Pain is a match opens Buzzkill Clamshell and so is this collection both a hot bright sudden flare in the dark and a swipe right an immense YES of delicious recognition Unafraid to keen keenly for whats unfinished wounded shuttered Amber Dawns poetry knows that being a buzzkill is worldmaking process mythically vivid and skinless in its witchy vitality that spells and sings exactly the heart of what poetry is So Mayer author of Truth amp Dare

In the neoSymbolist Gothic that is Buzzkill Clamshell Amber Dawn spelunks a cunt wrenched with pain to unearth guillotine humor and stunningly rococo analogy the body as the fresh mash of a peach under a boot a musical snuffbox the filthy keepsakes of a chesterfield sofa Here are poems that even as they wrestle with hardship and trauma celebrate the astonishing joys of weird pop culture flotsam brim with queeroccult pleasures and laze about on velvet This is a verse that offers the possibility of if not safe space than something richer an astral plane of tenderly kinky ministering Its been a while since Ive been as worddazzled as I am by this gorgeously wild punkformalist collection I recommend you dose yourself deep Arielle Greenberg coeditor of Gurlesque and Electric Gurlesque

Amber Dawn gives us a way to name this book trauma erotics but it would be reductionist to say thats all this book is She also writes the embodied erotics of chronic pain with the precision of a sharp blade Buzzkill Clamshells poems pulse with desire fire and ache often overlapping and ask How do we revel in the gore of our bodies In the fantasies of our pain In the control we have over our own bodies Or in the relinquishing of that control Our wounds and flesh become delight in Buzzkill Clamshell pleasure is a realm we are invited to access and invent Eli Tareq El BechelanyLynch author of Knot Body

I never quite know what Im going to experience with Amber Dawns poetry but I do know Ill get a bit of new sexy language mixed in with some body heat Buzzkill Clamshell does this with added layers of body horror body honour and a little bit of lesbian prayer Ablaze with poetic dexterity Buzzkill Clamshell is plush with a lesbian gaze that focuses in on desire pelvic girdles body fluids and an ugly attraction to ones self Amber Dawn offers us a sarcastic but compassionate view of ourselves Sharanpal Ruprai author of Seva and Pressure Cooker Love Bomb

Beautiful and ruinous this horny rotting TiltaWhirl of a book gutted my brain and rewired it opening new possibilities for being in relationship with illness and injury in my own body In an exquisite act of agency these poems approach chronic pain as collaborator crafting an erotics of chronic pain that is both raunchy and surprisingly tender by turns lewd phantasmagoria and softest bouncy castle Rooted in the tradition of horror as queer playscape for transgressive possibilities this is a world where to be monstrous is a perverse medicine Under the hot filth the abjection the camp the horror the mythmaking and the thrilling visceral ride of its inventive language this book has a thread of devotion where devotion is staying with something as it is desiring to know it deeply enough to be transformed Carmen Maria Machados queer horror meets Audre Lordes erotics in a filthy bathroom stall written as only Amber Dawn ever could Anna Swanson author of The Garbage Poems

Hold on to your hearts readers Queer lits favourite fierce femme and force of nature Amber Dawn is back and shes taking no prisoners Ribald and unrepentant in turns ferocious and tender the poems in Buzzkill Clamshell showcase the authors trademark wit and emotional range as they map the terrain of sexuality aging chronic illness and trauma with gorgeous language that is somehow both shocking and subtle Amber Dawn masterfully reinterprets lyrical and confessional poetic forms effortlessly weaving motifs drawn from history mythology religion pop culture and autobiography to illustrate the profound in the profane and vice versa Resilience has never looked quite so sexy or so sacred Kai Cheng Thom author of Falling Back in Love With Being Human