Under My Skin is a raw and passionate exploration of desire, power and difference in the Canadian landscape. Douglas’ poetry is visceral and emotionally compelling. The work embodies a profound yearning for love, tenderness and ethical recognition.

Orville Lloyd Douglas’ writing represents a generation. A generation raised in Canada and yet not of Canada in skin, temperament, literary canon, or political intelligibility. His work screams out from the page, filling in the glaring silences and casual censorship of Canadian racism. Refusing to succumb to the trite fetishism extended to racialized Canadians through official multiculturalist discourse, his work fiercely responds to a nation’s polite bigotry and inability to recognize black sexuality outside of cartoonish spectacle. Douglas’ work is not for the timid. With a lyrical courage that conjures up the ghosts of Essex Hemphill and June Jordan, the work speaks to the necessity of poetry as a refuge for those whose true home, and healing, might lie in the imagi/nation.