I was attracted to this book because the author is queer and queer poetry has a very special place in my heart. While the poetry itself is not necessarily or specifically about queerness, that didn't mean I was disappointed. I would describe the poems as quite wordy and indeed many felt more like abstract fan fiction than the short and succinct poetry I've perhaps become used to in modern times, and yet there was some comfort in this. It was also like being carried on a wave, the words flowed easily, but every now and then there was a surge or a crashing wave and a line would stand out, almost splashing you in the face. Many of these occasions were lines that could stand out as social commentary also - "I am black power and white guilt", "my woman's heart, man's womb" - but most were just captured moments in time or feeling that stayed with me "I can't alter your gravity but I can pull the shorelines into a script that begs love me, love me, love, me". All in all a lovely and delightfully unusual collection of poetry.

I have complicated feelings about <i>Lone Yellow Flower</i>. This poetry collection follows a breakup and the subsequent emotions experienced. With a poem referencing <i>Milk and Honey</i> by Rupi Kaur, it is easy to draw some sort of comparison between the two. However, this collection is more gritty and dark, but I would recommend for enjoyers of the Kaur collection looking for a different flavor. Unfortunately, the style of this collection is not to my taste. As a former curator of novice poetry submissions and a frequent writer of novice poems inspired by terse relationships, I feel justified in saying the poetry feels a bit under-cooked and misshapen. I think that this could have had more integrity as a chapbook and more workshopping on the specific poems. For instance, one of my favorite poems, likely the title poem being referenced in the book cover, "Yellow irises" impressed me in its imagery and word usage, where many poems employed mixed metaphors, cliches, and over-complicated word choice. And hey! I get it! I struggle with keeping my poems on track and mixing metaphors. I always want to use my new vocabulary word in a poem even when it doesn't add anything to the poem except for making me feel erudite. However... I have not published a 70+ page poetry collection. Yet, I sincerely hope that this book reaches its audience... I just need to be more comfortable putting down poetry arcs after the first few poems don't pop for me.

Review for Lone Yellow Flower.

Thank you NetGalley and Querencia Press for an arc in exchange for an honest review.

Before I begin, I think readers who are Rupi Kaur and Silvia Plath and their style of writing might have a chance to really like this, which is a compliment because Rupi Kaur’s Milk and Honey was clearly an influence and mentioned within Lone Yellow Flower. Overall, I really appreciate the Own Voices element of the collection and there were sections of certain poems that I really liked. I also think that Gill's descriptions of landscapes were beautiful and it is clear they are a talented writer.

Saying that, I am rating this 1. 5 stars. Mostly, because I do think that this poetry collection needed another round of editing. For example, in the first poem (in the arc), “what is this”, the first 6 lines could have been cut out and it would have improved the poem greatly. Also, the poems usually got better in the second half of the poem compared to the first so the writing quality was improving as the poem went on. Some other comments:

Depth/Meaning - I think my biggest issue with the entire collection was that a lot of the poems didn’t seem to have any meaning to them (or the theme/messaging was unclear). While the poems themselves can be pretty line-by-line, there isn’t much room for critical or literary analysis - which takes away from the memorability and enjoyability of the poems. The confusion of messaging is not helped that the poems often do not clarify key information like subjects. For example, the use of you is used several times but I struggled figuring out who the “you” was referring to. For the poems that were attempting to say something, I found that a lot of them lacked depth. The meanings were surface level and I really wished the poems had had further conversations with the reader, because some of the topics were really interesting (being bi-racial, toxic love, etc.). To me, the messaging of a poem is what makes it enjoyable and I just don’t think a lot of the poems were developed enough yet.

Structure/Grammar - for a poetry collection, I am surprised that there wasn’t really an exploration or breaking of traditional structure (since playing with structure is much a big part of poetry). I think that the collection would have benefited from breaking away from the norm to make certain poems standout. Also, there are very few poems that have stanzas and I think most of them really need it. Each poem tends to jump around to different ideas (part of what makes the messaging of the poems so confusing) and really could have used stanzas to organise each idea. Also, some lines didn’t follow or flow nicely into the next one so at least the stanza would clarify why the poem was jumping around so much. Furthermore, there are basically no periods or commas (that’s a bit of an exaggeration, but there's not a lot), which I think could have been used better. I don’t really understand why there was no punctuation (ex. to make one theme or poem standout) and it really negatively impacted my reading experience as I spent so long trying to figure out why.

Flow - I also wish the collection was more intentional about the placement of the poems. I didn’t really see the connection from one poem to another or reason as to why a poem was selected. The collection jumps from talking about being biracial - to toxic moms - to talking about romantic partners and I don’t see the why behind that decision. I feel like it would be more impactful if we read all the poems around a theme to get a complete picture which would help with clarification around messaging. At the end of the arc, it was stated that some of these poems were previously published and I think it's noticeable (not in a good way) that these are separately written poems added into a collection rather than poems written for a collection.

On a side note, I felt like some of the literary devices were awkward and that the poems really needed more of them. For example, in one poem (IN THE ARC) the speaker gets compared to a moldy Tupperware but I really couldn’t tell what that had to do with the poem's meaning. It just took me out of the reading experience.

Final note: I think if readers who are a fan of this author’s previous work, are a huge fan of this brand of poetry (Sylvia Plath, Rupi Kaur, etc.) or the themes seem interesting, should try and pick it up to see if they like it and I do think there are some nice poems within the collection. Unfortunately, it was not the poetry collection for me.

A copy of this review has been posted on Goodreads (@Keirrinwonderland).

I was really hoping to be able to see myself in this poetry collection as a queer person, but to me it seemed like a case of telling but not showing. The poems were often vague and talked in general terms about the narrator’s struggles instead of showing me. I didn’t find the rawness that I was hoping for and the pain that I could resonate with. I have a strong personal preference for vivid imagery and unique metaphors in poetry, so this poetry collection wasn’t quite for me.

3.75 rounded up
I liked these poems, my favorite poem was Romantic Notions and Stages
“You say, “It isn’t worth it.”
but what is worth?”

The poetry in Lone Yellow Flower by Erika Gill is both grisly and delicate, just like the wound of heartbreak that the speaker explores. The poems in this collection are confessional, tactile, and studded with gut-punching moments.

Hands, fingers, and touch take up space in a lot of the poems, and it's an intriguing motif I recommend annotating. Hand imagery begins In the first poem with a haunting, defiant statement: "my hands cannot be put to rest." I immediately imagined the poet's hands at work writing the 50 poems we read in this collection.

What I love about all the hand imagery is that it is brought full circle at the end. We face the idea of the poet's unresting hands again in the final poem where they describe fingers forced open, forced to let everything held fall to the floor.

I'm still wrestling with the final image of an open hand that's actively letting go. Selfishly, the lines made me think of my own fingers holding this collection. What if the poet is speaking to me, the reader finishing the last poem of their book? In a way, by finishing the book the speaker is naturally forcing the book out of my grasp. There's no more poems to read after all. Inevitably, after this last poem, Lone Yellow Flower will fall from my hands and go on the shelf.

This collection is perfect for readers who are...
- Interested in deglamorized explorations of mind-body connections* and healing therapies (like mindfulness, yoga, singing bowls...)
- Not squeamish about grisly imagery, e.g., blood and organs
- fans of Silvia Plath, Adrienne Rich (who is mentioned in the collection), Audre Lorde, Anne Sexton
* Because of the specifically intestinal, visceral imagery in the poems, I thought often the vagus nerve and how connected our gut health is with mental health as I read. The vagus nerve is never explicitly mentioned, but I felt like it was being discussed in the poems.

I highlighted and annotated a lot of patterns in this collection, to include:
- Hands, fingers
- Heartbreak
- feeling severed / unmoored
- flight attending poems
- consumption/ craving/ sugar / waste themes (very layered)
- slow healing
- nature
- Paris
- astrology
- bookishness

Favorite Motif to Annotate: Humpty Dumpty
I was super intrigued by how all these poems all have Humpty Dumpty imagery and themes of falling.
- Broken pipe/May 24/ Death toll 97,672
- Slime
- Skyline view
- In my dreams I am a runner
- Lilacs in the alley
- If it comes

Favorite Poems
- Doomscrolling
- No Left; Child Behind
- Coffee and strawberries

E-Reader Friendly Poems: Readers should not hesitate to get this collection as an e-book. The formatting of Erika Gill's poems are ideal for the e-book reading experience because the poems:
- are typically one page long,
- have consistent left alignment without indentations, and
- feature mostly short lines.
I comfortably read the poems on my Kindle with the font size set to size 4 (and sometimes larger.) I read in portrait orientation for most of the collection, only switching to landscape for a few of the poems that had longer

Reading Lone Yellow Flower feels like being invited into someone’s most personal memories—raw, honest, and deeply moving. Erika writes with a rare kind of openness that makes every poem feel lived-in and real. There’s a striking balance between sharing experiences that are completely unique and drawing unexpected connections that remind you of your own.

This collection was a pleasure to read from a sensory standpoint—the phrases and images were easy to turn over in my mouth and evocative in a way that left me feeling surrounded by the images, almost in a cinematic sense. At times it felt a little self-conscious, but I’m looking forward to following this poet’s career and seeing what they put out next.

I love how I was able to feel a wide range of emotions through the writing. I felt like I was going on a journey with every poem I read.

Lone Yellow Flower by Erika Gill is a collection that pulses with strong imagery and an undeniable voice. Gill’s word choice is deliciously rich, evocative, and, at times, breathtaking in its precision. Some poems struck a deep chord with me, lingering long after I’d turned the page.

That said, while certain images felt fresh and striking, others became overused by the end, slightly dulling their impact. Some poems resonated powerfully, but others didn’t quite land for me. Still, even in the moments that didn’t fully connect, Gill’s craftsmanship was evident.

Overall, this is a collection worth reading for its vivid language and strong poetic voice, even if not every piece will hit the same for every reader.

Poetry can be hard for me to review because it feels a bit like opening someone’s diary and critiquing it.

“It's been a hundred fifty some-odd years of fallow fields but my hands hold ghosts that plowed them and ghosts that owned them, and my hands cannot be put to rest”

One of my favorite things about poetry is reading about life experiences I will never live through. It’s eye opening, it’s hauntingly beautiful and terrifying all at once. Erika does such a perfect job of letting us in to experience what they have.

My other favorite thing is when those differences meet and say, “hey, I’ve been here too. Maybe we’re not so different.” There’s a lot of both in Lone Yellow Flower. 💕

There are lines I don’t think I’ll be able to free from my head after reading them. “The Dying Year”, “The Eye”, “Coexist”- those three back to back hit me H A R D.

“your loss does not need to war with my loss
as your pain does not need to war with my pain
but instead can enmesh and rub gently along together
the uncertainty of fingers of two hands entwined.”

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for providing me with an ARC in exchange for an honest review.

Nearly every poem in this collection had at least one highlight-worthy line that spoke to me. Even if I didn’t fully “understand” each poem on first read, this is a mostly accessible chapbook, and the craft is so well-executed that I didn’t care when a message was going over my head. The words sound nice together, and I could appreciate them on that base level alone. There’s a confident competence to the writing that assures me if I sat down with this book and really analyzed it, I could interpret the intended meanings and also make some of my own.

I especially enjoyed the poems about failed relationships and current socio-political issues. Some of my favorite poems were “Epitome,” “Baggage,” “What makes you leave,” “No Left; Child Behind,” and “In my dreams I am a runner.”

This is a nice, modern collection of poems. It would be a great piece of work to revisit and dig deeper into on each read.

Arc review:
This was not my favorite poetry I've read.
I enjoyed some of the poems like : what is worth?, coexist & romantic notions.
But I had the feeling I did not understand every poem, which is totally on me and might be because English is not my 1st language.
But it is the reason I'm giving it a 3/5.
Not because it is a bad book or badly written, but because I just don't understand a big part of the poems.

I do think it's worth the try to read is.
It's not a long book, and there are really good poems in there!
Please give it a try you are at doubt!

I want to thank everyone involved with me getting the arc.

i greatly enjoyed this anthology - some hit me more than others, but they were evocative and beautiful, even when the subject matter turned to darker matters, like grief. well worth the reading.