Thumbscrews

The 2007 Robert Kroetsch Award for Innovative Poetry Winner

Thumbscrews is a poetic engagement with the aesthetics of sadomasochism and consensual pain. It employs the techniques of mannerist poetry to constrain language as ropes, cuffs, or shackles that might be used to constrain the body. Each poem can be taken as a miniature sadomasochistic encounter where language is tied up, beaten, and twisted into submission. This book abuses language; language begs for it.

Thumbscrews engages with the sexual subculture of BDSM in content as well as in form. It explores the erotic ’scene’ and the prevalence of role-playing in the kinky bedroom, examines various settings as ‘pervertable’ locations, and chronicles a series of embarrassing trips to the emergency room. Poems are shaped from the hobbled language of email, visual representations of pain, and odes to various implements. Thumbscrews is a dirty-minded, sticky-fingered book.

Natalie Zina Walschots lives, writes and wreaks havoc in Toronto, Ontario. She writes live concert reviews, album reviews, interviews, blog posts, and articles for Hellbound, Alternative Matter, Angry Metal Guy, About Heavy Metal and Exclaim!. She is the Managing Editor of Canada Arts Connect Magazine, where she also writes the column “Girls Don’t Like Metal,” an exploration of feminism and heavy music. She has recently joined THIS Magazine as the new Reviews Editor. Along with designer Eugenia Catroppa, Natalie recently founded Golden Spruce Entertainment, a promotions company specializing in heavy music.

Natalie’s first book of poetry, Thumbscrews, won the Robert Kroetsch Award for Innovative Poetry and was published by Snare Books in 2007. Her next book, DOOM: Love Poems for Supervillains, was published by Insomniac Press (Spring 2012).