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Thank you Netgalley for an advanced ARC of the book. All opinions are my own.
Dead Dad Jokes by Ollie Schminkey is a Button Poetry published collection dealing with the death of her father from a terminal illness. Though the main themes of this book are queerness and grief, the trauma and writing are spun on its head because the bond between Ollie and their father was never particularly strong or even healthy and accepting. Consequently, the poetry collection examines and explores how death and pain altered the author’s relationship with their father.
This powerful, strong and unnerving collection has really stuck with me even weeks after finishing it. As many of you may know, I’m not the biggest fan of poetry because I never feel moved by or taken with them – there’s no connection or power between the words and me. While I may be able to acknowledge the brilliant writing, the effects are rarely as prominent as when I read a full-length novel. However, Ollie Schminkey has proved me wrong. The continuous themes of family, loss, grief, trauma and queerness allowed me to become deeply attached to the ongoing ‘plot’, so to speak, and I was so absorbed in the content and the style of writing.
The elegies throughout are written in free verse, with no capital letters, making the poems feel very personal, as if the thoughts had just come to the author, not rehearsed or edited. I rather enjoyed this style because again, it reinforced the attachment I had to the story because of this personal effect the style had.
Additionally, there was this constant comparison throughout of human death and animal death, with a lot of hunting analogy, referenced in the book cover. I found it brilliant how Schminkey managed to capture the experiences they had with their dad by using animals, hunting and the gore that is often present and link it to their experiences of loss and how to deal with it.
Following on from this, as the author is non-binary and transgender, the experience of “killing” their past, with the use of terms like “dead name” is another avenue the poet explored into the theme of death. In dealing with someone who was terminally ill, the identity of the author in effect become suppressed because of the needs of the dying dad. The experiences they talk about in regards to having to care for their father, and losing pieces of themselves and not being to implement activities that the author wanted to do was extremely moving and heart-breaking to read. The raw and tangible feelings expressed in the poems is something I haven’t in any poetry collection and was beyond impressed.
My favourites include Yet Another Poem About Roadkill and I Write My Dead Name in My Father’s Obituary which I think beautifully encapsulates both loss but also identity expression and dealing with two important topics at the same time in one’s life.
Overall, I would 100% recommend this to everyone. The writing isn’t complex but the topic are sometimes hard to grapple with, alongside its graphic content. Take caution reading the book but it is a really beautiful and raw collection.
Rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐/5