Crazy / Mad

By AJ Dolman

Crazy/Mad is the latest modern poetry of resistance, against the norms and standards of a moment and against the idea of the confessional poem as a tool only for the poet themselves. Written around the poet’s lifelong fears of how their mental health, gender and orientation could be perceived and potentially punished, the poems whimper, rail and spin against continued psychological, personal and political oppressions at the human and institutional levels, including heteronormativity, monosexism and ableism; and rally for embracing all our forms of diversity, within and without.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Gordon Hill Press
• Release date: Apr 1, 2024
• ISBN: 9781774221129

AJ Dolman

AJ Dolman (she/they) is the author of Lost Enough: A collection of short stories and three poetry chapbooks, and co-editor of Motherhood in Precarious Times. Her poetry, fiction and essays have appeared in numerous magazines and anthologies, including Arc Poetry Magazine, QT Literary Magazine, The Quarantine Review, Imaginary Safe House, Grain, Canadian Ginger, On Spec, Prism international, The Fiddlehead, Utne, Crush and The Antigonish Review. They are a bi/pan+ rights advocate living on unceded Anishinaabe Algonquin territory.

Book preview

Overthinking

Eye drags computer brain,

language pack, a two-four of

thinks, brainways noting

the and/ors and whatnots, a

grammar frame, tongue tangled

in the mathematical thickets

of linguistics, exacting values,

moreovers and thuses,

ergo

Ego failed Latin classes, my operating

system developed in Nederlands,

sorts files that equal English

or Francais, mad tabbing for

fragments of Espagnol,

symbols function stops

the holes up

Let me tell you about Knowing

v. Knowledge, how, sure,

we’re never without words,

but, boy, are we without

language for this shit

Inhibition

She breaks the glass,

just like that, a new night. Oh.

Where to begin now?

Bitch

Anger, dwelling, a sorrow of stones,

no weathers but the rains

that misery us past the broken point

Rage house and drag lawn and

all the time spent,

every moment wasted

each my/our, your fault, mine,

what differences there

could still be between us,

these spaces

Anger fibres from the carpets,

fills the voids, each empty room

brimming with furniture, clocks

and

Atheism

Your the isn’t

my the is the

only the that stands

before hiss and hearse

there, the theres

are mockups of the,

not the things

the stands for

but the thing

itself, the noun

known or un,

the thing we the,

first or last,

herewithin and

the every the

between you the

me, the theirs,

lineups that wind

past storefront isms,

down blocks of the,

outward, ad