New ebooks From Canadian Indies
Description
Confessional and immersive, Michael V. Smith’s latest collection is a broad tapestry that explores growing up queer and working class, then growing into an urban queer life.
In these poems, we are immersed in the world of a young Smith as he shares the awkward dinners, the funerals, and the uncertainty of navigating fraught dynamics, bringing us into these most intimate moments of family life while outrunning deep grief. Smith moves from first home to first queer experiences: teenage crushes, video cameras, post-club hookups, fears and terrors, closeted lovers, and daydreams of confronting your childhood bully.
Queers Like Me is an enveloping book— a meditation on family complexity and a celebration of personal insight.
Contributor Notes
MICHAEL V. SMITH is a writer, performer, and filmmaker. His poetry has been shortlisted for the ReLit Award, his fiction has been shortlisted for the Journey Prize and Amazon Canada First Novel Award, and his queer memoir My Body Is Yours was shortlisted for a Lambda Literary Award. Smith is the winner of a Western Magazine Award, numerous film awards, and the inaugural Dayne Ogilvie Prize from the Writers' Trust of Canada. He is currently a professor in Kelowna, BC, where he lives with his husband on the unceded territory of the Syilx Okanagan people.
Editorial Reviews
“Michael V. Smith is Canada's answer to Frank O'Hara. In poems at once charming in tone and yet devastating in subtext, rollicking in language and dignified in what is said as well as what remains unspoken, Queers Like Me explores the nature of family, place, and belonging from the perspective of a life lived on the artistic edge.” —George Murray, author of Problematica: New and Selected Poems
“A verse memoir from several perspectives of identity, Queers Like Me is a faceted lexicon of Smith’s experience of grief, desire, alienation, aging, and happiness. A warm, witty-tragic tale... this confessional/anti-confessional text feels like a friend you could talk to about anything.” —Sharon Thesen, author of The Wig-Maker
“Abeautiful, funny, honest book. There were so many moments when I felt a loving kinship with Smith through queerness, through family, through home. Each page feels alive and so deeply human. This is a book to read and to be read through." —Jordan Abel, Griffin Poetry Prize–winning author of Injun and NISHGA
“Michael V. Smith is Canada's answer to Frank O'Hara. In poems at once charming in tone and yet devastating in subtext, rollicking in language and dignified in what is said as well as what remains unspoken, Queers Like Me explores the nature of family, place, and belonging from the perspective of a life lived on the artistic edge.” —George Murray, author of Problematica: New and Selected Poems
"One of the important themes in Queers Like Me is family, not the one we choose but the one into which we are born." —The British Columbia Review
“Queers Like Me is a beautiful, funny, honest book. There were so many moments when I felt a loving kinship with Smith through queerness, through family, through home. Each page feels alive and so deeply human. This is a book to read and to be read through—a brilliant dive into belonging." —Jordan Abel, Griffin Poetry Prize–winning author of Injun and NISHGA.
“A verse memoir from several perspectives of identity, Queers Like Me is a faceted lexicon of Smith’s experience of grief, desire, alienation, aging, and happiness. A warm, witty-tragic tale... this confessional/anti-confessional text feels like a friend you could talk to about anything.” —Sharon Thesen, author of The Wig-Maker
“Michael V. Smith is Canada’s answer to Frank O’Hara. In poems at once charming in tone and yet devastating in subtext, rollicking in language and dignified in what is said as well as what remains unspoken, Queers Like Me explores the nature of family, place, and belonging from the perspective of a life lived on the artistic edge.” —George Murray, author of Problematica: New and Selected Poems
"One of the important themes in QueersLike Me is family, not the one we choose but the one into which we are born." —The British Columbia Review
"One of the important themes in QueersLike Me is family, not the one we choose but the one into which we are born." —The British Columbia Review
