What Small Sound | Reviews
These poems seek to bring all that's lost and unspoken into the light, so that we might connect with it, with the world, and, maybe, in brief and unexpected moments, with each other.
- Pedestal Magazine
Bell’s second collection of poems offers a portrait of motherhood, devastation, and hope.
- Kirkus Review, stared review
In so many ways, Bell chronicles the inevitability of suffering in a world full of love, and readers will appreciate her unflinching gaze and radiant images.
-Shelf Awareness, starred review
Between grief and relief, Francesca Bell's poems don't pause, they flow – like a warm bath, and someone quietly bringing a candle; then a cold shower, and the body awakened to spring.
-Rhino
Bright Stain | Reviews
Against the white space of the page, Bell's poems sear themselves into memory.
- Elizabeth Knapp, Kenyon Review
It is clear that these poems purposely marry sanctity with suffering, with what is missing.
- Cindy Hochman, Pedestal Magazine
Poet Francesca Bell shows she’s one of the most exciting—and disturbing—voices in contemporary poetry with her dark and resplendent debut collection, Bright Stain.
-Scott Neuffer, starred review, Shelf Awareness
For those who love binary judgements about crime, rape, religion, or sexuality, this book
will not satisfy.
-The Bangalore Review
Bell gives us a merciless view of the human condition that leaves us breathless.
-Crab Creek Review
From Bell, a gritty poetry debut that examines the power and perils of womanhood, sex, and religion.
-KIRKUS REVIEWS
Many of these poems blaze from the page either for their confessional style or the brazen descriptions of pleasure experienced deep in the body.
-NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW
Unflinching, tender, and sensual, the poems in Francesca Bell's, Bright Stain reach straight for the aorta and never let go.
-RHINO REVIEW
Francesca Bell's first book of poetry reflects a dark universe in which sexual pleasure and pain are intricately linked.
-Meryl Natchez, for ZYZZYVA
The voice is fresh, assured, unique, unapologetic, and very brave in its determination to expose the dark underbelly of things, especially conventional female roles in sexuality and childbearing.
-Rebecca Foust, for WOMEN’S VOICES FOR CHANGE
Interviews
MEAT FOR TEA PODCAST
RATTLECAST 196
RATTLECAST #15 | Francesca Bell + Open Mic
“Everything having to do with publishing and promoting your work is vastly easier when you can rest on the cushions of relationships and reputation, but it's vastly easier to write when no one knows you. It's easier to take risks and to tell the truth when you are alone.”
The collection is best summed up by the ending of the first stanza in "Woman Singing in Church," "we are pummeled by it, laid open / on the blade of its loveliness."
CONNOTATION PRESS | Crazy Rabbit Review (Includes an interview, 5 poems, and video)