My Art Is Killing Me and Other Poems

by Amber Dawn

In her novels, poetry, and prose, Amber Dawn has written eloquently on queer femme sexuality, individual and systemic trauma, and sex work justice, themes drawn from her own lived experience and revealed most notably in her award-winning memoir How Poetry Saved My Life.
In this, her second poetry collection, Amber Dawn takes stock of the costs of coming out on the page in a heartrendingly honest and intimate investigation of the toll that artmaking takes on artists. These long poems offer difficult truths within their intricate narratives that are alternately incendiary, tender, and rapturous.
In a cultural era when intersectional and marginalized writers are topping bestseller lists, Amber Dawn invites her readers to take an unflinching look at we expect from writers, and from each other.

Genres: Poetry, Queer, LGBT, Nonfiction, Canada, Feminism, Mental Health

128 pages, Paperback

First published February 21, 2020

About the author

Amber Dawn is a writer, filmmaker and performance artist based in Vancouver. She is the author of the novel Sub Rosa (Arsenal Pulp Press, 2010), editor of the Lambda Award-nominated Fist of the Spider Woman (Arsenal Pulp Press, 2008) and co-editor of With a Rough Tongue: Femmes Write Porn (Arsenal Pulp Press, 2005). Her award-winning, genderfuck docu-porn, "Girl on Girl," has been screened in eight countries and added to the gender studies curriculum at Concordia University. She has toured three times with the infamous Sex Workers' Art Show in the US. She was voted Xtra! West's Hero of the Year in 2008. She has an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of British Columbia. Currently, she is the director of programming for the Vancouver Queer Film Festival.

Reviews

[Domenica · Rating 5 out of 5]

To put it eloquently, holy fucking shit. Also, the line “When the mind processes trauma through metaphor is it compassion?” has been on a near-constant loop in my head.

[CaseyTheCanadianLesbrarian · Rating 5 out of 5]

An exquisite, hard-hitting collection of poetry not without its moments of humour and an ample amount of free verse experimentation with spacing, repetition, spells, and business letters. Amber Dawn writes about the burden and joys of writing from the perspective of a woman, a queer person, a survivor, and a sex worker. Being an artist in the public realm, performing or having to convince others of your trauma, dealing with abusers in positions of power in the literary community, and more. A book to reread and savour. Full review on my blog here.

"I wouldn't mind if poetry mimicked racing tipsy down the subway stairs / in platform heels to barely catch the last train of the night."

"A poem is always a mirror / that we must hold up before us"

"Who do I confide to about pain when pain is my praxis / and best performance?"

"But you (literally you) are reading queer and desperate poetry / so may I assume you too have never been afforded / an uncomplicated story?"

"My kink is to loudly love those / who've been told to keep quiet."

"Closure / is like the conspicuous consumption / of real life."

[Alanna Why · Rating 5 out of 5]

"An anagram for "creative writing" is "tragic interview." HOLY SHIT!!! I chugged this collection like it was a can of cheap beer and I was at a party in first year. I had planned to go see Amber Dawn on her book tour for this at Ottawa Writer's Fest, but purchased it directly from the publisher after life was canceled because of the uh, quarantine. My Art Is Killing Me is a super powerful collection of prose poems about the relationship between creative writing, sex work, queerness, trauma, and healing, as well as the power dynamics between professor/student, writer/reader, and maker/consumer. My favourite poems were "the stopped clock," "Hollywood ending" and "how hard feels." I've only read Sodom Road Exit by her before, but now I want to dive into her back catalogue even more. I'm going to be chewing on these poems for a looooong time to come.

[Jackie · Rating 5 out of 5]

full review to come at some point in a forthcoming spring issue of Quill & Quire, but this was so incredibly good.

she’s really out here writing lines like “The feral shade of blue that shows itself at four am...”!!!!!

[Margaryta · Rating 5 out of 5]

REVIEW FORTHCOMING IN THE TOWN CRIER

[Care · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was a really phenomenal collection of poetry and searing truths from a talented and accomplished writer. Themes include violence, trauma, sexuality, queer identity, academia, social media, censorship, body celebration, and enforced shame.

[Dana Neily · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wow. A new favourite poetry collection. Favourite poems are basically all of them but stand outs are An Apple or Haunted, and Fountainhead. The Ringing Bell was also the most perfect conclusion. Read this and think deeply about the relationship between trauma and beauty in art.

[Zach Linge · Rating 5 out of 5]

A sack of bricks to the chest.

[amelie · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wow this is truly some of the best poetry I have ever read. I can’t describe how much I felt connected and seen while reading this collection. The poems made me sad, then angry because of how ironically difficult it is to be a woman. Amber Dawn really gets you thinking about sex workers, trauma, being queer, sexual assault, and being a woman in a totally different perspective. I wish more people would read this, especially women because this is hard-hitting as fuck.

[df parizeau · Rating 5 out of 5]

Someday, someone is going to pick up an Amber Dawn book and write a rock opera adaptation, right? Right?!

[Megan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Ferocious callout of academic elitism and institutional protection of abusers -- and a complex inquiry into the stakes of writing truth, and trauma. Amber Dawn's new collection is equal parts devastating and uplifting, and includes some of her boldest and most structurally exploratory poems.

First lines (from "The Stopped Clock"):
I was costumed in a white tiger striped bodysuit when I found out
I'd been accepted into the graduate creative writing program
at the University of British Columbia. The bodysuit was one size
too small and my labia majora squeezed out from either side
of the gusset whenever I sat down.

[b (tobias forge's version) · Rating 5 out of 5]

"And how will I claim my body this time?
And will poetry still help me make this claim?"

I need to have a physical copy of this book on hand for when I start thinking that poetry is a pointless exercise in abstraction and ego-stroking and that no one will ever want to read my gay little poems.

[Audrey · Rating 5 out of 5]

poetry for survivors. so fucking beautiful <3

[Lancakes · Rating 5 out of 5]

The Ringing Bell is - of course - tenderly genius

[Silas · Rating 4 out of 5]

Poems of a queer ex sex worker, both depressing and liberating.

Queers and whores made social media

[Rosa G]

DNF

[Catherine]

nope

[Jules Nymo · Rating 4 out of 5]

I'll come back when I reflect more on this collection of poems. I'm glad I picked this one up another day. Gorgeous art cover, and equally beautiful poems within pages.

[Mila Menna · Rating 5 out of 5]

About sx work and being a survivor of assault. Comments on medias interaction w/ this as well as the feelings around having artwork publicly recieved.

[hiaa123 · Rating 5 out of 5]

I was drawn in by the cover art and title of this book and wow, what a powerful, angry, passionate collection of poems. Amber Dawn's confessional poetry explores otherness, queerness, the lives of sexworkers, and the experience of the artist in a forthright way designed to make you think about the ways in which you're complicit in society's need to brush marginalized communities under the rug.

Important lines to consider from Hollywood Ending:
"I've begun to ask myself, how is it we fail to see
nearby violence while we naively imagine distant violence?
...
How are we imagining the lives of others?

What are we failing to see? What vulnerability, yes, and also
what agency and what
resiliency are we overlooking? What do we gain from the
imagined or quantifiable
stories of others? How does story, and our interpretations of it
determine
what we blame and who we protect? How does story decide
what we subjugate and what we celebrate? Think about it, sex work is
both
invisible and it is a mirror. Hold it up."

I loved this musing from Fountainhead:
"Imagine if the grounds we walk were built from queer love?
What song
would our queer scion sing six thousand years from now?
What shape
Would story take? If our bodies were safe and fluid loose,
waxy and loud

and fluent in a madrelingua, in a kin spit, in the looped
vernaculars
we have long deserved, then imagine what words we'd know
so well
that even our subconscious could speak this love back to us in
a dream."

I love love love the line from Outsider Artist:
Where do I belong after I wrote myself as an outsider?"

I really appreciated Amber Dawn's final exploration on the experience of an artist who puts out their work and then has to interact with readers online, a constant bombardment of differing interpretations and opinions and attacks and suffering being projected onto her writing and her life. What a burden artists must bear, especially in the current age of the Internet.

"Whatever is written becomes beautifully suspended.
Have I transcended or have I stayed my own trauma?
...
I want poetry that makes me feel like I am
back on the viewing side of that two way mirror.
...
Is it too late for me
to believe in being uplifted?

Is it too late for me
to make grand statements about poetry?
...
And how will I claim my body this time?
And will poetry still help me make this claim?"

So thank you to Amber Dawn and other artists who speak their truths, being vulnerable to appropriation and aggression, in order to inspire and educate.

[Kat]

i want to read more poetry like this: challenging in both content matter and in form. my art is killing me picks up hammers and means to dismantle systems and insidious ways of thinking, attacks men who abuse their power and hurt the vulnerable, and refuses to let off the hook those who perform feminism without inclusivity. these poems sing with righteousness, only i felt i was missing something (it's on me - this would very clearly have been a richer read if i was more familiar with amber dawn's back catalogue, and to be fair, this collection very much made me want to be). nevertheless, these were really good, even though i sped through them far too fast (again, on me). i especially was moved by her use of very direct address - it created a specific brand of intimacy that i rarely feel outside of queer narratives, and which i was very surprised and pleased to find here.

thank you to edelweiss+ and the publishers for this review copy!

[Sofia Pisacane · Rating 4 out of 5]

Love this in a way I have not loved a collection of poems in a long time. They almost felt more like essays, with a free-write prosey style that is almost casual, and contrasts so well with the content. Dawn writes about poetry, art, sex work, queerness, and contemporary media and how they are connected to abuse, trauma, and healing. Through lines that are cutting, impactful, and sometimes darkly funny, she discusses how poetry can help us heal from our trauma, and also help us realize that many things we as a society view as traumatic and harmful (like consensual sex work) is not always that, and in reality the way the media portrays or censors these things can be even more harmful. She also discusses how poetry and simply being an artist and a writer are acts of resistance, as well as the complicated and disproportionate relationships between writer, reader, and employer. So good, I read this so fast!

[rabble.ca]

Review by Alexandra Valahu:

Toward the end of My Art Is Killing Me and Other Poems, Amber Dawn offers the Poetry 101 course I wish I had been taught in school. "And the wraithy hiss that often visits jaw and ear is poetry./ And the gritty hymns that enchant mending skins are poetry," she writes. "The feral shade of blue that shows itself at four a.m. is poetry."

Poetry is visceral and expansive. And for readers of Amber Dawn (the name is a mononym), poetry is an act to speak your truth. Through the various expressions of her poetry, whether hiss or hymn, she names abuses of power in certain spaces and communities. By doing so, she shows us how poetry can witness us speaking out in myriad ways.

Keep reading: https://rabble.ca/books/reviews/2020/...

[ChiChi · Rating 5 out of 5]

Just finished. It was a commute read this week. So many times on the bus I just had to close it and sit there and think. I would LOVE to see this studied at High School level. I learned so much here, and a lot of it I still don't understand. Hope I can talk about it with someone else in town.
Loved 'Hollywood ending'. Loved 'How Hard Feels' with its repetition of the line 'everywhere there is a man'. Loved all the stuff about ubc, 'the tenured professor', et al. Loved the one about social media.

My favourite lines, from 'Bootheel':

Survival has always been about omitting parts of the story
about speaking only permissible words in permissible situations.

[Marilou · Rating 5 out of 5]

Unlike anything I have ever read, and in a very good way. “My Art Is Killing Me” is a very queer poetry collection in the sense that it goes way beyond what you normally expect of poetry. It plays with boundaries so well.

I don’t think I have ever read a poet that was so straight to the point. I really appreciate this bluntness to talk about trauma.

Last but not least, I love what Dawn has done with her breaks—it feels like every space, every silence has its purpose on the page; it’s truly beautiful.

To read and reread.

[Anna]

BOOOOOF this hit hard, in a really good and awful way. Amber Dawn's writing is like an ion cannon, not in that it doesn't have nuance (it does; a lot of it; beautiful nuance), but in that it beams right at you, and you can't get away, and you shouldn't get away. The sections about UBC and the character of the "tenured professor" hit the hardest, as did the very fabulous and frightening illustrations.

[Al Burke · Rating 5 out of 5]

I can honestly say that I rarely gravitate toward poetry, but something about this book and its cover drew me in. It was worth it. Hearing the perspective of a former sex worker-turned-poet on any number of topics - including the views on the trade itself and her opinion on stars who try to save Amber and her peers from their plight is nothing short of fascinating. Recommend, even if you don't usually read poetry.

[Léa Taranto · Rating 5 out of 5]

Amber Dawn lights a match to my soul and shares powerful, piercing truths in this collection of freeverse poetry. While these poems draw upon the author’s personal experiences they are all relevant to any one who reads this book. Part battle cry, part confessional, part survival guide, spell, love letter and queer femme Queen gospel, this collection is full tour de force!

[Paula Kirman · Rating 5 out of 5]

What does it take to reveal yourself through your work? What effect does this have on your life? This is exactly what Amber Dawn explores in this collection about the results of writing about sex work, trauma, and related topics. She addresses the toll that writing so intimately about yourself can take. Hard-hitting.

[Jen · Rating 4 out of 5]

I've begun to ask myself, how is it we fail to see nearby violence while we naively imagine distance violence?

Very hard-hitting collection about gender (queer) identity, sex work, violence, trauma, academia, the protection of abusers, etc. This is unlike anything I have ever read in a very good way.