It Was Never Going to Be Okay
Sovereignty, vulnerability, honesty. --Ms. Magazine
it was never going to be okay is a collection of poetry and prose exploring the intimacies of understanding intergenerational trauma, Indigeneity and queerness, while addressing urban Indigenous diaspora and breaking down the limitations of sexual understanding as a trans woman. As a way to move from the linear timeline of healing and coming to terms with how trauma does not exist in subsequent happenings, it was never going to be okay tries to break down years of silence in simpson's debut collection of poetry:
i am five
my sisters are saying boy
i do not know what the word means but--
i am bruised into knowing it: the blunt b,
the hollowness of the o, the blade of y
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jaye simpson is a Two-Spirit Oji-Cree person of the Buffalo Clan with roots in Sapotaweyak and Skownan Cree Nation who often writes about being queer in the child welfare system, as well as being queer and Indigenous. simpson's work has been performed at the Canadian Festival of Spoken Word (2017) in Peterborough, and in Guelph with the Vancouver Slam Poetry 2018 Team. simpson has recently been named the Vancouver Champion for the Women of the World Poetry Slam and their work has been featured in Poetry Is Dead, This Magazine, PRISM international, SAD Mag, GUTS Magazine and Room. simpson resides on the unceded and ancestral territories of the xwməθkwəy̓əm (Musqueam), səlilwəta'Ɂɬ (Tsleil-Waututh) and Sḵwx̱wú7mesh (Squamish) First Nations peoples, currently and colonially known as Vancouver, BC.
simpson's debut is a raw, introspective portrait of trauma and healing...simpson's collection bears both the pointed clarity of reflection and the present-tense weight of emotion. Immediately notable in these poems is their precise, nimble control of language, and the rhythms take profound shape when read aloud...An emotionally wrenching and linguistically mature work. --Library Journal
