Review: no spring without winter

I had the pleasure of reading darwin’s no spring without winter. Please enjoy my review below.

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The appeal of no spring without winter lies in darwin’s ability to capture small moments of ordinariness, recognising that these minutiae are, in fact, worthy of being treasured.
Readers are quickly transported into darwin’s world by a strong sense of place. Poems infused with sensory imagery and metaphors depict micromoments: common experiences which are highly relatable. Events routine enough to be ignored or passed over in day-to-day existence are portrayed with a sense of wonder, serving as a gentle reminder that all aspects of life can be worthy of enjoyment … even if they sometimes get lost or appear mundane in comparison to the drama of big events.
The preface invites the audience to not ‘let the dark bother you. Life is the road’. The subsequent proposition that ‘even Mary Poppins had her period’ juxtaposes carefreeness and trouble, succinctly positioning darwin’s innovative approach and revealing his quirky sense of humour.
With the exception of a handful of pieces, darwin presents sonnet-style poems of four stanzas, each with four unrhyming lines. Within this tightly scaffolded framework, the author concisely expresses a wealth of emotions through a stream-of-consciousness flow of thoughts. Different sentence lengths, including sentence fragments, maintain audience interest. Creative punctuation stimulates curiosity.
Readers discover darwin’s prized childhood memories; learn about his dog Emo; and chart moments of intimacy (‘I want to dance. Want to hold you softly and live’), their end (‘That normal life, that simple dream, it’s faded now’), his grieving for love lost (‘My year in turmoil, her ego’s toy, I am now broken’) and his recovery (‘A good deal of time has passed. I no longer crumble. / My wounds have healed a bit. My strength returned’). At all times the author openly acknowledges his actions and feelings by unequivocally penning the equally strong emotions of love and pain: ‘My future to finish’.
The book’s cover is appealing in its simplicity: the sense of elements being stripped down to the bone complements the content. The book’s interior would be enhanced by greater style diversity, such as chunking the poems into categories to assist reader orientation, displaying poem headings in a larger or different font, and perhaps adding some artwork or glyphs to add visual interest to the large amounts of white space on each page. The few typos detract from the reader’s experience.
Whether ‘On a mission to bring a smile’ or with ‘No plans just yet, these days just sort of happen’, darwin’s no spring without winter is highly relatable, something a wide audience is sure to find reflects their own experiences.

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Find out more about darwin (aka George Richards) on Instagram.