KNOW NOT WHAT

My essay “Know Not What” is The Vault’s featured story for the month of May.

“For years I have been trying to write a book about beauty, because I modelled when I was younger, and I’m supposed to know something about it. But everything I know about beauty I learned from rivers, and everything I know about having a body I learned from pain.”

More here.

Illustration by Genevieve Ashley.

HOLD ME IN THE PALM OF YOUR MIND

My poem “Hold Me In The Palm Of Your Mind” has been shortlisted for Arc Poetry Magazine’s 2020 Poem of the Year Contest.

Click through to read my poem :)

THE PHYSICS OF ATMOSPHERIC MISOGYNY

A new-ish poem was published by The Account alongside my “account” of its genesis:

"I wrote this poem two years after a brain injury, when I was just beginning to read again. Because I’d been reading so little, the poems I read, from Elaine Kahn’s Women in Public, hovered, distinct, in my mind; there was no sea of language for them to sink into, no literary background against which they might disappear. I desire a future that transcends the gender binary, but the present, and present-day violence, and even my own trauma history, often feel defined by gender. Mostly, this poem describes a perspective on reality and popular culture that’s grounded in a body that feels like a target, like prey. But it also gestures towards possibilities that lie beyond this description, that my mind and my language have not yet corralled into text."

Click through to read the poem :)

ADELE BARCLAY: FOREVER POET

I wrote a profile of Adèle Barclay for Montecristo Magazine.

"Barclay explains that she sees poetry as a way to reify unexpected connections and relationships that defy convention—to say, 'it’s okay to love people in these ways that don’t fit normal romantic scripts.'"

For more direct quotes, here’s a Q&A I did with Adèle.

SPELL FOR SURVIVING YOUR MFA

My MFA sucked. I wrote this poem as a coping mechanism and note to self.

HEY STRANGER

“I was more broke than I’d ever been that spring, the spring I met you. […] The shoes I slipped off when we entered your suite were ones I borrowed from a roommate because mine were embarrassingly worn—suitable for shifts in a kitchen but not a date with a celebrity.” 

Click through for a personal essay published by GUTS Magazine.

Illustration by Dana Kearley.

TRUE SELF

“In New York at sixteen, I cringed when agents commended models’ weight loss like proud parents.”

Click through for an archived personal essay I wrote for ELLE Canada—basically a censored overview of my modelling career from start to finish.

Photo by Michelle Ford.