I absolutely love how this book explores family dynamics, and how much hurt they can bring to our lives. They shape who we become, how we love, trust and how we view ourselves.
I think that this collection was powerful, and well done. I love what the author brought into this. It’s not always easy to navigate pain and the feel of estrangement from ones parent.

I myself could relate to most of the poems, and they truly hit a piece of my heart. It tends to get you thinking, making you realize and become conscious of your feelings towards these things. Overall I really enjoyed this.


Thank you Netgalley for the opportunity to review and read this beautiful masterpiece. & a big thank you to the publisher as well. All opinions and review are all mine and have no relation to Netgalley or the publisher.

Crown Noble, is the debut by Bianca Phipps, navigating the crossroads of familial ties and forgiveness. Phipps in her collection ruminates on the ways we are shaped as humans.
What I respect so much about this collection is the raw honesty of the words displayed in these poems. Lines throughout jump out and capture you as you delve deeper into these poems. Poems such as ‘Stay With Me’ in the collection run like the author is emptying her thoughts on to paper, and these thoughts spill out some wonderful lines such as ‘I spilt sorry like an accident’ - such a simple line but just leaps out in the text.

Throughout this book there are long form poems, and these are I feel where the collection really excels. ‘Stay With Me’, ‘When The Boy Says He Loves My Body’ and ‘Almosts’ are perfect examples of this as the writer indulges us in poetry that has incredible impact. I won’t lie after reading ‘Almosts’ I was in tears, capturing the grief and loss of losing someone in a way that is done so heartbreakingly.

Smaller gems include, ‘Stick’, Pro-Choice’ and ‘Another Note About My Father’ which are short but hit you in a way that just stays with you, that honesty seeping into the pages once again and striking you anew. Phipps here debuts a collection that leaves you feeling everything she feels and it’s not easy but it is incredibly crafted.

I honestly couldn’t read more than 23 pages, these don’t make much sense, or maybe it’s just the style I don’t like, but I couldn’t finish it.

After reading the poesy collection Dear girl by Aija Mayrock, I thought I would try more poetry books and downloaded Crown Noble on Netgalley.
The resume was promising as it talks about family and forgiveness and the cover is really nice looking in my opinion. However, I was disappointed by the content. First, it may be because I’m just a beginner in poetry but I didn’t really how to read it, when to take a longer break or how-to rhythm the sentences. Moreover, some poems are just a thick paragraph and even though I quite liked In the clouds, I didn’t like Stay with me that I thought was too long. I also think I’m lacking experience to understand the poems as my parents are not divorced and I never experienced any problems within my family. It explores the dynamics of family and experiences of hurt and can therefore be quite dark. It is an interesting mix and even though I didn’t enjoy them all, some poems really got to me.

I received an advance reader copy of this book to read in exchange for an honest review via netgalley and the publishers.

This is a book of poetry that is very dark and deep. The poems explore family dynamics and experiences of hurt.
This poetry was a little too dark and heavy for my taste but that is just my personal taste.

This book just wasn't for me. I found the poems a bit depressive and dark for my taste. Although it is a poetry collection, it doesn't really seem like it It looks as if the author wrote a whole text and broke it into pieces, leaving full stops in the middle of the verses, to make it look like a poem. However, there were some bits I enjoyed reading. Rating: 3/5

Thank you to Button Poetry and NetGalley for the Advanced Reader's Copy!

Available Aug 25th 2020

What an honor it is to hold someone's vulnerability between your own brown hands, seeing their pain and growth and beauty unfold in front of you. "Crown Noble", the first full length poetry book from Bianca Phipps is all of that and more. From describing her strained relationship with her mother and the death of her father to the sacrifices made to get her to where she is today, Phipps imbues her work with grace and love. There is so much love in knowing what we can and cannot forgive,

A highly recommended and literary exploration of life and self from a poet who is new to me. Bianca Phipps is a talented voice — and I want to read more from this poet.

I received an ARC for this book on #Netgalley, but my opinions are my own.

“when my mother teaches me not to be swallowed
she is already sitting in the belly of the beast
i wonder if she has grown to love the cavern
like she once loved the man”

The first part of this slim volume examines the intricacies of parent-child relationships and family dynamics. What functions best in this collection is the specificity in each poem; there are details that are quirky and highly individualized. Rather than approaching the topic of family in broad, sweeping metaphors and cliches, Phipps addresses it with concrete details that make the reader even more invested in the poems and able to identify with the speaker.

Many of Phipps’ poems are a mixture of maturity and naivete. They are reflective and occasionally dip into sentimentality without feeling ‘cheesy’. Phipps’ voice is quite strong, and for a debut this book is excellently crafted and distinct. Though some poems aren’t quite as developed or as impactful as others, and even approaching cliche, there is a rich sense of poetic voice in this book.

“my body has never been mine
alone

always a shared space
with the ghosts of my father’s past
and my mother’s favourite demons
and little room for me.”

This book is appealing to anyone who as an adult or older teenger is reexamining their relationship with their family and looking inward towards the impact their upbringing had on their lives today.

“I am my father’s daughter my mother’s mirror
designed to seek that which can destroy me
and let it, love it”

I find that many titles from Button Poetry and similar presses follow similar poem structures, and while many poems fall into the stylistic tendencies of titles from Button Poetry, there is enough variety in this collection to set it apart: there is a mix of prose poems, short poems, and long poems that keeps the reader engaged throughout the whole collection.

Some of the poems about love/relationship don’t feel as fresh or insightful, and many poems feel like they could be shorter (though the shift in ‘Almost’ is masterful).

“shame is our love language”
There is a lot of raw emotion in these poems, which present it in an almost triumphant way. The way that the ending of the book mirrors the beginning is very clever and well-executed. The poems about the foil for the other poems’ speaker, ‘Nina’ are fantastically rendered; offering an alternate life that illuminates the poignancy of the other poems.

“we don’t talk about the screams in the night
that drive us out of our rooms. we’re not
supposed to give it the power of a name.”

I'm excited to see where Bianco Phipps goes in the future and how she explores these themes as she deepens her craft. “Survivor’s Weight” is a poem everyone should read. I’m so happy I read this book.

“Daughter is not enough context
to cover it all.”

I don't know if this book falls under poetry or prose. The only thing I can say is that I really enjoyed this book. From the cover of the book, I had a feeling that it would address familial ties and relationships and that is what I got.
The relationship between Siblings and the method of love that is passed down in the family. I felt a bit disconnected from the individuals in the books and that really opened my eyes to my own family dynamic. The difference that is explored in this book, conflict resolution
A specific part that comes to mind a lot is under the title "Born To Embody it"
"My body has never been mine alone
Always a shared space with the ghosts of my father's past
And my mother's favorite demons
and a little room for me.
I am a product of my mother's fragile vertebrae and my father's miserable veins"

I got me thinking about how much deep it means to be a product of your parents. I would highly recommend this book.

This book of poetry is a really beautiful exploration of family relationships, grief, and the tensions within human emotion; both within us as individuals and between us and the others in our lives. It provides a touching and heartbreaking window into a family broken and torn apart, with particular attention to the mother-daughter and father-daughter relationship.
It's often very difficult to stand out amongst the ranks of modern poetry, but some of these poems felt completely fresh and original, with especially inventive and quirky use of form, presentation and language - some poems were throughly arresting.
However, there were a few poems that just didn't work for me. Sometimes this was due to (what felt like to me) an excessive use of repetition; repeated words and phrases. I know this is a particular style, and for some it works really well, and it certainly places emphasis on the central subject of a poem. But it often felt more like a gimmick than effective and that marred some of the poems for me.
Other poems sometimes felt distant from me as a reader, like the speaker held a secret that the reader is not permitted to access. Sometimes this was rectified with more information as the "story" progresses through the poems, and this was a lovely aspect of this collection.

In a sentence - this is an emotive and raw exposition of deeply personal experience, and it feels like a privilege to read these words.

Oh wow, I am really glad I picked this up.

Bianca Phipps' poems in this collection are intense and intricate at the same time. She displayed complexities without pretense; which is not to say it was not beautifully crafted. Just look at lines like:

Mother made windows out of people.
and
Nina has boundaries that bloom like her tulips.
and
‘our fault-line bones’
and
‘each molar whispers about you to my gums’
and
‘You hold a lot of love in your heart and it curdles/
because you leave it there, said the fog.’

Oof - good, right?

My favorites were the more prosaic ones, as they had the strongest sense of voice. I loved the tumbling effect they had, as someone who aims for that in my own poetry. I also enjoyed how the Nina poems worked to form the arc of the collection, which is reinforced by all of these other great lines throughout.

My favorite poems were: Nina, Crown Regent, I am All the Roots, Stick, Elena Alvarez is Living My Best Life (a wonderful show, too, ah).

And an honorably mention goes to Stay with Me, because I thought form was super interesting, and is a technique I'm definitely going to try when I next need to get inspired.

All that being said, I occasionally felt the poems veered into being too narrative driven, but that’s a matter of personal taste, since I know that style is exactly what some people love!

content notes: cancer, addiction, death of a parent, discussions of suicide, being closeted

This is probably a very biased review because this poetry collection hit so close to home for me. Phipps writes about topics that have been put into poetry so many times - guilt, grief, family, identity - but their writing is evocative and pithy in a way that feels very contemporary.
Crown Noble captures the constant undercurrent of conflict that comes from messy relationships with your family, and how this conflict touches so much in your life, not as a tidal wave but as a constant tide.

I started reading this book and I was floored by memories of my Dad, because most of the poems in the very beginning explore this kind of relationship, and it took me a while to shake off that feeling and read on. I'd say that this is a good chunk of emotions compacted in prose.
Thanks Netgalley for the eARC.

This poetry collection was an interesting mix for me. A lot of it is very stream of conscious style poetry, which I often enjoy. Some of those included in this collection didn't flow for me, which can make this style quite hard to read. The content of the poems were written beautifully and had great metaphors and imagery, but the enjoyment was dampened when they became a little clunky in flow. That being said, if you enjoy poetry that really examines difficult familial relationships and how our upbringing can shape us, this has a lot of good content surrounding that.

This is an impactful book of poetry for anyone who's considered what it is that makes them who they are, recognized the humanity of their parents, and confronted those parts of themselves that we often try to bury.