Body Count

by Kyla Jamieson

In this vital début, Kyla Jamieson sifts through the raw material of her life before and after a disabling concussion in search of new understandings of self and worth. Energized by the tensions between embodiment and dissociation, Body Count flickers between Vancouver and New York, passing through dreamscapes and pain states. Both earnest and irreverent, comedic and cosmic, these poems come from a full heart (“You came here / for a kind of truth / & I want to give / you everything”) that often finds its way obstructed by fear, anxiety, and the myriad ways trauma can pattern a life. Here, we see the work of removing the barriers between this heart and the world, and glimpse the labour it takes to heal a body and mind discarded by capitalism. One part rape culture protest anthem, one part long-distance love story, one part invisible illness testimony, and 100% epistolary intimacy, Body Count is a tonic for the times we live in, an open invitation to question the textures of our realities, the ways we inhabit our bodies, and the futures we envision for ourselves and our communities.

Genres: Poetry, Canada, Disability, Mental Health

96 pages, Paperback

First published April 18, 2020

About the author

Kyla Jamieson was born and raised in Squamish and North Vancouver and now lives in Ucluelet. Her début poetry collection, Body Count (Nightwood Editions), wove the disparate experiences of a brain injury, modelling in New York City, and studying creative writing in Vancouver into a text that was named a CBC Best Poetry Book of 2020 and received praise for its candour, humour, and complexity. She earned her BFA and MFA in Creative Writing from the University of British Columbia and served as the Vancouver Public Library's 2024 Writer in Residence. Her work has been anthologized in Poetry is Not a Luxury: Poems for All Seasons and published widely.

Reviews

[s.penkevich [hiatus-will return-miss you all] · Rating 4 out of 5]

Poets use language like a guitar pick upon your heartstrings and Kyla Jamieson is wailing on power chords full of angst, chaos, and grittily gorgeous sentiments. ‘You came here / for a kind of truth / & I want to give / you everything,’ she writes in her debut collection, Body Count, and with harrowing honesty and bluntness her poetry navigates our modern anxieties and trauma, issues of invisible illnesses, the oppressive forces of patriarchy and horrors of rape culture, but also love and hope. Even when, confronted with sorrow and she must ‘let hope / ghost me,’ there is an underlying passion for life. ‘My testimony is simple,’ she announces, ‘I’m a mess of statistics / & I still want to live,’ and these are poems that, even in the mess of modern living, make you glad to be amongst the living and the art we can create from such mess.

I Need a Poem

Can we talk about the moon
tonight? Low & full
in the baby-blue sky. A friend
at my door, the sound
of her laugh & well-loved
heart. I want to be held
up like that. I need a poem
about happiness I haven't
written yet, an ode
to the ducks in my neighbour's
pool, another for the pink
magnolias of spring—some trees
make it look so easy: Yes,
I can hold all this beauty up.

This is a lovely book. ‘I have nothing / to offer Literature / or Capitalism,’ Jamieson writes and, girl, hard same. You may recognize Jamieson from a poem of hers that had gone viral in the past few years and frequently graces my social media timelines (or maybe you haven’t and all my social media is just that intensely nerdy). Sure, it’s not in this collection but I’m putting it here anyways because you need to read this and it was the poem that had me scrambling to find a collection of hers.

My Sexual Orientation is Spring

We change time,
make the days longer.
I start to forget
the pact I made
with unhappiness,
take myself
to the ocean,
say I just need
to catch the last
few minutes
of light. This is
how spring is love,
the way it pulls us
towards pleasure.

Yea, thats so good, right!? That is a short poem just bursting with emotions. It’s punk when you stop and think about it. And, honestly, that’s what Kyla Jamieson is able to hit in crescendos of crisp prose. Her poems are short and punchy and just emanating sardonic wit at every turn and for every short quippy poem some might overlook she hits you with a torrential downpour of emotion in the most savagely succinct way. ‘Fall in love,’ she writes, exuding an ironic coolness, ‘It’s more like / Yeah / sign me up / For future / Sadness.’ These poems have sharp, pointy teeth and they nip at every opportunity. In the best way. It’s a style I often dislike in lesser hands, but Jamieson spins snarky straw into golden verse that cast their glimmer across the dark caverns of my heart like a planetarium when I read her work. It can often be very funny, though darkly so, such as when she writes ‘Sometimes its exhausting / to be awake & alive / at the same time,’ in Kind of Animal or quips ‘I worry / I’m too burnt out / & maybe in love / for a revolution.’ The witticisms, however, often arrive in tandem with a chaffed pain that aches with authenticity and angst, often self directed yet universally empathetic and relatable:

‘You thought I was
supposed to get better.
But I got worse.
I’m disappointed
in me too.’

I feel you there, Jamieson. It’s a collection that called to me especially seeing a poem titled In Exile I Draw the Tower Card, seeing as the Tower is my favorite tarot card and it perfectly encapsulates the thematic anxieties of the collection. The Tower, sure, is destruction, dreams shattered, a life toppled like a house of cards, yet it also signals the opportunity for the path of a new beginning paved by the destruction—a sort of aspirational phoenix from the ashes mythos potential—especially as it is followed by The Star. There is pain, but there is also a path towards healing waiting to blossom from her verses, particularly in her poems that take dead aim at social ills of misogyny and the vapidity of value systems based on consumption towards profitability over meaningfulness.

The critics will say,
This isn’t poetry
It’s audacity

Let them

There is a boldness to these poems that I can’t help but adore, even if it does feel a bit slight at times. But it brings internet culture—emphasis on Millennial internet culture—alive in short, sparse brushstrokes of language that confront ‘how everything is shaped / by what we want / from each other.’ This formulation of social interaction and hierarchy is examined from the perspective of those suffering invisible illnesses or simply general social disbelief or refusal to hear of their pains. The latter is a social ill where frequent studies have shown that women’s complaints of pain are far more likely to me dismissed or minimized than men by medical professionals. Yet this also shapes her poems, which she discussed in an interview with Hannah Macready about the struggles to write following a traumatic brain injury:

‘After my concussion it was really hard for my eyes to follow longer lines of text. When I made the lines short, I could at least read my own work. So in large part, the form of my poems is driven by necessity, it’s a product of me making my own work accessible for myself, but in a way that also makes it accessible to other folks with the same brain injury-related visual symptoms.’

The idea of accessibility is cleverly harnessed and flows forth from the pages as Jamieson employs a rather accessible style that doesn’t skimp on depth as well as an accessible and humorous lexicon of quips, text-speech, and self-deprecating humor that gleefully captures a very Millennial aesthetic.

‘I really like writing
poems to you
by which I mean
I’ve written two
including this one
—from My Summer Goal Was Yo Drink More Slurpees & I Failed

Kyla Jamieson’s Body Count is a marvelous and moving collection that hits a wide spectrum of emotions and ideas. We have pleas for societal accessibility housed in accessible poetry that cuts right to the core, strong stances against misogyny, empathetic odes to uplift women and each other in turn, and each page is a delight. A very lovely collection of poems.

4.5/5

Vernal Equinox

I promised no poems
about you. I'm sorry:
I managed to leave you off the page
but couldn't stop writing
about love. Soon the snow
will melt & we'll climb
mountains with nothing
but shoes on our feet.
I'll take myself
places I haven't been
in years. The future feels
wide open, I feel wide
open. If you listened
to my chest it would sound
like a river ice breakup,
like I just learned
how to breathe.

[laila* · Rating 4 out of 5]

chronically ill slut. felt like a mirror.

[micaila · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.8
digestible, but requires a lot of chewing. The combination of free verse and defamiliarization can you leave you with ????s but Kyla’s brutal honesty and self-reflection(s) is refreshing

[Jo Owens · Rating 5 out of 5]

I read about this book in an article in the Tyee online newspaper, and bought it for a friend who has chronic pain. Of course I planned to vet it before sending; I'm going to be needing another copy. I like poetry that I can understand. I like poetry that sends me scurrying back to the text, licking my fingers for crumbs. I'm not the one with chronic pain, but boy, did I ever relate. Feeling grateful for this book on multiple levels. Five stars and counting . . .

[Sabrina A · Rating 4 out of 5]

"You came here / for a kind of truth / & I want to give / you everything. / I know almost nothing / I can prove. I can't / earn a wage / & can barely read / but I truly believe / our flesh vessels / can hold both joy & pain. / I won't argue hope / with the hopeless. / My testimony is simple: / I'm a mess of statistics / & I still want to live." - Future Body Self-Portrait

[KileyV · Rating 2 out of 5]

Not for me, thanks! But another book of poetry added to my 2021 reading accomplishments.

[Dev · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5

[Angel · Rating 3 out of 5]

I have nothing to offer Literature or Capitalism
--so true bestie!!

[Ellen · Rating 5 out of 5]

absolutely DEVOURED this one. i tried to take it slow but just couldn’t help myself from picking it up for just one more bite, one more poem. can’t wait to revisit these again ❤️

[Ell · Rating 5 out of 5]

In the beginning I needed help

to walk but none came
so I stayed inside where I couldn't fall

or get lost. Now each day I walk
slowly around my neighbourhood

holding my own hand.

[Angel · Rating 3 out of 5]

So much of modern poetry lacks depth. Some of these poems were interesting, but the rest were just created to be consumed by Instagram poetry culture.

[Kiran Bassi · Rating 4 out of 5]

glad I read this. these poems sing to me

[Lindsay · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5 stars. From “Future Body Self Portrait”: Has illness / made me more / or less human? / I feel small & vast / at the same time. / I am desperate / & very much alive.

[Cait · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fab poet fab teacher. Can’t wait to read more of her writing and take more of her workshops ✨✨

[Paloma Hazel · Rating 5 out of 5]

Re-read