Where the Words End and My Body Begins
CBC Books | | Posted: April 10, 2019 2:26 PM | Last Updated: April 10, 2019
Amber Dawn
Award-winning writer Amber Dawn reveals a gutsy lyrical sensibility in her debut poetry collection: a suite of glosa poems written as an homage to and an interaction with queer poets,such as the legendary Gertrude Stein, Christina Rossetti and Adrienne Rich, as well as contemporaries like Leah Horlick, Rachel Rose and Trish Salah. (Glosas, a 15th-century Spanish form, typically open with a quatrain from an existing poem by another writer, followed by four stanzas of ten lines each and usually end with a line repeated from the opening quatrain.)
By doing so, Amber Dawn delves deeper into the themes of trauma, memory and unblushing sexuality that define her work. (From Arsenal Pulp Press)
From the book
Depression, the word, is useless. There's no music
no romance, no reclaiming it. Neither word nor illness
can be made into bedroom play. Comedy, maybe?
"So a guy walks into a bar... I mean the ER,
no I mean a bar... no I mean ER." Same difference.
Divorced from the root
depression divvies, clinically scores me
into that and this and this and this.
But sadness is bigger than my last relapse.
This sadness is bigger than B vitamins, it
no romance, no reclaiming it. Neither word nor illness
can be made into bedroom play. Comedy, maybe?
"So a guy walks into a bar... I mean the ER,
no I mean a bar... no I mean ER." Same difference.
Divorced from the root
depression divvies, clinically scores me
into that and this and this and this.
But sadness is bigger than my last relapse.
This sadness is bigger than B vitamins, it
From Whole Messy Thing by Amber Dawn ©2015. Published by Arsenal Pulp Press.