Greetings Louis Williams !

I am currently reviewing as part of the tasks set by the "Game of Thrones" . I am reviewing together with Chrys O'Shea for Door #4. We found your piece in the Browse By Genre section of this site.

In this review, I mainly focus on the positives of your piece and I may point some Areas for Improvement if found any. Without much a do, here are the things I noticed after delving deeper into the contents:


"Shipwrecked" presents a stark, visceral scene of isolation and encroaching doom within a hostile, alien environment. The poem effectively portrays the fragmented, desperate mental state of a lone survivor. It does this by leaning into sensory details and sharp contrasts. The feeling of suffocation in the first line sets a claustrophobic tone that carries through the rest of the poem. This feeling clashes with the line "vastness of space within this alien place", hinting at the struggle between the character's immediate physical struggle for survival against the larger, cosmic horror of their situation.

The poem's focus on physicality is unrelenting. We have boots marching, a battered body, the creature, and finally the raw, violent images of the last stanza. All this builds an overwhelming sense of danger and the fragility of human life in this setting. The character's actions – the frantic running, ignoring the fallen comrade, clinging to the utility of tools – further emphasize this sense of frantic struggle against inevitable demise.

The most potent aspect of "Shipwrecked" is its ending. The transformation of the survivor from terrified prey to a figure embracing the "joy of death" is deeply unsettling. This leaves the reader questioning the nature of this shift. It could be a descent into madness, a perverse form of survival instinct, or a hint that this alien world shapes its inhabitants, forcing them to become as monstrous as its original denizens. This ambiguity, this sense that something fundamental has shifted within the survivor, gives the poem a lingering horror far beyond the immediate danger presented within the situation.

In conclusion, "Shipwrecked" excels in creating an atmosphere of immediate physical threat overlaid with a cosmic sense of dread. It's a disturbing and effective piece.


Best regards,
Gervic