Books, Readings
For Spooky Season, Nolan Natasha reads “Arachnophobia” from I Can Hear You, Can You Hear Me?
Oct
It’s Spooky Season and we’re featuring readings from some of our authors whose books explore the horrors and vulnerabilities of a life lived. Here, Nolan Natasha reads “Arachnophobia” from his poetry collection I Can Hear You, Can You Hear Me? (Invisible Publishing, 2019).
“Nolan Natasha’s collection maps the large cultural shift we’re all feeling about identity, about vulnerability, about body, about community with insight and acuity. And in this collection’s blood, in its silences, there is indeed ‘the howling wonder.’ How could there not be?”—Sue Goyette
The poems in I Can Hear You, Can You Hear Me? spark connections that alter trajectory and carry lasting resonance. Encounters across phone lines, over drinks, through walkie-talkies, and unspoken recognitions between queer bodies fill this collection with explorations of what it means to be seen. Nolan Natasha’s poetry is plainspoken but lyrical, sweet but frank, nostalgic but unromanticized, combining the atmosphere of Eileen Myles with the musical insight of Helen Humphreys.
Nolan Natasha is a queer and trans writer living in Halifax, Nova Scotia. His poems have appeared in The Puritan, The Stinging Fly, Event, Grain, Prairie Fire, CV2, and Plenitude. He has been a finalist for the CBC poetry prize, the Geist postcard contest, Room Magazine’s poetry contest, the Atlantic Writing Competition, and was the runner-up for the Thomas Morton fiction prize. Nolan grew up in North York and the Faroe Islands.