Jenny Haysom | ARC Poetry Magazine
“Alongside her own graphic descriptions, Ross finds, in her range of domestic material, real moments of beauty and epiphany that offer the reader a breath of relief. For example, in the gorgeous poem, “Feeding Iris Strawberries,” we are witness to a magical moment when mothering is not drudgery, but a one of a kind opportunity for revelation and joy.”
Margaryta Golovchenko | The Puritan‘s Town Crier
“Popular culture immortalizes moments like birth itself, first steps, and first words. After Birth is interested in smaller, more mundane moments that exist beside these childhood benchmarks.”
Adrienne Gruber | CBC Books in Celebration of National Poetry Month
“This book is everything I ever want in poetry. It has birth and death, life and loss, grief and longing. It has blood and birthday cake, processed breakfast sandwiches and breast milk. The poems in After Birth are every small detail that makes up a perfectly ordinary life, but that life, viewed through Ross’s tightly crafted lens, is wildly and beautifully and painfully chaotic.”
Candace Fertile | Quill & Quire
“Ross makes experiences come alive through her fresh and frank diction and her terrific use of imagery.”
Matea Kulić | Poetry Is Dead
“…’Teach me / how to tell a lie.’” The last line is especially sound advice for any would-be-autobiographical-confessional writer as it refuses a responsibility to Truth. I look forward to Ross’ next book on motherhood, to her using whatever mechanisms nudge her speaker and reader toward embarrassment — even if that means recognizing autobiography as another form of fiction.”
Entire review available in Poetry Is Dead 15
Camellia De Castro | Existere: Journal of Arts and Literature
“Whether Ross’s muse is the world around her or her own past, her confessional poems motivate readers to contemplate and unearth the meaning of everyday experiences.”
Entire review available in Existere 35.1
Michael Dennis | Today’s Book of Poetry
“Elizabeth Ross’s poems burn right through any hip dark cynicism to get at the real DNA of her own heart. No melancholy here, but vivid reporting from the perilous journey. Ross has been held to the flame and these well-tempered poems are first rate steel.”