Jessica Popeski, The Problem with Having a Body

 

iv

markham’s interlocking leaves
that tweenage hand trick
here’s the church here’s the steeple
a sugar, norway, silver, emerald queen maple
and tulip, redmond linden, hackberry, horse chestnut
schubert chokecherry marquee

a willow drizzles to tarmac at harbord
the pong of a skunk feast
a block below bloor
candy cane spatter
meat fly-amassed

not supposed to bike but i bike
the way my body overburns

around ramhorn handles
nails tipped maroon shellac
all the rings are falling from my fingers (“come clean”)

Following the chapbooks The Wrong Place (Toronto ON: Anstruther Press, 2015 ) and Oratorio (Anstruther Press, 2015) [see my review of such here] comes Toronto-based “dis/abled opera singer, Professor of English, Creative Writing, and Music, and internationally published, intersectional ecofeminist poet” Jessica Popeski’s full-length poetry debut, The Problem with Having a Body (Guelph ON: Gordon Hill Press, 2025). As the back cover offers, this is a collection of poems “that unites Jessica Popeski’s preoccupations with intersectional ecofeminism, epigenetics, and the inheritance of fractured, grandmaternal generational lines. It reconciles private and public conflicts, examining how political and geographical rupture and war zones generate traumatic, ancestral memory by chronicling experiences of moving through the world with dis/ability and anorexia. Accompanied by the insistence of matrilineal song, these poems ask loud questions about cyclical bouts of anxiety and depression, madness, illness, voicelessness, and disordered eating.”

The poems in The Problem with Having a Body hold a precise measure of descriptive nuance; offering precise rhythm, hush, halt and flow. “when it rains it drizzles ceaselessly,” the short sequence “flatline” begins, “so everything gets soaked / in my dreams i sleep / until six // ribs are scaffolding / stretch skin like cellophane / over leftovers [.]” Popeski writes through narratives of illness and the body, and matrilineal lines; of long-term dis/ability, wrapping her subject matter tight around the provocations of the book’s title, and the title poem, that offers: “the problem with having a / body is you have to carry // it everywhere with you. / mine has held the curlicue / of three babies & still // i’ve no one to show for it; / a hoard of manila medical // files cramped & yellowing.”

The collection is structured in two sections, the bulk of which exists as “the pros and cons of staying sick,” followed by a far shorter section of more visually-focused poems, “sculptured,” akin to a kind of coda or punctuation. “this is how you / lose me.” she writes, to close the poem “this is how you lose me,” set in the opening section of the collection, “i won’t // eat for days, & / dream of folding // myself through / the tissuey air // of the humber / bay arch bridge.” That is such a lovely passage, that—“dream of folding // myself through / the tissuey air”—one of many that stopped me in my tracks, wanting to read it once more, a bit slower. Hold on to that phrase, that image.

There is something curious about the way Popeski’s poems, specifically the more narrative first-person lyrics of the opening section, seem to focus on the moments between occurrences, writing a kind of deceptive calm before the next thing, the next event, or following what has already occurred. Her descriptive passages write of movement, mid-gesture, offering layers of descriptive straightforwardnesses that accumulate upon each other, but somehow end up somewhere other than the presumed sum of the poem’s parts. These are the poems that allow the narrator the ability to hold it together through levels of uncertainty and illness. These are poem-markers, across a far broader narrative, not all of which needs to be seen to be understood. “the room in its semicircle,” the sequence “come clean” ends, “sits up / a ruler-straight row / the youngest faces rose-redden / know this is what they have [.]”

As well, the poems in the book’s end-section shift from the narrative structures of the pieces in the opening, instead offering grid-structures, building blocks, of words and phrases; poem-structures with titles “university health network,” “healthy,” “underweight,” “overweight,” “obese,” “extremely obese,” “muscle tension dysphonia / false cards,” “krrrrrr,” “my oh my,” “nyay,” “kay” and “no.” There’s something of the Greek chorus to these poems, punctuating a number of the underlying subjects throughout the first section, providing something playful and serious to close out. Utlizing the building blocks of shape, hashtag and repetition, the poem “obese,” reads, in full:

#pigout #sweettooth #foodcoma #cake
#pigout #sweettooth #foodcoma #cake #cook
             #sweettooth #foodcoma #cake #cook
             #sweettooth #foodcoma #cake #cook #fattofit
                        #sweettooth #foodcoma #cake #cook #fattofit
                        #sweettooth #foodcoma #cake #cook #fattofit

Ongoing notes: the ottawa small press book fair (part two,

Did you see my prior series of notes here? Or, really, my notes from the fair prior to that? I have so many notes on so many things. Should I even possibly start thinking about the dates for the fall fair? So much to do, so much to do.

[Kyp Harness, listening intently to Claire Farley at the Canthius table] Ottawa/Toronto ON: The second issue (spring/summer 2016) of Canthius, a journal of “feminism & literary arts” [see my recent interview with co-editor Claire Farley at Queen Mob’s Teahouse], includes, at the offset, a short note from the editors:

As editors of a new literary journal, we are still negotiating how best to promote gender equity. While our association with feminism could obligate us to publish works with overtly feminist themes, we’ve opted instead to offer a diversity of women and genderqueer writers space to share experiences and perspectives, no matter what those may be.

Now that they’ve two issues of their semi-annual journal under their belt (and seeking work for a third), one can’t help but be impressed by the clarity of vision editors Cira Nickel and Claire Farley have for Canthius, a journal of poetry, fiction and visual art. This new new issue includes new writing by an impressive list of writers both new and emerging, including Catriona Wright, Jacqueline Valencia, Sandra Ridley, Chuqiao Yang, Frances Boyle and Mary Ma, as well as artwork by Mary Grisey. In a certain sense, it’s far too easy to produce a first issue: the hard part is in producing a second, and a third; this becomes even more difficult without having a clear sense of what you wish to accomplish before you even begin, and their mandate is focused, open and incredibly straightforward, even as they, as they say, still work to negotiate the ways in which they can assist in promoting writing, thinking and conversation. As they infer in their introduction, if one wishes for a proper conversation of any sort, one requires the input of more than a select few.

We fail to name this right / without the words

For lapsing / lilies / wilted / in the beginning

Wind caught nothing / but your leaf unfurled

To fall. (“Dirge,” Sandra Ridley)

Given the limitations of a semi-annual journal, they’ve also been opening up their blog for further materials, including notifications, interviews, poems and non-fiction. So far, they’ve held launches for each issue in both Ottawa and Toronto (where each of the co-editors live). It will be interesting to see just how this journal continues to grow over the next couple of years.

[Meagan Black, sitting the Arc Poetry Magazine table] 

Toronto ON: From Jim Johnstone’s Anstruther Press comes Toronto poet Jessica Popeski’s Oratorio (second edition, thirty copies; just how small might the original run have been, I wonder?), the first of two chapbooks the press produced by her in 2015 (the other, which I have not seen, being The Wrong Place). According to her online bio, Popeski is a Classical Voice and Creative Writing graduate from Brandon University, and her dense and dexterous lyrics are heavy with not only a musical tone, but musical language (and even the occasional musical score). Just listen to the opening of the poem “Home Visit,” that reads: “The cat curls a lick-wet paw behind an ear, makes a straw- / skinny mew for milk. String-darned socks smoke like kippers / on the radiator, space heaters strategically sprinkled.” While certainly not pretending to be a language poet gymnast, Popeski isn’t writing a complete straight line, either, allowing her phrases and sentences the occasional pop and sing, allowing each line a bounce in its step.

Mother-in-Law’s Tongue

on the counter, reeking

Lysol. Middling green

rug moss between toes.

Wall, cerulean sky.

Cosmos contained in a

computer screen square.

Blue-headed vireos

belong in books, and

ruby-crowned kinglets,

white-breasted nuthatches.

Aurora Borealis clotting

over prairie suburb sprawl

will be watched on television. (“Last Child in the Woods”)

With Oratorio edited by Dionne Brand, I’m curious to know if Popeski’s second chapbook was as well; and if a debut full-length collection (whether by McClelland and Stewart, where Brand edits, or anywhere else) might be far behind.