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it was never going to be okay - Paperback | Diverse Reads

it was never going to be okay

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"Sovereignty, vulnerability, honesty." —Ms. Magazine

it was never going to be okay is a collection of poetry and prose exploring the intimacies of understanding intergenerational trauma, Indigeneity and queerness, while addressing urban Indigenous diaspora and breaking down the limitations of sexual understanding as a trans woman. As a way to move from the linear timeline of healing and coming to terms with how trauma does not exist in subsequent happenings, it was never going to be okay tries to break down years of silence in simpson’s debut collection of poetry:

i am five

my sisters are saying boy

i do not know what the word means but—

i am bruised into knowing it: the blunt b,

the hollowness of the o, the blade of y 

ISBN-13: 9780889713826

Media Type: Paperback

Publisher: Nightwood Editions

Publication Date: 04-20-2021

Pages: 96

Product Dimensions: 5.30(w) x 7.80(h) x 0.40(d)

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.

Table of Contents

1

Sea glass 11

Teeth & sharp bones (a dialogue) 14

Boy 17

Haunting (a poem in six parts) 20

00088014 26

Her. (i.) 28

Her. (ii.) 29

Metal // biting down // i 30

2

Nogojiwanong // Peterborough 33

The end of a friendship 36

Inheritance 38

// 40

This woman//nookum 41

Urban NDNs in the DTES 44

It is too late: 46

Flinch 48

Loving in the dark 49

Head & heart & hands & health (a poem in four parts) 52

3

Fever 57

Norman fucking rockwell! is lana del rey's greatest album 58

Bedroom hymns 60

In a city without seasons … 63

Beast 66

Decolonial pu$$y 68

Godzilla 70

R e d 72

Beautiful monsters in uncanny valley 74

Perennial love poem 76

ζηλια // jealousy 78

Monstrous bodies 80

4

The seven sacred ways of healing 83

Orality 86

Healing // sacrifice // necessity 88

Waterways 90

Queer // rition 95

Raven 98

About the ones i want to love 101

Notes 106

Acknowledgements 107

About the author 111