhelmed.

I was grabbed by this anthology by the list of names I recognised and had previous loved. Cyrus Parker. Nikita Gill. Iain S. Thomas. But even picking it up, I realised that I had no idea what I was in for here.

The introduction written by Michelle Halket immediately informed me that I was in for a very different kind of anthology to whatever I had been expecting. Each of the poets in this anthology, new and established, would both write a poem, and then write a short story inspired by a poem from one of the other poets in this anthology.

What came out of this was something truly fantastic and something I've never seen before, in poetry or fiction. It was the perfect fusion of both.

Most anthologies, there are a fair mix of stories one will love and also not connect with at all. In this anthology, I loved every single poem and story bar just one by a poet I hadn't heard of before.

For that alone, this anthology deserves a high rating.

But also, it introduced me to other authors I hadn't yet read. Though I've heard of Trista Mateer before, I hadn't gotten around to reading her as yet, and I was stunned by just how much I loved her modern day story on Artemis falling in love with a human girl, and was slightly reminiscent of the gorgeous poetry collection Goddess of the Hunt by one of my all time favourite poets, Shelby Eileen.

R. H. Swaney is another author I'd heard of, even have an anthology from, but haven't yet read. His story and poems may actually be my favourite of the whole collection. He has a way with words that I feel is very similar to Kalianne Faye in Moonrise, in just the lyricism and the way that the words just fall into each other. The pacing comes across as deliberate and evocative and just beautiful. I've already jumped straight into reading his collection because of it.

Reading Cyrus' fiction for the first time almost brought me to tears. He's still my favourite poet, but now I also love his prose as well.

Honestly, I can't speak highly enough of this anthology, and am super glad to know there's already another [Dis]Connected anthology on the way!

A fun experimental book where each author writes one poem and writes a reaction short story from the poem pieces. It creates an interesting dynamic. There are so many directions one can take when you take over someone else's sparse story. While the idea was great, the stories were a little tame.

I wanted to like this more than I did. It felt like the poems were hit and miss and the stories needed more time to cook. I know one of these stories from a previous collection and read all of her poetry. I think some of the stories took a weird turn when they were good on their own. In some ways, as if they didn't trust their own voice.

All of these stories blended so perfectly together. Amazing poets and storytellers. Emotional and beautiful collaborations.

This collection caught my eye because it contains work by a few poets I am familiar with whose work resonates with me. It was nice to see those familiar voices alongside others whom I had not read before. I feel like this book provided a good sampler for me to explore new writers while visiting with some favorites.

Excellent collection of short stories and poems from YA's favorite writers! How they are all connecting and intertwined was a beautiful display of intricacy. Adored every page. Thank you for the approval and privilege of reading this collection.

it was interesting how these poets weaved their poems and stories together and build off each others.

I actually didn't mean to read this anthology, but I stumbled upon it and fancied a quicker, easier read! This was certainly a great one to pick too as it was a well executed, unusual creative writing exercise in which each poet wrote three poems and then passed them onto another of them who wrote a short story inspired by one of the three. I really enjoyed them all, and it was fun to see contemporary stories sprinkled with a dash of magic!

Though all were enjoyable, I had a few favourites. 'Parietal Eye' by Nikita Gill, inspired by Canisia Lubrin's 'That Instrument Of Laughter' was a sad yet wonderful short story about grief, loneliness and...dragons? I also liked 'Terra Firma' by Sara Bond, set after the end of the world where a band of travellers look for Utopia and Amanda Lovelace's 'Small Yellow Cottage On The Shore' about witches, selkies and sea magic. Every story was very different and interpreted the theme 'connection' very differently, but I loved that they were all very feminist and diverse!

Of course there were some stories and poems that I enjoyed more than others. That's to be expected in any anthology. Sometimes I felt that they were only very loosely connected to the poems too, and those that decided to include lines from the poems felt a little like they had shoe-horned them in. But this was an experiment, and I would say a very successful one that resulted in an eclectic set of fairy tales laced with all sorts of different types of magic but connected by a central theme. I'm excited to see that a second set is due to be released!

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This book challenged me. I'll admit I didn't fully understand the concept upon requesting it, and that confusion persisted once I downloaded and began reading the book. It did not really catch my interest and I'm still quite unsure what the entire concept is. Thank you for the opportunity to read this title.

I have only recently gotten into reading and enjoying poetry. I think that the premise of this book is excellent, but it was still slightly above my reading level of poetry. I did enjoy the variety of authors and being able to read others ideas.
I feel this book has a specific audience and unfortunately it was not for me. I am rating this book a 3 star.

Uneven, yet ultimately worth it.

** Trigger warning for rape.**

“There is a story about a man who watched me bathe nude and was so overcome with adoration and desire that he approached me. They say I turned him into a deer before he could even speak and watched his hunting dogs rip at his flesh. Men have spent thousands of years romanticizing their unwanted advances, their assaults. They have spent just as long demonizing women for their anger and their retribution.”
– “The Unholy Wild,” Trista Mateer

Mama raised us on her own, a house full of girls, though it wasn’t really a house. We lived up on the third floor and every summer when the heat would rise, we would fight like animals over the bathroom for a cool shower and a few moments of privacy. And when the door-banging and screaming stopped and one of us was nursing bruised knuckles, Mama would call us out into the living room. “I am raising a house full of girls,” she’d say, her voice tired. And the three of us would look down at our feet, quiet and sorry. Because Mama only ever called us girls when we had really f***ed up.
Otherwise, she called us her babies, and she loved us even more than she was afraid for us.
– “Ultra,” Yena Sharma Purmasir

It’s a shame, really, how humans try to take the things they’re not allowed to have.
– “Small Yellow Cottage On The Shore,” Amanda Lovelace

So the concept behind this collection of poems and short stories, explained by editor Michelle Halket in the intro, is brimming with promise and intrigue:

“The concept and theme of the book are of being connected. We seem to live in a hyper connected world, yet we increasingly hear stories of loneliness, isolation and disconnect. This book is about connecting poets with each other; connecting poetry with short fiction; and publishing stories about connection and/or a lack thereof. The premise was this: Each of the fully participating authors was to submit three poems adhering to this theme. These three poems would be assigned to a randomly chosen counterpart. That counterpart would select one of the poems and write a short story based on it.”

Like most anthologies, though, the result is somewhat uneven: There are pieces I loved, adored, and cherished – poems and short works of fiction that will stick with me for days and weeks to come. Others were merely forgettable, and there were even one or two that I skimmed or skipped altogether. That said, the gems are shiny enough to make the mining worth it.

Let’s start with the premise. Whereas I expected (rightly or not) a focus on technology, and how it binds us together – and drives us apart – the theme of connection was approached in a much more general way. More often than not, “connection” was just a stand-in for relationships, and all their messy bits: love and loss, joy and grief, rebellion and oppression. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but I had hoped for a collection with a sharper focus. You might feel otherwise.

The convention of further linking each piece together by repeating a line from the previous work, while an interesting idea, didn’t work for me in practice: rather than feeling organic, the lifted lines mostly had a clunky feel to them. I don’t think it helped that they appeared in bold to further draw attention to them. I think it would have been more fun to let the reader spot the bridges for herself, no?

As for the pieces themselves, I’ll be honest: I picked up [DIS]CONNECTED for one reason and one reason only – because Amanda Lovelace’s name was connected to the project. And her contributions do not disappoint! Her poems are among my favorites; “A Book and Its Girl” is both playful and lovely, and “Sisters: A Blessing” hints at what’s in store for us with her third installment in the WOMEN ARE SOME KIND OF MAGIC series, THE MERMAID’S VOICE RETURNS IN THIS ONE.

Ditto: “Small Yellow Cottage on The Shore,” in which a sea witch must defeat the scariest monsters of them all – entitled white men – in order to save the love of her life, a selkie kidnapped for the purposes of sex trafficking and forced marriage. Oh, and her long lost love, another selkie similarly victimized. (The only thing I didn’t love about this story? That they let the dudebros live. This isn’t a silly prank or harmless mistake, but rather organized, systemic rape. LET YOUR RETRIBUTION RAIN DOWN FROM THE SKY! SLAY THEM ALL! LET NO RAPIST DRAW ANOTHER EARTHLY BREATH!)

[DIS]CONNECTED also introduced me to some new favorites: every word Yena Sharma Purmasir writes is magic, from her short story “Ultra,” to the poems “Things That Aren’t True” and “If My Aunt Was On Twitter @lovelydurbangirl.” Trista Mateer’s “The Unholy Wild” gives a voice to Artemis, goddess of the hunt, along with a girlfriend and (an ever narrowing) place in contemporary society. It is wild and beautiful and fiercely feminist; it’s no mystery why I pictured her as a topless Leslie Knope. Iain S. Thomas’s “Driving With Strangers” is alive with some of the most achingly beautiful imagery you’ll ever read, while “A Way To Leave” by R.H. Swaney and Liam Ryan’s “The Train” are the most wonderful kind of melancholy.

The only piece I actively disliked – had a visceral “oh gross!” reaction to, in point o’ facts – is “Where the Sea Meets the Sky” by Cyrus Parker. A #MeToo story told from the perspective of the (accidental? are we really supposed to read it that way?) rapist, it just felt wrong and unnecessary. Our culture is overflowing with this POV; what are we to gain from experiencing a “date rape” through the perpetrator’s eyes? Hard pass.

There are so many amazing authors here i just knew i was going to love this collection and i was right because i was not disappointed. I've poetry by many of these writers so i was excited to read more. I really hope they do more like this.

[Dis]Connected is a collection of poems and short stories written by numerous authors. Each writer was assigned a poem by another writer, and had to write a short story based on that poem.

I requested a copy of [Dis]Connected via Netgalley because I really love Amanda Lovelace and R.H. Swaney, and I thought it was the perfect opportunity to discover new poets. Unfortunately, I didn’t really like this book because it was really not what I was expecting.

I think that the idea behind [Dis]Connected was really original but I didn’t enjoy every poem and/or short story. I know that with every anthology, it’s hard to like every poem/short story, but I don’t know, I think I expected more of this book because Amanda Lovelace and R.H. Swaney, two of my favourite poets, contributed to this collection.

It was also a bit obvious that some authors aren’t used to writing short stories and some of the stories had nothing to do with the poems. It was like some of the authors read the poem and then wrote something completely different.

It was hard for me to read all the short stories, but I did, however, enjoy reading the last part of the book filled with poems. I’m still going to check out the other authors and read some of their poetry collections because I really liked the poems and I will not judge them by their short stories.

[Dis]Connected is a collection of poems and short stories written by a variety of authors; the concept of this collection is really interesting. Each author writes a poem, these poems are then given to another author, who has to write a short story based on this poem. I wanted to read this book as I am a big fan of Nikita Gill and absolutely love her other works. However I did struggle with this book; I had a hard time connecting to the majority of the writings; this may be in large due to the fact that I'm not a big fan of short stories, I also felt that it showed that the short story and poem were written by different people; a lot of them didn't seem to interact with each other well. That is not to say that they aren't written well; they really are, and I think each one in their own right is to be considered good, it is when you put them together into a collection that makes it difficult. There is one short story that I did quite enjoy and that was 'Ultra' I really enjoyed this concept, and would have been willing to read a longer story just based on this alone.

I think I would have to rate this as 3* overall.

Thank you NetGalley for allowing me to read a copy of this book for my honest review.