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In The Gospel of Breaking, Jillian Christmas confirms what followers of her performance and artistic curation have long known: there is magic in her words. Befitting someone who “speaks things into being,” Christmas extracts from family history, queer lineage, and the political landscape of a racialized life to create a rich, softly defiant collection of poems.
Christmas draws a circle around the things she calls “holy”: the family line that cannot find its root but survived to fill the skies with radiant flesh; the body, broken and unbroken and broken and new again; the lover lost, the friend lost, and the loss itself; and the hands that hold them all with brilliant, tender care. Expansive and beautiful, these poems allow readers to swim in Jillian Christmas’s mother-tongue and to dream at her shores.
Christmas draws a circle around the things she calls “holy”: the family line that cannot find its root but survived to fill the skies with radiant flesh; the body, broken and unbroken and broken and new again; the lover lost, the friend lost, and the loss itself; and the hands that hold them all with brilliant, tender care. Expansive and beautiful, these poems allow readers to swim in Jillian Christmas’s mother-tongue and to dream at her shores.
Price: $12.95
Pages: 80
Publisher: Arsenal Pulp Press
Imprint: Arsenal Pulp Press
Publication Date:
31 March 2020
Trim Size: 8.00 X 6.00 in
ISBN: 9781551527970
Format: Paperback
I am taken by the adventurous forms that leap off the page in The Gospel of Breaking and how those forms are complemented by the ability of Jillian Christmas. The winding forms are held together by pristine imagery, a crisp attention to narrative, and illuminating metaphor. This book, among many other things, is a showcase of how many different ways a poet can show themselves to be dazzling. —Hanif Willis-Abdurraqib, author of They Can’t Kill Us Until They Kill Us
Jillian Christmas is the former Artistic Director of Vancouver’s Verses Festival of Words. An educator, organizer, and advocate in the arts community, utilizing an anti-oppressive lens, Jillian has performed and facilitated workshops across North America.