Book review: Amber Dawn’s poetry fights back against sex trade stereotypes
Credit to Author: Tracey Tufnail| Date: Fri, 28 Feb 2020 19:00:37 +0000
By Amber Dawn (Arsenal Pulp Press, 2020)
$17.95 | 141 pp.
“I put it in ink: I write
for other survivors. I am listening
As well, in ink, presently, on this page: I’m here
For the divine and complex work that is healing. “ — Amber Dawn
Amber Dawn.
Amber Dawn, Vancouver-based editor, filmmaker, poet, novelist, and advocate has had a busy and productive decade.
In 2011 she won the Lambda Literary Award, and in 2012 the Dayne Ogilvie Prize. She has edited three books (including Hustling Verse, reviewed in 2019) and authored five more.
She has served as programming director and co-artistic director for the Vancouver Queer Film Festival, and taught creative writing at Douglas College. Her most recent publication, My Art is Killing Me and other Poems, can be viewed as a companion piece to 2013’s How Poetry Saved My Life: A Hustler’s Memoir.
As the contrasting verdicts of the two titles illustrate, Dawn has a fraught and complicated relationship to her life as a writer and public face for sex trade workers.
While poetry may have saved her life, much of the public exposure it has generated has had its painful edges. The new book eloquently explores the dialectical nature of fame, especially when it comes to someone from a marginalized population.
For Dawn, her writing is clearly a cherished act of resistance and assertion, and a way of promoting healing — both personal and social. And yet going public as a sex trade worker, a queer activist and as a poet has left her vulnerable to internet trolling and face-to-face humiliations. As she dryly notes: “Being hated is just part of the job.”
The poems included in this remarkable collection are political in the most profound sense, taking on issues of gender, identity, representation, sex trade work, on-line censorship, debates within feminism and appropriation of voice.
But while political, these works never congeal into the dead, stultifying language of much poetry with political intent. The author is determined to both “speak her truth” (the bell-like incantation that tolls through the book) and to create vivid images and memorable metaphors delivered with wit and intensity.
One particularly witty poem, “Dear Incorrect Name: Found and Redacted from My Inbox” mocks the many condescending invitations she receives to appear as a poorly paid or unpaid speaker in classrooms or conferences, while “Stregheria Instructional #2” displays her lyrical voice at its best.
Dawn’s poems are rituals of beauty, courage and fierce rage.
• Tom Sandborn lives and writes in Vancouver. He welcomes your feedback and story tips at tos65@telus.net
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