Pensacola Girls by Kristin Garth


Pensacola Girls
Title : Pensacola Girls
Author :
Rating :
ISBN : -
Language : English
Format Type : Chapbook
Number of Pages : 33
Publication : First published October 12, 2018

The poems in Pensacola Girls are about abuse and trauma. They’re about the things men often (too often) do to women and children: make them prey, turn their bodies into playthings or objects of derision (depending on their mood), then blame the women, the girls, for their leers and jeers. It is about how men turn women mad, then hope they can Rochester their way out of it by locking them in the attic. It is about how children are often (too often) hurt most by the ones meant to protect them. But it is also about survival. It is about those who survive child abuse speaking for those who did not. It is about women reclaiming the words used as epithets against them, reclaiming their sexuality, reclaiming their madness.

Pensacola Girls Reviews

  • Rusty

    A fierce collection of short poems brought together by the experience of being a girl/woman in a certain place, Pensacola, at a certain time. I was most impressed by the frank nature and sheer variety of this slim book. Kudos to all involved.

  • Linda Crate

    This impressive collaboration was both poignant and beautiful whilst also being vulnerable, angry, and deep. It was a terrifying look into sexual abuse and the trauma that it leaves in it's wake. The poems were all powerful and well written about such a deeply disturbing collective experience.

  • Paige Johnson

    This FL-based heart-thumper of 30 pgs houses poems by alternating authors about an abused-to-death little girl Garth knew IRL! There’s an easy, building rhythm to the bruised prose. All their unique traumas unite them: physical, emotional, mental, slaps, sex, slurs/insults, cutting weight and wrists and oxygen.

    Schoolhouse scuffles, prancing through panic attacks, lullaby prayers to escape the crazed Pentecostals. Elisabeth’s poems are more blunt and a cut to the quick protecting and projecting a juvenile voice. Garth’s threads more wisdom, “Whipping Girl” my favorite as it can reside in kinder contexts: BDSM and a dare to slut-shame her.

    It is also interesting there are poems named after Garth’s other books like Puritan U and The Meadow. Fav images: roving a forest for lost teeth, tartan skirt sins, and the pom-poms under strobe lights in a strip club.

  • Miss December

    This is a raw collection of skeleton and muscle woven from pain and abuse. The trauma that stripped the writers to their bones is horrific and gripping, but their language is so beautiful and haunting that even though it's a difficult journey to process, the pieces will stay with you long after you've read the verses. This is a bold work that needed to be cast into the world.