This poetry anthology was deeply personal, dealing with many difficult subject matters. Owing to the extremely personal nature this makes it difficult to write a review as others interpretations of the work is very subjective and will be received by others in a variety of ways but will always be extremely important and meaningful regardless.

I found Sad Girls Club, to be particularly impactful and have stuck in my mind, as I too fell prey to the early 2000s tumblr era.

What to Expect When You are Not these lines in particular stood out to me:

"It's not your job to fix it, honey

4.

But it feels like it is

my job to fix it,

honey."

At times I felt the spacing to be a bit jarring rather than contributing to some of the pieces. Some of the shorter poems I did not necessarily connect to as much, nor found they flowed as well as the longer ones, but appreciate them all the same.

Overall this was a great collection. I appreciate how raw and open the writer was and look forward to reading more.
I also liked the inclusion of the birth chart at the end of the book, that was cool to see.

3.75/5 rounded up to 4 here.

Thank you Net Galley and Button Poetry for access to this ARC.

This book opens with the trials of teenagehood, especially the pressure to be thin and attractive. Suicide, mental health issues, addiction, and eating disorders are all addressed in part one. The language veers rapidly between dark, glittering imagery to pained playfulness to conversational--wondering:

"what if someone
had told us that

we didn’t
have to

be bleeding

in order
to be open?

what if someone
had told me

that a wound was
not the only way

to travel into
the center

of myself?"

What a Body Inherits is such a poignant description of the complicated relationship between young girls, their mothers, and their bodies. This one really stuck with me and made me feel understood by the author.

Guilt Doesn't Live Here Anymore is a lovely and sharp transition into Part two which addresses the journey through recovery and rage. Then we slip into a story about abortion and the sadness that follows her through that journey. And then, in Taking My Mother to a Gay Bar, the author begins to explore her mother's relationship to her sexual identity.

Part 3 discusses being an artist, being in love, and the uselessness of shame.

As a queer girl with body image issues, a penchant for darkness, and a strained relationship with mothers and motherhood, this whole collection really hit home for me.

Some favorites from this collection were The Nights I Felt Irridescent and Come Home, Stockholm.

I haven't read much poetry recently, and this was a nice way to dip my toes back into the genre. It only took me a little over an hour to devour, and I think this is a read that will stick with me for some time.

This was a short yet impactful anthology that contained a lot of striking and taboo topics and yet covered them so eloquently, it was interesting to see eating disorders and pregnancy related topics portrayed in such a way and the self awareness of the poet was an additional touch that made the poems more emotive and allowed the reader to connect with them further

Blythe Baird is an amazing spoken word poet. Phenomenal talent and also entertaining. I personally really enjoyed the poem Dome Of Butterflies. I would highly recommend this book to everyone whether you have experienced spoken word poetry or it’s your first time.

Blythe Baird has such a beautiful way with words. This is the second book I’ve read of hers, and several times I had to stop and process what I just read. Blythe writes about difficulty and touchy subjects in such an empathetic, honest and unflinching way that you can’t help but be affected by it. I felt so seen in her words, which I wasn’t expecting when I started reading. My favorite quotation was “you do not have to be a catastrophe to prove you are worth paying attention to.” So many people need to hear exactly that and so many of the other beautiful and poignant quotes in this book. Everyone needs to read these poems.

Baird is a hot name in poetry, which made me delighted to see her name on Netgalley, where I received a free copy in exchange for an honest review. As someone who has been a casual fan of her spoken word poetry, is in the same age range as her, and have had similar experiences as her, I did overall enjoy this book and finished it in one sitting. This book hit heavy topics and uses stunning language to illustrate the struggles of eating disorders and mental illness. Although split into three parts describing phases of her life, my two favorite poems “Sad Girls Club” and “Hospital High School,” were in the first part of the book.

I requested this as an eARC because I really liked Baird's previous collection "If My Body Could Speak." Unfortunately I didn't connect to this collection as much, and while I empathized with the experiences Baird confesses I didn't find the writing style impactful.

TW: eating disorder, suicidal thoughts and suicide attempt, self-harm, drug abuse, homophobia from a parent, abortion

Sweet, Young, & Worried is a powerhouse of vulnerability, touching on themes of shame, violence to self, expectations, and what happens to girls in this society…how we come to hate our bodies, what that looks like.

Baird explores everything from sexuality, relationships, and the effects mothers can have on their children. The yearning for acceptance, the feeling of being never good enough.

Reading Blthye Baird is like a returning to myself, the part of me I bury and am too afraid to look at.
She voices it all.
Her work is both beautiful and devastating. In Baird’s personal and raw style of writing, words become meaning, which becomes an unburdening, which becomes both power and healing. And that’s what makes it so important

Thanks to NetGalley and Button Poetry to read and review this work.

TW- abortion, self-harm, suicide, eating disorders, trauma

I loved this poetry book, and finished it in an afternoon! I especially appreciated how it included lived experience, and dealt with some heavy topics in ways that felt sincere.

A collection of poems dealing with very heavy topics. It might trigger some people so really read the TW for this one. However, it's an honest collection of the struggles a teenager faces.

Read it in one sitting.

An ARC was proved via Netgalley in return of an honest review.

I first heard Blythe Baird’s poetry through the Button Poetry youtube channel nearly 10 years ago. I bought her previously published poetry collection, If My Body Could Speak, as soon as it hit shelves back in 2019 and have read it many times over the last three years. I am so honored and grateful to have gotten an eARC of this newest collection of her work.

As I expected it to, Blythe’s writing hits me like watching old home videos. I am, thankfully, not in the depth of my mental health struggles like I was when I first found Blythe’s spoken word. Still, her words resonate with a part of me that will only ever hibernate and never fully retire. My favorite pieces were “This Must Be Enough” and “Guilt Doesn’t Live Here Anymore.” Growing up with her poetry and reading it again now has made me appreciate and grieve the years I spent in the same boat as her. It’s heavy and hard to swallow but it’s real and it’s important. Massive TW for eating disorders, self harm, suicide and suicidal ideation, and abortion.

I absolutely loved this poetry collection! I really related to a lot of these poems and that is one of the things I look for in poetry. This was my first time reading from Blythe Baird and I will absolutely read from them again. A lot of these poems really hit me in my feels and I felt really understood. This collection is extremely personal and raw, and that is something that I really loved about it. I teared up multiple times while reading this and that usually doesn't happen to me. You could feel the author's emotions in the poems, and that is what makes this collection really special. The poems were extremely well written and had great imagery. These poems really took me back to my teenage years and how I dealt with my self-esteem and mental health. I can't wait to see what Blythe Baird comes out with next!

Thank you to NetGalley and Button Poetry for granting me the ARC in exchange for an honest review.

[2.5]Thank you Netgalley for approving me to read for a review! I also won an audibook of this on StoryGraph shortly after being approved and listened while I read along. I enjoyed this more having the author reading it as intended than I would have reading it by itself, especially with the awkward digital formatting.
I was hoping that this poetry book with lead more with queerness and healing than ED and SH like the author's previous books. But, as the author wrote in the book, "I still don't know how to write about the things that didn't hurt." I understand that both ED and SH are things that linger, but I have finally gotten myself out of that mental space so reading this felt a bit like backsliding for me. Or like trying to be nostalgic about being sick again, if that makes sense.
I enjoyed the longer poems because they felt more substantial to me than the shorter ones did. I understand why there are more short, bite sized poems than there are long, deeper poems. Poetry like this is very personal and making yourself open and vulnerable for strangers to have pieces of. I just wish there was maybe a few more longer poems to think more deeply about. I enjoy the author's voice so I'm looking forward to the day when they're able to write about more than things that hurt.

*Thanks to NetGalley and Button Poetry for the chance to read and review this book*

TW: Eating disorders, self harm.

I don't read lot of poetry. I've always loved words though, and the way they flow. Much of Baird's poetry reads like short, aural stories that flow like water or are smooth like stone. I particularly enjoyed parts 1 and 2, in which Baird delves deeply into personal material and exposes the truth and core of who she is.

Despite its deeply personal nature, I found fragments of myself reflected in these poems.

I appreciated the opportunity to feel that this collection presented.

Thank you NetGalley and the publisher for granting me the ARC in exchange of honest review.

First thing you need to know is I cried. The first section wrecked my being, twisted the knots in my stomach and tugged it roughly. I was in pain, a very beautiful pain if possible.

The book reminds me of the journey of my high school years, losing myself and finding myself many, many years later. It reminds me of the struggle to love myself while I keep shoving people away from my sight, not believing anybody.

It hurts, so much that I can only cry and wish I could hug the old me.

Got this ARC from NetGalley to provide an honest review.

This is the first time reading Blythe Baird but I
remember her reciting "Taking my mother to a gay bar" on Button poetry's Instagram.

"what if someone
had told us that
we didn't
have to
be bleeding
in order
to be open?"

I love poetry and I liked reading this book that discusses themes of sadness, the rol of society on our mental health, eating disorders, internalized homophobia, queerness, grief, healing and choosing ourselves.

That poem about Tumblr and "I want to die spelled out in cocaine cursive frosting" was a sudden and sad reminder of youth and social media.

"How does anybody heal
in a culture that glorifies
self-hate?"

My favorite poems were:
- Sad girls club
- Guilt doesn't live here anymore
- Taking my mother to a gay bar
- Multicolored pills
- What a body inherits

2.5

Reviewing and rating poetry collections is usually really difficult, and this collection is no exception. I requested it as I thought this would be something I would highly relate to - it talks about eating disorders, mental illness, queerness, loss. In a way, it was exactly that, but I also didn't end up enjoying it as much as I expected.

I think it's clear this collection is dear to the author's heart, at times it felt very raw and touching. It almost feels wrong to rate this as low as I'm rating it, as I understand poetry is highly subjective, and holds a lot of emotion, no matter how much someone enjoys it. And of course, there were poems I enjoyed. As with every poetry collection, some poems are bound to work for you more than others.

In this collection I generally enjoyed the longer poems more, there was something more tangible about them, they felt more emotional and the format was just more enjoyable to me. The shorter poems felt a little bit too much like snippets of thoughts rather than full works by themselves. A lot of the shorter poems really couldn't stand on their own very well. I did still relate to a lot of the poems, and I think the younger me would've loved this book so much. I used to enjoy this format of poetry a lot, and I think there are many people who'll be able to read this and enjoy it more than I did.

Unfortunately, this collection didn't work out for me, but if you are interested in reading it, definitely give it a go! Despite not enjoying it as I thought I would, I think this collection comes from genuine feelings the author had and it will be appreciated by the right people :)

Thank you to Netgalley for providing me with an arc in exchange for an honest review!

Thank you to NetGalley and Button Poetry for accepting me as a reviewer.

TW: this collection deals with many topics but a considerable part involved eating disorders, mental illness, suicidal thoughts, and self harm among others - but they come from a place of personal trauma and I would say worth reading Baird’s experiences.

I don’t know if I would say I necessarily enjoyed this poetry collection due to the nature of the themes discussed which were quite hard to read. Also some are a little too abstract for me to personally get my head around and others are a bit similar. However, I did feel they all had a lot of meaning, coming from the heart and so you feel an emotive response. There are many snippets and whole poems that really stood out to me and certain points I could relate to too. I’d say if people (and I know this to be true from reading some other reviews) can relate to experiences, thoughts and feelings mentioned then they do impact you a lot and this was a great way for Baird to release her trauma of going through these situations in her life. She guides us through this journey of embracing who she is (queerness, love, loss, femininity, etc) and the vulnerability but also power of healing along the way.

The collection is split into three parts; the first dealing with her going through traumatic events in her life and ‘becoming an emergency’, the second (I think the most impactful) where she is pining for the ‘splinters of improvement’ in her life, and the third (my favourite as it was the most pleasant reading experience) where she’s imaging a better future and entering ‘a place we haven’t been to yet’. - the ‘’ are the titles of each section and they are very well executed for what poems are contained in them.

Some of my most impactful parts of poems are below:
‘We obsess over shame (the most
useless emotion I can think of).’

‘instead, we sang only of the joys, the pastel weekends, & the good things that must live in a place we haven't been to yet.’

‘Of all the things this world
has taught her to apologize for,
I am jealous that love has
never been one of them.’
- this one really spoke to me as she is talking about how her friend’s mum explained sexually to her as a child but Baird herself had to deal with coming to terms with her sexuality on her own and other homophobic dynamics within her life.

‘it is one thing
to want help
and another
to have the
language
to ask for it.’

And my personal favourite as it really spoke to this idea of self hatred in a sense, I’m not entirely sure of how one is supposed to interpret it but for me it is this notion of focusing on one’s worse qualities and bad things more than the good and Yhh… very impactful. But then again someone else might see something else in these words which is a great thing about poetry in its relativity (not always but usually):
‘why did I not
allow myself

to clutch the
shooting stars

of my happiness

as tightly as the
dissolving sea

of my griet?

why is there so
little evidence

of all the nights
I felt iridescent?’

haven't read a book that's so deeply relatable in a long time. Baird gives voice to those who were also going through the things she talked about in her book. it makes the reader feel seen and validated. it is also empowering. don't miss out on her second book!

Sweet, Young, & Worried is a poetry collection of the author’s personal life experiences. There are a plethora of poems in this collection that discusses themes of self-forgiveness, acceptance, queerness, internalised Homophobia, mental illness, eating disorders, grief, abortion, and healing.

The pacing/spacing of the writing seemed a bit disorientated and made it difficult to read at times. My favourite lines were: “You do not have to be a catastrophe to prove you are worth paying attention to”. The arrangement of the poems was a bit confusing as the ones talking about self-hate, EDs, Suicide etc we’re mixed with the ones talking about healing.

The more I think about it, this could have been done on purpose as a way to show that healing is not linear, and if it was intentional, I think it’s genius. As someone who has struggled with mental illness and eating disorders, I related a lot to the author’s experiences.

I usually struggle with reading poetry but this was very easy to comprehend and was a quick read. Although it covered many heavy topics, I think this poetry collection would be great for teens as a lot of what the author talked about is exactly what many teens experience everyday.

I didn’t understand the purpose of the birth chart. There was no writings about it or explanations as to why it was there, it was just kinda thrown in at the end for whatever reason I don’t know. And I know nothing about astrology so I have no clue what it means.

Overall, it was a nice, quick read and I would recommend this to teens struggling with EDs and/or mental illness and/or queerness. I feel they could benefit from connecting with this author so they can feel less alone and more confident that they can heal.

Although I appreciate the NetGalley description for providing some trigger warnings, I think it would have been beneficial to include a page at the beginning of the poetry book with a fuller list of trigger/content warnings considering the rawness of the poems and the heavy discussion topics.

Thank you to NetGalley and Button Poetry for allowing me an eARC of this poetry collection and most of all, thank you to the author for sharing your life experiences.

TWs/CWs - Abortion; Alcohol consumption; Animal death; Anorexia; Blood; Bulimia; Cussing; Drug use; EDs; Homophobia; Internalised Homophobia; Medical detail; Murder; Needles; Overdose; Psychiatric ward; Pregnancy; Self harm; Suicide attempt; Suicide ideation; Vomit