It's dark in the forest - "Red Rite" by Eva Papasoulioti
BogiReads brings you the daily speculative reading recommendation of editor Bogi Takács.
Today's recommendation -
Author: Eva Papasoulioti
Title: "Red Rite"
Venue: Strange Horizons, Mar 2024 (eds. AJ Odasso, Romie Stott, Lisa M. Bradley, Vanessa Jae – I’m not sure who edited this specific poem)
Type: Poem – over 50 lines (if you count empty lines?)
Themes: Fantasy, folktale retelling, generational trauma, child abuse
Where to read: Text free online
I’m not usually the fan of retellings of a limited set of very popular folktales, and this is one of them, but!! It didn’t go where I thought it would go!! And it’s not only that, but now I’m rethinking the whole story. This is truly a feat, and the poem is also great sentence by sentence, it’s not only the concept that carries it.
This is a wonderful piece and the transgenerational trauma aspects make it feel like… the kind of European literature that European literature is, and not how it is often imagined in the US. If htat makes any sense?
Take care (please take good care),
Bogi.