Smoke the Peace Pipe is Roz Weaver’s first published poetry collection. Although, she has progressed a long way on the poetry scene in a relatively short time. I have followed her work, watching it go from good to exceptional. While most of the poems in this collection are short and easy to read, the standout poem is The Moment You Haven’t Met Yet. This spans across several pages and takes the reader on a journey of meeting your future self, offering a message of hope and showing that despite previous mistakes, you can overcome these and love yourself for who you are. This works well on the page, although it also makes an excellent performance piece, and to get the full effect of the poem, you can watch Roz’s impromptu performance from That’s What She Said, recorded just a couple of days after she wrote it.
The other poems are all short and snappy, centred around the same theme of learning to love yourself, a positive message for everyone to listen to. Roz manages to achieve a balance of sharing these deeply personal words while creating something many readers, particularly women, can relate to. The last line of Communion “We answer our own prayers” says so much in so few words. It’s something we should all remind ourselves of, in a world where so many of us tend to rest our hopes and dreams on other people or circumstances beyond our control. Sometimes we need to be more active in our own lives.
Smoke the Peace Pipe is the title piece and a perfect ending to the collection, summing up the meaning of loving yourself, in spite of trauma — learning to accept your past, appreciate the now and look forward to the future.
Smoke The Peace Pipe is available now via Yellow Arrow Publishing.
Review by Amanda Steel
Amanda presents the Reading In Bed podcast on Anchor FM
instagram.com/weaverroz