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Crohnic
A poetic meditation on what it means to live a medicated life, looking toward sites of nature where life and death exist side by side
Crohnic is a brilliant and moving collection of poems that asks, what is the landscape of a medicated life? From their convalescence in a room that overlooks the North Saskatchewan River, author Jason Purcell thinks ecologically with medical records, prescriptions, and dosages, staying attuned to place and to what it might mean to live a life relying on something—in this case, an interminable course of medication—that hurts you in some ways to help you in others. How does the terrain of life change?
Picking up the threads of sickness first plucked in Swollening, Crohnic charts two years of Purcell's treatment for Crohn's disease, journeying from hospital rooms to bogs and muskeg, places where life and death intermingle and create the conditions for one another's flourishing. This is a world populated by coyotes, ermines, steroids, pine, infusion drips, moss, pills, and ice. These other-than-human beings come together in Crohnic, coalescing into relations that together form a personal narrative of the management of chronic illness.
This publication meets the EPUB Accessibility requirements and it also meets the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG-AA). It is screen-reader friendly and is accessible to persons with disabilities. This book is defined with accessible structural markup. This book contains various accessibility features such as alternative text for images, table of contents, page-list, landmark, reading order and semantic structure.
Crohnic is a brilliant and moving collection of poems that asks, what is the landscape of a medicated life? From their convalescence in a room that overlooks the North Saskatchewan River, author Jason Purcell thinks ecologically with medical records, prescriptions, and dosages, staying attuned to place and to what it might mean to live a life relying on something—in this case, an interminable course of medication—that hurts you in some ways to help you in others. How does the terrain of life change?
Picking up the threads of sickness first plucked in Swollening, Crohnic charts two years of Purcell's treatment for Crohn's disease, journeying from hospital rooms to bogs and muskeg, places where life and death intermingle and create the conditions for one another's flourishing. This is a world populated by coyotes, ermines, steroids, pine, infusion drips, moss, pills, and ice. These other-than-human beings come together in Crohnic, coalescing into relations that together form a personal narrative of the management of chronic illness.
This publication meets the EPUB Accessibility requirements and it also meets the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG-AA). It is screen-reader friendly and is accessible to persons with disabilities. This book is defined with accessible structural markup. This book contains various accessibility features such as alternative text for images, table of contents, page-list, landmark, reading order and semantic structure.
- GenresPoetry
104 pages, Paperback
Published September 9, 2025
1 person is currently reading
33 people want to read
About the author
Jason Purcell
4 books914 followersJason Purcell is a writer and musician from amiskwacîwâskahikan, Treaty 6 (Edmonton, Alberta). They are the author of Crohnic and Swollening.
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Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews
September 22, 2025
Incredible and amazing and beautiful.
January 2, 2026
a grim exploration of the patchy interface between life and death, disease and health, medicine and healing. Purcell writes as a sick human reduced to lab values. Illness looms as an invariable and haunting weight like winter in the prairies. There is an unbelievable bravery in this book.
“…something
minacious that senses
the warmth in you and so winds
itself up the wrist squeezing reminding
you that to intervene is to bargain.”
“…something
minacious that senses
the warmth in you and so winds
itself up the wrist squeezing reminding
you that to intervene is to bargain.”
August 30, 2025
Thank you Arsenal Pulp Press for the ARC.
In Crohnic, Jason Purcell blends medical records with nature imagery to reflect on chronic illness. Instead of offering easy recovery stories, the collection explores how harm and healing, life and death, body and landscape are deeply connected. Early on, the poet describes snow as “a tablet crushed and blown toward the crisp / blank future … where health and death are the same temperature,” capturing the book’s central tension.
What makes Crohnic powerful is its connection to nature. The poet’s illness is reflected in the swamp, the dying forest floor, the frozen river, and the fur of animals. Life and death are intertwined, not as opposites but as part of survival. As Purcell writes, “all things are poison all things are exchange … to intervene is to bargain.” Illness here is not only bodily but ecological, part of the larger cycles of decay, endurance, and regrowth in the natural world.
Crohnic mixes different styles and feels fragmented. Medical reports appear directly in the poems but shift into images like “the coils of the MRI machine … no expectations of me other than to lie there” or the moment of discharge when “I tremble as I walk from the ward. I get lost … Almost nervous to cross the threshold, to go back outside.” The poet also explores the meanings of words like “admitted” and “fistula,” showing how medical language can feel harsh but also poetic. The result blurs the line between facts and feelings, documents and poetry.
This is not a story of overcoming illness. Instead, it is queer, disabled, and nature-focused poetry that stays with difficulty and finds beauty in vulnerability. By the end, as the poet reflects that “This year has calmed me. I have accepted my boundaries. … lulled by this drip, this drip of spring, melt as medicine,” Crohnic shows illness as part of a connected way of being, where survival relies on relationships and interconnection.
In Crohnic, Jason Purcell blends medical records with nature imagery to reflect on chronic illness. Instead of offering easy recovery stories, the collection explores how harm and healing, life and death, body and landscape are deeply connected. Early on, the poet describes snow as “a tablet crushed and blown toward the crisp / blank future … where health and death are the same temperature,” capturing the book’s central tension.
What makes Crohnic powerful is its connection to nature. The poet’s illness is reflected in the swamp, the dying forest floor, the frozen river, and the fur of animals. Life and death are intertwined, not as opposites but as part of survival. As Purcell writes, “all things are poison all things are exchange … to intervene is to bargain.” Illness here is not only bodily but ecological, part of the larger cycles of decay, endurance, and regrowth in the natural world.
Crohnic mixes different styles and feels fragmented. Medical reports appear directly in the poems but shift into images like “the coils of the MRI machine … no expectations of me other than to lie there” or the moment of discharge when “I tremble as I walk from the ward. I get lost … Almost nervous to cross the threshold, to go back outside.” The poet also explores the meanings of words like “admitted” and “fistula,” showing how medical language can feel harsh but also poetic. The result blurs the line between facts and feelings, documents and poetry.
This is not a story of overcoming illness. Instead, it is queer, disabled, and nature-focused poetry that stays with difficulty and finds beauty in vulnerability. By the end, as the poet reflects that “This year has calmed me. I have accepted my boundaries. … lulled by this drip, this drip of spring, melt as medicine,” Crohnic shows illness as part of a connected way of being, where survival relies on relationships and interconnection.
October 6, 2025
On the one hand, this was a challenging collection for me. No titles, lots of styles and through lines to follow. I had to let it wash over me at times and then I could see the connections. On the other hand, as a nosy person with IBS, reading medical reports and endoscopy results in a poetry collection was just what I needed!
November 18, 2025
Kind of a horror book for me considering this is documenting a much more severe manifestation of a type of disease that I have, but love how this shifts between prose and lyric, threads the body through nature-- terrifying and beautiful!
August 22, 2025
Review to come. 💙
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews