Stigmata is about bodies caught in the crosscurrents of sexual deviancy and religion. Its poems are ruinous encounters between traumatic and historical memory; they transfigure the cult of the wound into a mystic frenzy of sex, grief, and noise. Stigmata draws inspiration from a broad archive of texts and practices: apophatic theology, body horror, gardening, queer theory, classic films, poststructuralism, and bad sex. Together its poems form a counterhistory of the wound, an experiment in fractured memoir and misplaced anatomy that weaponizes the confessional mode, wrenching it from self-narration to approach a violence that breaks language and bodies apart. Taking a cue from New Narrative writing, Stigmata fuses the “high” to the “low” — the “sacred” of theory and theology to the “profane” of leaking and lust. The result is a treacherous adventure, helped along by a bitter sense of humour, to the limits of faith and body.

Scott Jackshaw is a poet, scholar, and editor from Edmonton, Alberta. Their poetry and prose have appeared in journals including The Capilano Review, CV2, and Jacket2. They currently study as a doctoral candidate in English at Brown University.

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