Book Review :: Glitter Road by January Gill O’Neil
Review by Lauren Crawford
Glitter Road, January Gill O’Neil’s most recent poetry collection, is about change. The poems tell the story of a speaker entering new chapters in her life after the loss of her life partner. Part of that new chapter illustrates her adventures and the exploration of her new identity on new soil: The South.
So many Southern voices, cultures and influences fill these pages. There, change is everywhere: “Here’s the nadir of our suffering, which started in one place to end in another.” We are called to the attention of the South’s gruesome past with racism and division, and Gill does not shy away from braiding culture shock and a land littered with a violent history against a backdrop of Mississippi landscape, the river often speaking in metaphor to the possibilities of change, even for the South itself.
We also bear witness to the change in family; the speakers’ relationship with her young children, as well as another chance at romance with a new, budding love. O’Neil describes the Southern landscape as “A repository for memory preserving a shared moment as when two people have loved each other well the topography transforms, diverges over time, cleaves a clearer path to where it was always meant to go.” And what a gentle, intimate way of writing how to embrace change in an unfamiliar land, and perhaps even how to leave the door open for more.
Glitter Road by January Gill O’Neil. CavenKerry Press, February 2024.
Reviewer bio: Lauren Crawford holds an MFA in poetry from Southern Illinois University, Carbondale. A native of Houston, Texas, she is the recipient of the 2023 Willie Morris Award, a finalist for the 2024 Rash Award, third place winner of the 2024 Connecticut Poetry Award, and the second place winner of the 2020 Louisiana State Poetry Society Award. Her debut collection, Catch & Release, is forthcoming in 2025 with Cornerstone Press as part of the University of Wisconsin’s Portage Poetry Series. Her poetry has either appeared or is forthcoming in Poet Lore, Passengers Journal, The Appalachian Review, Prime Number Magazine, SoFloPoJo, The Florida Review, Red Ogre Review, Ponder Review, The Midwest Quarterly, THIMBLE, The Worcester Review, The Spectacle and elsewhere. Lauren currently teaches writing at the University of New Haven and serves as the assistant poetry editor for Alan Squire Publishing. Twitter @LaurenCraw4d
