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*Content Warning: child abuse, rape, sexual assault, suicide, suicidal thoughts, alcoholism, blood, bullying, child death, death, domestic abuse, hate crime, infidelity, mental illness, racism, toxic relationship*
Droplets of my Soul by Nedu Kels is a collection of poems about life, love, African identity, world peace, death and everything in between. The huge wealth of poems in this book is impressive and an achievement in and of itself. The range of poems in this book means there will almost definitely be something for everyone.
Before discussing the book, I’d like to mention that I’m not someone who engages frequently with poetry, mainly because I never find it as fulfilling as reading a novel. I’ve tried to not let this affect my judgement as much as possible but be sure to take this review with a grain of salt.
While I really wanted this to be the book that saved me from my hate of poetry, I’m sad to say it couldn’t do this. The wealth of poems in this book comes at a cost, and I think that cost has resulted in them being very surface level poetry, with little depth or insightfulness into the themes the poems are meant to express. To add to this, the majority of the poems were about romance, which led to phrases and ideas being recycled. There is only so much writing about kissing and making love to your partner that can be expressed in the writing style that Kels adopts, and it can become repetitive very quickly.
To add to this, I found the poems used very cliché phrases, which highlights a wider lack of originality. The same can be said about the metaphors and similes adopted as well as its pace; comparison of love to flowers, roses, and nature felt very overused and shallow. As for the pace, virtually the entire book follows the same pattern of four lines per stanza repeated several times over. This meant rhymes were in the same place and the reader falls into a predictable reading rhythm. It’s truly a shame that I wasn’t really blown away with any of the poems.
One thing that pains me to say is at first this book was going to be a 3/5 star, but then in the final 10 pages, the authors decision to write about a woman being raped without having perspective was unsettling, and often graphic. This was shortly followed by a poem shaming those who commit suicide, calling it blasphemous and putting everyone’s struggles equal to those of people with depression. The sudden lack of compassion towards those with mental health issues and to rape and sexual assault survivors was shocking and resulted in a lower rating.
The final weakness I found was that the structure in the book was completely distorted. The first 10-20 poems write about love, the beauty of it and how beautiful it can be, only for it to then discuss child abuse in one poem and just as quickly revert back to love. This most probably feels out of place because of the wealth of love poems in this book that makes any deviance seem awkward, but I wish the structure was either categorised by theme or completely disorganised and chaotic, which would feel more raw.
For positives, as mentioned in the introduction, the wealth of poems for someone of his age is impressive, but I would have loved for this to have been a shorter book with perhaps 30 poems which properly engaged with a topic more and didn’t feel like several words thrown into stanzas. For example, the line “the music was slow and romantic” was directly followed by “there was no noise, it was just us”, highlighting how it felt like that was no real connection to what was written.
Overall, if you’re looking for a full-length poetry book, this may be for you. Perhaps I’m missing something in the poetry world. Do let me know your thoughts if you do read it.
Rating: ⭐⭐/5