Buzzkill Clamshell

""A Gothic, the theorists tell us, is a text in which the body itself is the site of horror. Or, as Amber Dawn writes, 'Beardsley said, ""If I am not grotesque, I am nothing."" wowʍoʍ same.' In the neo-Symbolist Gothic that is Buzzkill Clamshell, Amber Dawn spelunks a cunt wrenched with pain to unearth guillotine humor and stunningly rococo analogy--the body as the 'fresh mash' of a peach under a boot, a 'musical snuffbox, ' the 'filthy keepsakes of a chesterfield sofa.' Here are poems that, even as they wrestle with hardship and trauma, celebrate the astonishing joys of weird pop culture flotsam, brim with queer/occult pleasures, and laze about on velvet. This is a verse that offers the possibility of, if not 'safe space, ' than something richer: an astral plane of tenderly kinky ministering. It's been a while since I've been as word-dazzled as I am by this gorgeously wild, punk-formalist collection. I recommend you dose yourself deep."" --Arielle Greenberg, co-editor of Gurlesque and Electric Gurlesque ""I never quite know what I'm going to experience with Amber Dawn's poetry, but I do know I'll get a bit of new sexy language mixed in with some body heat! Buzzkill Clamshell does this with added layers of body horror, body honour, and a little bit of lesbian prayer. Ablaze with poetic dexterity, Buzzkill Clamshell is plush with a lesbian gaze that focuses in on desire, pelvic girdles, body fluids, and an ugly attraction to one's self. Amber Dawn offers us a sarcastic but compassionate view of ourselves."" --Sharanpal Ruprai, author of Seva and Pressure Cooker Love Bomb ""'Pain is a match, ' opens Buzzkill Clamshell, and so is this collection: both a hot, bright, sudden flare in the dark and a swipe right, an immense YES of delicious recognition. Unafraid to keen keenly for what's unfinished, wounded, shuttered, Amber Dawn's poetry knows that being a buzzkill is world-making process: mythically vivid and skinless in its witchy vitality that spells and sings exactly the heart of what poetry is."" --So Mayer, author of Truth & Dare ""Hold on to your hearts, readers! Queer lit's favourite fierce femme and force of nature Amber Dawn is back, and she's taking no prisoners. Ribald and unrepentant, in turns ferocious and tender, the poems in Buzzkill Clamshell showcase the author's trademark wit and emotional range as they map the terrain of sexuality, aging, chronic illness, and trauma with gorgeous language that is somehow both shocking and subtle. Amber Dawn masterfully reinterprets lyrical and confessional poetic forms, effortlessly weaving motifs drawn from history, mythology, religion, pop culture, and autobiography to illustrate the profound in the profane, and vice versa. Resilience has never looked quite so sexy or so sacred."" --Kai Cheng Thom, author of Falling Back in Love With Being Human ""Beautiful and ruinous, this horny, rotting Tilt-a-Whirl of a book gutted my brain and rewired it, opening new possibilities for being in relationship with illness and injury in my own body. In an exquisite act of agency, these poems approach chronic pain as collaborator, crafting an erotics of chronic pain that is both raunchy and surprisingly tender, by turns 'lewd phantasmagoria' and 'softest bouncy castle.' Rooted in the tradition of horror as queer playscape for transgressive possibilities, this is a world where 'to be monstrous is a perverse medicine.' Under the hot filth, the abjection, the camp, the horror, the mythmaking, and the thrilling visceral ride of its inventive language, this book has a thread of devotion, where devotion is staying with something as it is, desiring to know it deeply enough to be transformed. Carmen Maria Machado's queer horror meets Audre Lorde's erotics in a filthy bathroom stall, written as only Amber Dawn ever could."" --Anna Swanson, author of The Garbage Poems