The following interview is part two of an eight part series of conversations with BC poets. All interviews were conducted by Rob Taylor.
Cosmological Touch
To mitigate this pain you must massage the void.
Never mind glossing the abdomen in almond oil, hot
compress, menthol temples, fine milled licorice root,
never mind fascia and muscle. It’s all carnal noise.It’s all racket and backache, spasm and babble.
To mitigate this pain you must massage the void.
Anything of clay or split fruit, egg or hominid—
let go. You’re already reaching for the unreachable.These are not directives of nihilism and despair.
In negative decibels, in intangible density, rejoice.
To mitigate this pain you must massage the void.
Emptiness is an erogenous zone, a collapsed star,black with absence and oxytocin. Sanctify and toy,
lubricate the dark energy. A body transposed by pitch
and edge. Love transforms you into what you love.
To mitigate this pain you must massage the void.
Reprinted with permission from
Buzzkill Clamshell
(Arsenal Pulp Press, 2025)
Rob Taylor: Matt Rader once said to me, of his efforts to communicate his chronic pain, that “pain is very difficult to speak about except in symbols, metaphors, and analogies… To some degree, I don’t know that pain or poetry can be communicated much at all except through experience.” Does this resonate with you? What about your experience of chronic pain do you think you were able to record in Buzzkill Clamshell? What couldn’t be captured in poetry?
Amber Dawn: What Matt Rader says in his interview resonates. One doesn’t need to be writing poetry—like Rader’s Ghosthawk, which I loved—to be steeped in pain-related metaphor. Talking to medical professionals about pain involves metaphor, or at least abstraction. Is it a sharp pain or a dull pain? Is it an electric zap kind of pain or a swollen pulsating kind of pain? Is it level seven pain or is it a ten? Pain is not quantifiable, so it’s nearly impossible to speak in literal terms. When I viewed my intraoperative medical photos, there was a yellow, potato-sized tumour (among other abnormalities) on my pelvic floor. Before seeing that photo, I never thought to describe my pain as yellow and potato-sized—though that would have been the closest to a literal description I could get.
I didn’t record my experiences of chronic pain in Buzzkill Clamshell because the word “record” suggests some kind of accuracy or objectivity. Don’t get me wrong, metaphor can achieve a kind of emotional or contextual accuracy, but that wasn’t what I was going for. I burlesqued pain—I tried to make it decidedly less accurate. I like burlesque’s knack for parody and for rendering seriousness into frivolity. For example, in the poem “Francesco del Cossa: Santa Lucia of Syracuse, 1472” I used Dante’s rhyme scheme: abbc deec cffcgg. Dante’s Inferno is serious, canonical, capital “L” literature. My poem is also ekphrastic and describes del Cossa’s portrait of Saint Lucy, which is a serious example of Italian Renaissance Art. I took on these masterpieces, but in response I wrote a perverted poem about genital necrosis and how Catholics like to masturbate to punishment.
Chronic pelvic pain is no joke, of course. It is serious insofar as how it can manifest in the body and how debilitating it can be. It is also serious from a societal perspective, as pelvic pain is largely considered a “women’s problem” and, therefore, there is grossly inadequate medical research, diagnostic tools and treatments. I teased and mocked pain in Buzzkill Clamshell to conquer its seriousness. I needed to tease the power pain had over me. More than tease, I needed to humiliate pain. There is an image I often returned to while writing that didn’t make it into Buzzkill Clamshell. It was an image of me—or cartoon burlesque me—pissing in the mouth of chronic pain just before it was about to tell me another medical test was inconclusive. Candidly, that’s what I tried to do with the collection. I tried to burlesque pain to such an extreme it became shamelessly abject, uncomfortably erotic and just plain frivolous.
I tried to burlesque pain to such an extreme it became shamelessly abject, uncomfortably erotic and just plain frivolous.
RT: I love that idea of conquering pain’s seriousness. The opening epigraph in Buzzkill Clamshell, from Eli Tareq El Bechelany-Lynch, reads: “Writing about pain only brings more pain, throwing me out of that sweet dissociation I live every day. Am I sacrificing my joints to be a poet?” In the book’s second poem, you say, “I’ll never write the word trauma in a poem again” and you subsequently black the word out whenever it comes up in the book. I’m curious if you see this as a shift from a previous perspective on writing trauma and pain (“Crisis and creativity can be a potent combination,” you wrote in 2013’s How Poetry Saved My Life) and if so, if that’s more about developments in your relationship with writing, or in your relationship with pain. Do you find it’s different to write about physical pain than emotional or psychological pain?
AD: The word “never”—as in ‘I’ll never write the word “trauma” in a poem again’—is pure hyperbole. The erasure of the word “trauma” does indicate a larger shift, though. Erasure occurs three times, a total of eighteen characters are blacked-out. For me, this small craft choice is loaded. The erasure is not about a perspective shift or a shift in my relationship with writing, though. I still believe that crisis and creativity are potent together.
The shift that has taken place comes in my relationship to publishing and readers (including readers who have never read my books but hastily decide what I’m all about based on jacket copy and my author bio alone). The weight of being deemed an “outsider” or “marginalized” artist is the focal theme in my second poetry collection My Art Is Killing Me and Other Poems, which came out in 2020. This was around the time that mainstream media lost interest in the MeToo movement, also when former UBC professor Steven Galloway filed a defamation lawsuit against the woman who accused him of sexual assault, along with twenty others, and during Trump’s re-election campaign. Eesh! I mention all this because it was a moment when survivors were acutely aware of hostility. Backlash against survivors is ever-present, as we know; I’m suggesting that this ever-presence is routinely punctuated by an uptick in public hostility, like in 2020. What does it mean to be a trauma-informed writer during a time of hostility?
For me, it meant that the publishing world framed my existence in very particular and marketable ways, ways that are not inaccurate, per se, but ways I frequently felt I had lost control of. I was asked far more questions about trauma than about craft (or the complex interplay between the two). It meant that I would receive considerable feedback from readers about the types of traumas I’ve survived and my approaches to healing—as I’ve disclosed them in my writing. Again, this isn’t necessarily wrong. I deeply appreciate my relationships with readers. But ultimately, I understood that publishing trauma-informed writing has disrupted my ability to wholly know myself as a survivor. I also understood that sharing my trauma with the publishing world contributed to my chronic pain.
This brings me back around to Buzzkill Clamshell. Survivor visibility is not Buzzkill Clamshell’s objective. Buzzkill Clamshell’s aim is to erotically, metaphorically and radically tromp around in a chronically pained body. While the collection is populated by sexy headless beasts, filthy shapeshifters, and the like, I consider the most radical choice I made was the refusal to overtly talk about trauma or explain my pain through a trauma-informed lens. I’m not unique. Many vocal survivors step away from activism or artistic practices to reflect on the impacts of visibility. Survivor burnout is real. The benefits of quietly, not publicly, tending to ourselves and the close communities we’re part of is real. Needing rest is real. The erasure of the word “trauma” is my way of announcing the radical action of rest.
I understood that publishing trauma-informed writing has disrupted my ability to wholly know myself as a survivor. I also understood that sharing my trauma with the publishing world contributed to my chronic pain.
RT: I love that idea. Like the blacked-out words, in Buzzkill Clamshell you also greyed-out certain words, lines, or stanzas, which suggested to me that these lines were half written, or whispered, or fading away. Some of these greyed-out sections communicate uncertainties about the poems, like “I have no idea how this poem ends” or “I probably shouldn’t include this poem in my collection.” Could you talk about the voice, or perspective, of these greyed-out texts? Does it change from poem to poem? What did the inclusion of these half-present lines open up for you in the poems?
AD: In 2014, poet Sheryda Warrener and I were incoming adjunct professors at UBC. I was jazzed to be working with her, and we had loads to talk about in terms of poetry pedagogy. At some point, one of us invented the slang term “poem-it-up.” As in, how can we encourage students to “poem-it-up”? Poem-it-up was a stand-in for several concepts we were trying to develop in our fledgling curriculum, but it largely meant to move away from prosaic writing and to amp up poetic devices. You know, take your rough draft writing and “poem-it-up.”
The greyscale text in Buzzkill Clamshell isn’t “poemed-up” at all. It’s prosaic and raw. The greyscale shows that the poem is aware that it hasn’t arrived yet, so to speak, it’s still working things out. There is one anomaly, however, in “IT” the greyscale is used to imply that the poem could be run on a loop, but the loop fades out because otherwise the poem could go on infinitely.
Did I need to share the poem-it-up anecdote to answer this question? I probably said several things that didn’t need to be said throughout this interview. I wonder if Sheryda Warrener ever uses the slang “poem-it-up” anymore. I miss working with her. Where has the time gone?
RT: Ah, how wonderful! Should I reassure Amber Dawn that I loved her answer, the “poem-it-up” bit especially, or keep moving forward? I miss seeing Sheryda Warrener, too. But let’s stay on course.
Midway through Buzzkill Clamshell, you write “Pain initiates a threesome between my abstract and corporeal selves.” Could you talk a little more about this idea of pain connecting mind and body? I’m curious if, amidst the awfulness of chronic pain, there is also learning, a new or deeper awareness of what it means to be alive?
AD: Chronic pain changes our brains, altering cognition, emotional regulation, decision-making, memory, etc.; it can even trigger psychosis. Most sick, disabled and chronically pained people will also go through the psychological stress of being gaslit by medical professionals, not to mention the isolation of bedrest or not having access to social spaces. Wherever pain goes, the mind must go with it.
Anytime the brain reorganizes itself to respond to experiences or stimuli is an opportunity for deeper awareness. It can take a lifetime simply to recognize our stress responses and, hopefully, view these responses as helpful, not burdensome. That’s not a complaint, not a geez, my sympathetic nervous system is so freaking cryptic grumble. The lifelong process of knowing our minds can be beautiful.
I won’t get into the existential inquiry of what it means to be alive. But I do love learning about mind-body connections, like how chronic pain and dopamine are connected, for example. I can listen to 1960s Motown albums or orgasm and boost my dopamine and as a result manage physical pain—beautiful! Reading and writing poetry can also release dopamine, by the way. Patterns, like rhyme and repetition, are pleasurable. Metaphor activates the right hemisphere of our brains. Wherever the mind goes, pain will go with it. Poetry was very much a part of my pain management plan. I’d encourage everyone to incorporate poetry into their personal care routines.
Reading and writing poetry can also release dopamine, by the way. Patterns, like rhyme and repetition, are pleasurable. Metaphor activates the right hemisphere of our brains. Wherever the mind goes, pain will go with it. Poetry was very much a part of my pain management plan.
RT: In How Poetry Saved My Life, you write about the importance of Kate Braid’s poetry and mentorship, noting that Braid was one of a handful of poets who “did indeed save my life.” You’ve written elsewhere that Braid taught you about the importance of literary community, but another influence seems to me to be your wide-ranging interest in poetic form (Braid being, alongside Sandy Shreve, the editor of In Fine Form: The Canadian Book of Form Poetry). Your books have always engaged with form, perhaps most notably your collection of glosas Where the words end and my body begins.
Here in Buzzkill Clamshell you give us a comprehensive tour of popular poetic forms, checking off so many of the including the Dante-inspired double-sonnet you mentioned earlier. Could you speak a little about Braid’s influence on your interest in form? More generally, what have these poetic forms helped you get at in your writing that might be harder to access in free verse?
AD: My memoir How Poetry Saved My Life launched in 2013 and thereafter Kate Braid’s name has come up frequently in author profiles and reviews of my work. It is a heartening story—Braid’s poetry is something of a root for my own writing practice and, more heartening still, she advocated for me when I was at my most vulnerable. I would not have applied to, nor stuck with, UBC’s Creative Writing Program without Braid’s support.
What may be a less heartening, or a less interesting, story for the pages of The Globe and Mail or Quill and Quire is that form poetry has been an ongoing element in knowing my own traumatized, mad and queer mind. I mention dopamine in the question above, and I’ll talk more about neuro-stuff here. Form poetry has helped me regulate the nervous system, right down to addressing sympathovagal imbalances. [In] plain language: I sleep just a bit better, I digest food more easily, my heart rate is better maintained and, overall, I manage pain and symptoms of my disability with additional ease. Anyone who’s been sick, injured and/or disabled has likely tried (or been told to try) remedies that didn’t work for them. There isn’t a universal fix all, but what I’ll say is that discovering your mind’s unique internal wisdom and regulation patterns is critical. Turns out, my mind responds well to form poetry.
The forms and adapted forms in Buzzkill Clamshell are the ghazal, glosa, haibun, barzelletta, canzone, viator, villanelle, found poem and nonsense poem. Throughout the collection, form is a conceit for the constrained body, in particular, my own body constrained by chronic pelvic pain at the time I wrote the collection. While forms are constraining, they are also luscious and exacting and give my mind time with patterns and puzzles. Counting syllables while crafting each line of a canzone. Working a wandering refrain into each stanza of a viator, or a line from a quoted quatrain into each stanza of a glosa. Breaking narrative logic and working with the autonomous couplets inspired by the ghazal. Paying hyper-close attention to language and sound. This is my brain’s happy place. Form poetry has gotten me through some really tough bedrest days.
In this way, twelve years after my memoir came out, my writing continues to be influenced by Braid. In Fine Form: The Canadian Book of Form Poetry has been a more (or equally) relevant tool for me than The Courage to Heal Workbook or The Body Keeps the Score. In this way, Kate Braid is still saving my life. There is no other poet whose brilliant body-of-work and whose kindness has impacted me more.
Kate Braid also exemplifies our incredible ability to inspire one another and to be in conversation through verse. I can’t count how many times people have told me, “Poetry has saved my life, too.”
Amber Dawn is a writer and creative facilitator living on unceded Coast Salish Territories (Vancouver, BC). She is the author of several books, including two novels (Lambda Literary Award winner Sub Rosa and Sodom Road Exit) and three poetry collections (Buzzkill Clamshell, Where the words end and my body begins and My Art Is Killing Me and Other Poems), and the editor of three anthologies.
Rob Taylor’s fifth poetry collection is Weather (Gaspereau Press, 2024).He lives with his family in Port Moody, BC. You can read more of his interviews on his website.