a body more tolerable

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By (author): jaye simpson

Ferocious and vulnerable poems about redefining acts of creation, destruction, deconstruction, and recreation, from a singular Indigiqueer point of view

a body more tolerable is a collection of powerful and haunting poems combining faerie tales, mythology, and a self-divinized female rage. Divided into three parts, the book examines Indigenous grief, trans identity, and frustrated desires in ways that reject perception. Gone is the soft, kind, gentle girl that author jaye simpson once thought she would become. Instead, she unravels the sticky threads of colonialism with poems that exact lyrical acts of self-surgery.

In these visceral poems, teeth gleam, graze skin, and sink into flesh, becoming bloodied and exposing the animalistic hunger that lies within. Pulsating with yearning and possibility, a body more tolerable is a book that resists typical notions of physicality and sex to dream of a world more divine. It is a call-out into the canon for a new age, one filled with retribution and recompense.

AUTHOR

jaye simpson

jaye simpson is a Two-Spirit Oji-Cree person of the Buffalo Clan with roots in Sapotaweyak and Skownan Cree Nation who often writes about being queer in the child welfare system, as well as being queer and Indigenous. simpson’s work has been performed at the Canadian Festival of Spoken Word (2017) in Peterborough, and in Guelph with the Vancouver Slam Poetry 2018 Team. simpson has recently been named the Vancouver Champion for the Women of the World Poetry Slam and their work has been featured in Poetry Is Dead, This Magazine, PRISM international, SAD Mag, GUTS Magazine and Room. simpson resides on the unceded and ancestral territories of the xwməθkwəy̓əm (Musqueam), səlilwəta’Ɂɬ (Tsleil-Waututh) and Sḵwx̱wú7mesh (Squamish) First Nations peoples, currently and colonially known as Vancouver, BC.

Reviews

Here memorial flowers drip from parting lips a swarm of bees escapes the throat croaking a new magic in the face of old fears Here in the years of held breath jaye simpson generously transports us througha body more tolerablerevealing with every page a blessed haunting a knowing witness an incendiary inheritance and a different kind of return Here we are invited to discover sacred truths yes a scream can be a song a sideways water a cocoon of never happening my heart my heart my heart my heart my heart Jillian Christmas author ofThe Gospel of Breaking

jaye simpson is one of the most compelling and incisive voices of their generation Ina body more tolerablethey seize the English language and command it into an instrument that meticulously sings the realities of their present moment I found solace fire and a relentless love for living and loving in these poetic offeringsa body more tolerableis a wayward map and it is gorgeous Ill carry it close to my heart Leanne Betasamosake Simpson author ofNoopiming The Cure for White Ladies

i cant retire this tongue jaye simpson writes in a sophomore collection that creeps howls floats shatters an Indigenous speaker grapples with survival the foster care system the body conceptions of motherhood and trans girlhood in this heartwrenching leap that returns what is most precious to us through lush language and keen lyricism each poem is a portal of longing ferocity softness i cant recommend it enough Kinsale Drake National Poetry Serieswinning author ofThe Sky Was Once a Dark Blanket

jaye simpsonsa body more tolerableis a singular achievement Her poetic project at once forwarddawning and ancestral both revolutionary and decolonizing is given total expression in this book These poems moved me immensely there is so much beauty feeling and power in all of them No one is writing like jaye simpson BillyRay Belcourt author ofA Minor ChorusandCoexistence

a body more tolerableis a work at once open and lyric fearless and tender Expanding griefs territory into moments of relation and desire simpson also challenges home as a wayward theory into a poetics of selfmothering of being beyond becoming This collection is a fierce and resistant nurturing Liz Howard author ofInfinite Citizen of the Shaking TentandLetters in a Bruised Cosmos