The Untranslatable I

by Roxanna Bennett

In unmeaningable, her previous Trillium Poetry Awards winning book with Gordon Hill Press, Roxanna Bennett renovated the North American disability poetics canon via her queer fusion of invisible and visible disability identities. The Untranslatable I builds on Roxanna's acute sense of form and cripping of myth by establishing a more reflective, heartbreaking voice that asks, "Was I chosen? Is this a gift or a curse?" and provides answers not as prescribed path or cure, but as beautiful song.

Genres: Poetry, LGBT

79 pages, ebook

First published February 1, 2021

About the author

Roxanna Bennett is the author of 'The Uncertainty Principle' (Tightrope Books, 2014).

Reviews

[Amanda · Rating 5 out of 5]

An absolute brilliant and vital book that translate pain thru various lenses: travel, Nick Cave, Sappho, Anne Carson, the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. And those sonnets! Wow! I'd recommend this book to every ill person, every pain sufferer.

[Dorothy Mahoney · Rating 5 out of 5]

Through travel diaries, postcards and gratitude journals, Bennett explores pain and what it means to
be "trapped on an island of my own conditioning." "All poems are about flowers & birds, love, life & death, even this one" begins one postcard. But what cannot be simplified is the individual journey,
what remains untranslatable.

[Rachel Ashera Rosen · Rating 5 out of 5]

Nope nope nope I relate way too hard to this book on every possible level, from navigating the world as a disabled person to the author's taste in music and her politics, to be objective in any way about this devastating collection of poetry. Goddamn this is good. I couldn't put it down. I immediately felt the need to buy it for at least two other people.

[A.J. Dolman · Rating 5 out of 5]

Unbearably brilliant. I read this volume very slowly, as I often had to sit with the impacts of each poem, both emotional and through their linguistic dexterity, for hours, days or sometimes weeks. One of the most resonant and brilliantly language-shaping poets working in Canada right now.

[Paul Vermeersch · Rating 5 out of 5]

Roxanna Bennett is a brilliant poet!