Dead Dad Jokes (Button Poetry)

Reviews

Flamingo

While I may be able to acknowledge the brilliant writing, the effects are rarely as prominent as when I read a full-length novel. Dead Dad Jokes by Ollie Schminkey is a Button Poetry published collection dealing with the death of her father from a terminal illness. Though the main themes of this book are queerness and grief, the trauma and writing are spun on its head because the bond between Ollie and their father was never particularly strong or even healthy and accepting. Xx

Erika Janet

I rather enjoyed this style because again, it reinforced the attachment I had to the story because of this personal effect the style had. The elegies throughout are written in free verse, with no capital letters, making the poems feel very personal, as if the thoughts had just come to the author, not rehearsed or edited. The writing isn’t complex but the topic are sometimes hard to grapple with, alongside its graphic content.

Hannah

I wanna thank @netgalley & @buttonpoetry for an arc of this very raw book! It’s a moment of grief where you can’t explain the pain and you just describe everything in 1000 seconds, this book is like that. The experiences they talk about in regards to having to care for their father, and losing pieces of themselves and not being to implement activities that the author wanted to do was extremely moving and heart-breaking to read.

I found it brilliant how Schminkey managed to capture the experiences they had with their dad by using animals, hunting and the gore that is often present and link it to their experiences of loss and how to deal with it. Take caution reading the book but it is a really beautiful and raw collection. This is a book of poetry that can only be described as TRULY UNFLINCHING.