Solemn Camaraderie: Review of Jason Purcell's Swollening
Jason Purcell, Swollening
Arsenal Pulp Press, 2022. $18.95 CAD.
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Jason Purcell’s debut poetry collection, Swollening, captures the many ways in which queerness and illness exist, interact with, and influence the experience of being othered. This collection brings light what is hidden in the dark about identities of queerness and illness, and how similar the two can be in terms of perception and lived experience. Those who hold one or both of these identities can see themselves in the poems, and are able to feel held by Purcell’s camaraderie.
Take these lines from the poem, “North of Nipissing Beach”: “It stayed until I called out, wanting / to be recognized by my parents for having been / chosen, but by the time / they set down their drinks, moved / from their folding chairs, the fish was gone, and moving / around me was the frustration of not being seen. Even this memory is queer. / These are the terms of this space” (14). Even in ordinary moments, Purcell is able to queer the seeming simplicity of a childhood memory through critical reflection. Purcell illustrates vivid scenes in their writing both in imagery and emotion. Not only are we able to see the interaction unfold through their intentional and poignant words, but we feel the anger, the sadness, and the difficult feelings at the heart of Purcell’s work.
A powerful writing tactic Purcell excels at is offering layered and multiple meanings in a central or single muse of a poem. In “Earring,” Purcell uses the image on an earring to anchor the poem; however, the reader can understand that the poem is about much more than an ornamental piercing. Consider the line, “Your child coming home pierced, your voice / all the way through the wound / that never grows over.” (24). Purcell sets the scene so that we may understand the depth to this piercing: its relationality to family, coming out, and queerness and its visibility.
As mentioned, Purcell speaks about themes of queerness and illness in Swollening . Though some poems are more obviously about one of these themes than the other, the two often intersect, or poems can be read through both lenses. Take this line from “On Acicular Ice”: “Turn the body inside out and it goes / on for days; choose length or depth” (81). Though in this poem, Purcell is speaking about queerness, these words too can also apply to illness. The ways some poems hold multiple readings, depending on the reader or how it is read, is yet another skill at which Purcell excels.
The imagery of Purcell’s illness, which appears to be dental in nature (also seen in the cover of the collection, which displays an x-ray like visual of teeth), seemed as though it would have a finite degree of visuals to pull from. Despite this, Purcell makes commentaries that expand beyond the location of the pain itself. They share with the reader musings about the body, its capabilities, its resilience, and what it is like when the pain is unbearable—and how to hold space for the feelings that come with it. In the poem, “Cavity”, centered around the image of teeth, the closing line reads, “You can pull your own truth from yourself, but what to do / with all the extra blood?” (46). The double entendre is a strong suit of Purcell’s: to make the reader read each line twice, to truly understand its vastness in the meaning it holds. This is also seen in the poem “fertility,” where Purcell writes, “Holding my own dead self in my hands. An artifact of neglect that rots and teems / with life.” (47). The ways in which Purcell is able to describe the body and the experience of having a sick body in so many dimensions gives insight to both the able-bodied, and more importantly a camaraderie to the disabled. This camaraderie is especially poignant when it comes to sickness related to dental pain, which is less often depicted in writing. Purcell is able to create a well-rounded picture of what this sickness is like.
Those that know this life experience—whether it is the same sickness or not—are able to see thoughts that may have never have had the words for. Specifically related to their sickness, Purcell writes in their poem, “An appointment,” “Under the / drill / roots / so long all the way / to the brain / where you hope / they can extract / the memory/ and fill it / with something artificial” (48). More generally related to sickness, Purcell states in “Men in the Gut,” “Escaping the body / that wants to quit from the inside.” (58). Purcell writes with such a profound understanding of the body: how it hurts, how it betrays, and how to live, still.
There is no romanticizing of sickness, but there is an appreciative beauty with which Purcell writes about the community found in experiencing sickness. The poem, “inadequate insurance,” is one that stands out as a poem of grief for the way that sick folks are treated. But it also reads as a poem of love for the community found in the shared experience of sickness. The poem ends with the lines, “Having to pay for your own debasement / with the last of your pride, then crawling / back to your people: the hollow-toothed, / crooked fingers interlocked, who have // waited for you to return, stitched together / their empty pockets into a blanket / with which to wrap you so you are at least / warm while you bleed.” (87). Purcell is able to aptly depict the selflessness with which the community will come together when they know that institutions will fail them. Depictions of sickness are fine-tuned with such piercing accuracy, such as a line from the same poem that reads, “Indebtedness, a consequence / of living.” (86), or longer lines such as that in “Recovery”: “Affects flare / and transfer between bodies / so that the one who is sick / touches the other / and both tire.” (71). There is clearly a deep knowingness about the experience of sickness that Purcell is able to share through their writing, and both those that know this pain, and those that are lucky enough to not, are able to read these poems and feel its intensity all the same.
Purcell’s debut poetry collection, Swollening, is one that embraces the similar patterns between experiences of sickness and queerness, and is written with incredible vibrancy. These images, though solemn, are stark in their curation, and paint a picture that cannot be missed by the reader. I greatly look forward to any coming works of Purcell’s.
Namitha Rathinappillai (she/they) is a disabled, queer, Tamil-Canadian spoken word poet who has entered the poetry community in 2017. She is currently based in Toronto, and was the first female and youngest director of Ottawa’s Urban Legends Poetry Collective (ULPC). They are a two-time Canadian Festival of Spoken Word (CFSW) team member with ULPC, and they published their first chapbook titled ‘Dirty Laundry’ with Battleaxe Press in November of 2018. In 2019, they won the RBC Youth Ottawa Spirit of the Capital Award for Arts and Culture. You can find more at namitharathinappillai.com.