a body more tolerable by jaye simpson
Ferocious and vulnerable poems on Indigenous grief, trans identity and frustrated desires
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.
(From Arsenal Pulp Press)
jaye simpson is an Oji-Cree Saulteaux Indigiqueer writer and activist from the Sapotaweyak Cree Nation. Their debut poetry collection it was never going to be okay was shortlisted for the 2021 ReLit Award and the Writers' Trust of Canada Dayne Ogilvie Prize and won the 2021 Indigenous Voices Award for Published Poetry in English.