Multiverses is an interesting collection of poems, which read more like life snippets in the main, due to the freeness of the form that Celia Lisset Alvarez has chosen. They constitute a series of memories and recollections interspersed with imaginings of what life would be like in a parallel universe if the reality had been different, in verse form.

Due to the style of the poetry, these poems are very easy to access and provide a very honest view of relationships and loss and the tensions that exist in any family, especially one which has to deal with the loss of a child.

I think that poetry is a very personal form of writing and having shared some of the experiences that Alvarez has faced, I found that a lot of the events described and sentiment explored in the poems resonated with me. Her style is very direct with a sparseness of imagery and I get the sense that the poems are a form of catharsis, that now that she has time to breathe, she is able to give a voice to her emotions with a view to coming to terms with the reality of her losses.

The poems that I liked the most and formed the peak of the collection for me were Version 0.44 ,Version 0.45 and Version 0.46 as they are full of strong emotion with a less muted tone and stand out from the rest of the verses, packing a powerful poetic punch.

Anyone who has experienced difficulty conceiving or who has lost a child or indeed has had an uneasy relationship with their father will find echoes of their own life here in these pages, highlighted by Alvarez’s shared words. And Alvarez’s sharing goes some way to providing comfort and understanding to parents who have found themselves in the same situation, to know that you are not the only one out there who feels this way.

That is the strength of this collection: the honest and brave articulation of traumatic life events through simple accessible verse.