Jason Purcell

In this episode of Crow Reads, Rayanne Haines interviews Jason Purcell, a writer and musician from amiskwaciwaskahikan, Treaty 6 (Edmonton, Alberta), where they are also the co-owner of Glass Bookshop. As a chronically ill writer, Jason writes at the intersection of queerness and illness and is the author of the chapbook A Place More Hospitable (Anstruther Press). Swollening is their first full-length collection. In this conversation Jason reads from Swollening and talks about teasing out metaphorical spaces, writing the external and internal violence in the body, the parameters of giving and hiding/revealing within the practice of vulnerability as a queer writer, looking for the beats of the narrative in poem placement to orient the reader and signal underlying currents in the collection, and how being sick in a sick world may be a reasonable response.