Holy Wild

by Gwen Benaway

Winner of the 2019 Governor General's Literary Award for Poetry Finalist for the 2019 Trillium Book Award for Poetry Finalist for the 2019 Lambda Literary Awards - Transgender Poetry Category Finalist for the 2019 Publishing Triangle Awards - Trans and Gender-Variant Literature Category Longlisted for the 2019 Pat Lowther Memorial Award In her third collection of poetry, Holy Wild , Gwen Benaway explores the complexities of being an Indigenous trans women in expansive lyric poems. She holds up the Indigenous trans body as a site of struggle, liberation, and beauty. A confessional poet, Benaway narrates her sexual and romantic intimacies with partners as well as her work to navigate the daily burden of transphobia and violence. She examines the intersections of Indigenous and trans experience through autobiographical poems and continues to speak to the legacy of abuse, violence, and colonial erasure that defines Canada. Her sparse lines, interwoven with English and Anishinaabemowin (Ojibwe), illustrate the wonder and power of Indigenous trans womanhood in motion. Holy Wild is not an easy book, as Benaway refuses to give any simple answers, but it is a profoundly vibrant and beautiful work filled with a transcendent grace. Praise for Holy Wild : "This is a heart wrenching, thought provoking, honest, and graceful walkthrough of trans realities both on the homeland and in urban settings." -Joshua Whitehead, author of Jonny Appleseed , longlisted for the Scotiabank Giller Prize, and Full-Metal Indigiqueer "As the poet says, "they want one thing and I am many." This book is many things, and we are grateful." -Katherena Vermette, author of the award-winning novel The Break "Benaway conjures trans life in a place that is both prior to and in excess of the violence that mires it. It is the emotional infrastructure for something like freedom. Let Benaway lead you there." -Billy-Ray Belcourt, author of This Wound is a World

Genres: Poetry, Queer, Indigenous, LGBT, Transgender, Canada, Feminism

139 pages, Paperback

First published September 1, 2018

About the author

Gwen Benaway is a bisexual feminist Gemini trans girl of Anishinaabe and Métis descent. She has published three collections of poetry, Ceremonies for the Dead and Passage, and Holy Wild. Her fourth collection of poetry, Aperture, is forthcoming from Book*hug in Spring 2020. Her writing has been published in many national publications, including CBC Arts, Maclean’s Magazine, and the Globe and Mail. She is currently editing an anthology of Fantasy short stories by trans girl writers and writing a book of creative non-fiction, trans girl in love. She lives in Toronto, Ontario and is always open to auditioning new Queer polyam feminist lovers, as long as they believe in Astrology and are not a Taurus. She is currently a Ph.D student at the University of Toronto in the Women and Gender Studies Institute.

Reviews

[Alex (Pucksandpaperbacks)]

It has come to my attention that Gwen Benaway has faked being Indigenous, so I no longer recommend her poetry collection.

[Hannah · Rating 5 out of 5]

deep breath

this is a collection to expand your entire body to stretch the borders of your being to teach you some stark truths about good loving & real bad loving, loving where the abuse some of our ancestors (settlers) did & do against others, the ancestors of the rightful keepers of these lands. it’s not a didactic lesson & it’s not written around & for us; it’s the writing that teaches my body the most by the spaces, the absences, the gaps, the un-knowing, calls me into deeper reality, asks me to hold myself & my people with stronger love & stronger accountability.

and also gwen has some of the most graceful, fluid skill with language i’ve read, these poems are like rivers & lakes flowing to ocean, take one breath, trust your body’s float/flow with them 🌊

[Petra · Rating 5 out of 5]

These poems are powerful. They speak to a soul searching for place, acceptance, knowledge of self and the ability to believe in the self and stand strong to one's trueness.

There's so much pain, shame, confusion in the first sections of this book. The poems are heartfelt and burrow into one's soul. Everyone, trans or other, who has ever felt different, hurt, a misfit would find something in these poems.

There's a power, too, in coming to terms with one's true self and having the courage to live that life, with all the glory and tarnishes that it brings.

Beautiful wording. Powerful poems.

[Jordan · Rating 3 out of 5]

there are many very beautiful and profound turns of phrases in this collection, but I felt myself thirsting for them in between many, many very similar stanzas about the perils of having sex with white men.

[Anne-Marie · Rating 4 out of 5]

A really beautiful, emotional collection of poetry centering around the poet’s experiences of indigenous trans womanhood and the beauty and worthiness (and the struggle to accept these feelings in a society that actively oppresses) of these bodies and experiences.

While I didn’t love every poem, and found several too similar for my personal tastes (when considering the collection as a whole) I thought she wrote a really strong and evocative collection, that’s also accessible for those newer to poetry (like me).

Definitely would read more of her poetry in the future.

My favourite poems include
Girls like me
Curiosities
Root
Dysphoria
Holy wild
A love letter for trans girls
Niibii

Side note: for those who prefer their poetry to have limited/no swearing and/or sex, this may not be the collection for you.

[Magdelanye · Rating 4 out of 5]

the middle ground of gender is a killing field. p30
from the poem Transition

The surprise is the tenderness to be found amidst the harsh celebration and raw emotion in this brave and holy wild collection.

what I want is not what I hope for
what I hope for is a love worth becoming but what I want is any love
that's possible
p47 from the poem Dysphoria

[Bogi Takács]

Wow this was strong. I want to write a longer review highlighting some of my favorite passages later.
____
Source of the book: Bought with my own money

[Nathaniel · Rating 5 out of 5]

“tonight
                    you will not conquer me
                               and I will not disappear

                                                            this is how I know

                                                                                               I’m holy
                    tonight
                         my body is not terra nullius
                                                       and you won’t save me

                         I am the wild
                                             that is not empty

                                                            the animal
                                                                      that is not dead
                         and the girl
                                        you won’t call yours

          but this is not a prayer
                    and we are not sinners
                                              to be redeemed

                         I will not call you wrong
                                             to be afraid to love me

                                                                 in your bed at daylight

                              even if bruises on my thighs
                                             flower from your mouth

                                                                                by dawn.

                              I am not a confession
                                         you make in secret

                         not a servant of God to rest my hands
                                                  on your face and forgive you

                                                        for sins I don’t believe in.

I am not Eve’s daughter
                         but Ayaash returned
                                             to Akii

                                   I will not explain what these words mean
                                                            even if I love you
                                                                      more than I love myself

                              I will text you back
                                                       a heart emoji

because tonight
                              I am not the ghost you leave behind
                                         but a softness

                                   you will never know
                                                        how to be.”

(bho “Tonight”)

sàr-bhàrdachd.

[Amanda · Rating 5 out of 5]

I loved Holy Wild. I loved its fierceness and tenderness. It moved me. Nature permeates the book in English and Anishinaabemowin, a language that Benaway notes in her note is not standardized. She comes to it as a second-language learner who is not a fluent speaker but who feels a responsibility to use the language. This is a form of acknowledgement, celebration and remembering, and just one example of how these poems expose the writer’s vulnerability as she to survive in a trans misogynistic colonizer society, to be accepted as herself, a woman who is trans and Indigenous, who is a fighter and has to be.

Benaway’s willingness to show vulnerability in the face of hatred, erasure and ignorance contributes to the strength and power of this work. Another reason why I loved the book is the well-written, well-articulated images that explore desire and the withholding of desire, femininity, indigeneity, and belonging: earth, water, light, the willow tree, “smells of old perfume embroidered in black flowers” (Curiosities); withholding of desire, shame, feelings of otherness and unbelonging: snow is “what happens when the possibility/ goes out of water” (Girls Like Me)/ Holy Wild is an intense and beautiful work. It is a book of light, blooms, comets and resistance about a girl who wants to wear a lace dress by the lake.

In the collection of great Canadian contemporary literature that finally and belatedly makes space for and celebrates the voices of those who have been ignored by the CanLit canon, I would include it as Holy Wild as a vital read, along with Trish Salah’s Lyric Sexology Volume 1, the work of Amber Dawn, Casey Plett’s Little Fish, Joshua Whitehead’s Full Metal Indigiqueer and Jonny Appleseed, Tanis Franco’s Quarry.

[Kathleen]

I feel very troubled by the revelation brought up recently by other indigenous writers that benaway can not prove her indigenous heritage. I'm saddened that this had to become a public callout (that benaway has not responded to).
I always want to & will support trans writers, but since there is this contention about her indigeneity I got caught on a lot in this book.
Other than that, the style isn't really for me.
Times are complicated.

[Andy Oram · Rating 4 out of 5]

Openly political poetry has a bad reputation--and so does confessional poetry--but Benaway turns these into a triumphant, often gripping book. She deals with both her gender transition and her indigenous background, bringing them together most clearly in the poem White Passing. The best poems, such as Phoenix, are powerful and concise. Others go on too long after the point has been made, and even (as in the poem titled Olympia, Washington) veer into a bit of adolescent mooning. Stick with these poems, though, and their graphic sexual descriptions, because Benaway is capable of giddy flights of wonderful language. I don't any words can help cis people understand what it's like to be transgender, but the mystery, pain, and self-affirmation come through in this book.

[Lawrence · Rating 5 out of 5]

I put off reading the last poem because I was somehow reluctant to finish it. Going slowly, as I did toward the end, was more rewarding. The whole volume made me feel a strange and intense intimacy/longing. The poems beautifully evoke trans experiences in the city in which I live, but not my experiences -- but so close that I can almost see them. I think it made me want my own life to be written in poetry like this. Many of the poems are also darkly hilarious in a way that made me feel that odd intense intimacy again, something like love, in the feeling that there would be many people who were not in on the joke. There were also, of course, many places where I wasn't "in" on it, which is where the longing comes in. I'm glad I read it.

[Seneca Washburn · Rating 4 out of 5]

I don’t know if I completely love Benaway’s poetry form or how she puts collections together, that’s all that knocks a star off because I love the content and the raw discussion she brings to the floor.

[Barbara McEwen · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.5 stars - some powerful, intense, emotional poetry!

[Tallon Kennedy · Rating 5 out of 5]

If you love poetry you have GOT to know Gwen Benaway and this book is a wonderful place to start. Holy Wild grapples poignantly and unflinchingly about the realities of being queer and indigenous in a transphobic settler-colonialist world. Benaway's writing is astonishingly vivid, bright, and affecting. She is a stunning writer who is skillful, accessible, and powerful. One of the best poetry collections I've read in awhile. 9/10

[Caitlin Kyle · Rating 2 out of 5]

Benaway's an undeniable talent, but the controversy around her potentially forged Annishnaabe identity makes it hard to connect with her writing. I wish she had addressed these claims in 2020. Whether they are true or not, talking about them improves our collective understanding of the effects of colonization and identity politics. I'll be uncomfortable reading more until these concerns are resolved.

[Solly · Rating 3 out of 5]

I liked the first quarter a lot, and then some of the other poems. In the end though, body and sex ended up being a prominent theme in a lot of these poems, which is fine, but is also something I struggle to get anything out of as a sex-averse person.

I enjoyed the inclusion of ashinaabemowin words/language! However, after searching the author's name on Twitter, I learned that she's been accused of appropriating the Indigenous identity in a letter by a few Indigenous authors. I'm pointing this out, but I honestly do not know enough about this to say antyhing definitive, especially since a lot of the people who seemed intent on supporting that letter (not the writers of the letter themselves) seemed awfully transphobic. I'm just leaving the info there, but from what I grasped it wasn't quite a clear-cut issue, though I can't really affirm anything as a white person. Anyway, I'm aware of the potential issue, and I think it might have tainted my reading experience a little bit.

[Zachary Littrell · Rating 3 out of 5]

Say you love contradictions,
place a hand between my thighs

An intensely personal poetry book. Really, it's less poetry and more an open, honest, and nonstop flow of Benaway's life and feelings. Even when it rambles or laps back on the same subjects --and it does get mighty repetitive-- I cannot shake the feeling that this is an important book. Benaway shines her lighthouse through the muck of reconciling the heartache and dangers, and I hope the right readers find her.

[Danny Mclaren · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of my favourite poetry books I’ve read this year. Benaway’s work is captivating, evocative, emotional, while at the same time accessible, conversational. I’m learning while I’m reading this, witnessing stories of trauma and sex and survival and womanhood and Indigineity and so much more.

[Kelly · Rating 2 out of 5]

I liked the message of these poems, but they felt very amateur.

[Derek Newman-Stille · Rating 5 out of 5]

Gwen Benaway’s collection of poetry Holy Wild is a mapping of words onto body, a play between language and the lips of lovers. Benaway explores the way that she has been shaped by the violence against her body, by the transphobia she has experienced, and by the ways that her lovers have sought to capture her essence through their desire and disgust. Yet Benaway’s poetry reveals that her selfhood is unconstrained and that her lovers and her assailants can’t grasp the complexity or beauty of her body and identity.

Holy Wild is a discourse on the body, an examination of the way that the body writes itself into the world, resisting the words that are placed on it, and instead creating its own script. Benaway tells us “A body is a story, a character in an imagined world” and “A body is a paragraph, a poem waiting to be written” and her poetry is fundamentally bio poetry, stemming from her body knowledge and experiences as a Trans Anishinabee Kwe (woman).

Benaway plays with words in her poetry, both English and Anishinabee, recognizing that a single language can’t express the extent of her knowledge and experiences. Although she admits to being a new learner of Anishinaabemowin, she draws upon her knowledge of the language to explore the complexities of her experience, weaving Anishinaabemowin and English together as an expression of her own bodily identity.

In Holy Wild, Benaway examines the way that body, history, colonial violence, sex, and gender interweave, bringing attention to the way that transphobia has been part of a colonial act and that gendered violence is a mapping upon the body of what is being done to indigenous lands. She critiques the idea of the “adventurer” with all of the cis, white privilege and violence that the word entails.

While composing a poetry of the body in Holy Wild, Benaway tells us that “I can’t compress this body into language”, revealing that her body, and bodies in general, can’t be constrained, can’t be limited by language. Yet she also reveals to us that language is sacred, telling us “What sleeps in language is what sleeps in me/ possibilities and consequences/ for which the surface has no hope,/ an unwritten alphabet of shadows/ I learned in secret, undercover from a hormonal moon/ in a dark tongue”. Her poetry paints a picture of bodily interactions, using words to highlight knowledge, witnessing the sacredness of language and of the storied body

[Sydney · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was a fantastic collection of poems by Gwen Benaway. This is an incredibly sensitive and vulnerable body of work that surrounds her experience as an indigenous trans woman. This poetry is dark, and explores many themes of abuse, body dysmorphia, transphobia, etc. Though Benaway also expresses the beauty behind both her Anishinaabe & Métis descent, as well as her trans identity.

These are really powerful poems; they are written from a very deep place. My favourite thing about this collection was the transition from the beginning of the book, where there was a lot of anger and darkness, through to the latter half where there is more soul searching and acceptance of one’s own trueness.

Though the focus of these poems is on her own lived experience as a trans woman, these poems can be for those who experience all kinds of adversity. I think almost everyone can find something within Holy Wild to relate to.

I wasn’t originally going to participate in #nationalpoetrymonth but I’m so glad I did, because it lead me to finding a poet I think is absolutely brilliant.

Benaway has published several poetry collections, with her fourth collection coming out soon (Spring 2020). She is wonderfully talented, and I highly recommend you check her out!

This is a poem called Phoenix that I really enjoyed:

I am tired of explaining the fire.
it burns because it must.
each flame is a small destiny
igniting in the heat of our bodies.
this is what you touched,
what seared us in the dark of my bedroom
twin flames, reaching out .
your hands squeezing embers, sparking.
now we’re immolated,
now we have scars that can’t fade.
graft new skin to the raised edges.
I will not burn for you again.

what we brought is not what we asked for.
someday I will forgive you in a forest,
release the unanswered words.
someday you will forgive me under a mountain,
the wounded echoes.
one day we will walk over coals,
we will call lightning,
learn to pray inside love’s furnace
without being consumed,
but I can only be this sudden torch.
you see me now or you never will.
somewhere on your palm, a streak of me
glimmers underneath calluses.
I brand you as holy.
few parts of me are left unchanged
but this remains:
wildfire, brush blaze, starburst,
this girl is a phoenix.
you can’t touch me without burning.

[❄Elsa Frost❄ · Rating 2 out of 5]

Well, this seems a bit difficult to review.

The writing style itself is simple but also woven enough into contemporary poetry to elicit a good book. For an introduction to contemporary poetry, I would say it’s a good starter for anyone beginning to enter the realm of contemporary poetry.

I did find out recently that the poet has been inconsistent with her claim of Indigenous heritage, with inconsistency of heritage and connection. Interestingly, if this is true, then her poetry about white folks violating indigenous spaces is exactly what she has done. Unfortunately, a common occurrence with Indigenous literature. It also means that this book, with its numerous poems about NDN heritage and being colonized is incorrectly portrayed as if she were being victimized. However, if she does happen to be Indigenous, then her poetry is valid.

It’s difficult to give a positive review, knowing this kind of blunder which demands a lower rating because of its portrayal of a trans indigenous woman. (Note: I haven’t yet heard indigenous folks calling for cancellation; only a clarification of indigenous heritage, accountability if she’s not indigenous, etc. In response, Gwen deleted her Twitter account.).

Other than this, there are a lot of erotic portions that may be uncomfortable for some readers. It almost reads as if she’s too hard on herself when it comes to sex.

There are also depictions of rape and violence. But sometimes it was hard to distinguish these scenes from the sex portions because of the way she words both in similar ways. Maybe this is done to emphasize how difficult it can sometimes be to tell the difference between sexual violence and just sex? Hard to say, when this isn’t clarified.

[Paige · Rating 4 out of 5]

This poetry collection is a candid, painful, sometimes hard to read examination of the author's transness and her indigenousness and how they both come together in the crossroads of her body. Benaway tells of violence, sex, love, betrayal, and a connection to land, lovers, and language that helps her gain a better understanding of the way her body and her sex have been used as a fighting ground for so long.

The looks at sex and genitalia and power and how they play a role in her relationships are honest and revealing. The explorations on the intersections of the kinds of violence perpetrated by colonial powers and white men today are poignant and upsetting to read. But Benaway also takes a moment to explore her complicated relationship with herself, and seems to come to a place of reclamation and peace.

A jarring read, but somehow still so pretty. A necessary read, especially for cis white Canadians.

[Ellen]

I won't rate this for one reason; the author's claims of indigenous heritage have come into dispute by some well-known Native American authors, and if by chance she is not of the ancestry she claims to be, this collection is filled with utter appropriation. If those authors are wrong, then I'm wrong and that aspect of this collection isn't an issue.

I originally liked what I was reading, but all the poems were so similar that after a while I got fatigued with the subject matter (sexual frustration as a Trans woman, mostly).

So, can't say one way or another what I really felt about this one. Reading it all at once, you may find, like I did, that it gets to be a bit of a broken record situation after a while, but maybe if you identify with the poems, you'll be happy to see so much on the same subject. I love to see indigenous languages used in literature, but the way the words were used would be awkward, again, if the poet is not herself indigenous.

[Kassandra · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is inevitably shadowed by the doubts raised as to the author's claims to indigeneity. That is unfortunate, because I found poems like "Transition" and "Fuck Your Fear" to be evocative of certain varieties of transfeminine experience. Being, personally, unconnected to the overlapping Canadian milieus in which these doubts have been raised (respectively, the indigenous, LGBTQ2S+, and CanLit communities), I do not have enough information to judge the allegations, so I can only recommend that readers take a skeptical, critical approach to any pieces using anishinaabemowin vocabulary and/or tropes associated with indigeneity. Ask yourself if they ring true? And then, if they do, ask yourself if that ring of truth better reflects your own knowledge, or your ignorance? If that mode of reading leaves you uncertain (as it did me), then your appreciation of this book will depend on your own comfort with uncertainty.

[Dorothy Mahoney · Rating 5 out of 5]

The colorful cover opens to mirror images on the inner front and back so that the poetry becomes the core of the illustrated woman. The indigenous artist, Quill Christie-Peters, from Thunder Bay
provides the preface to the book saying, "I hope this image acts as a portal, an invitation, and as a protocol from which to enter this beautiful collection." The poems are a documented journey of the
trans-woman in today's world. In "Root" the final image of transition "as simple as pulling bark/ from a tree without stripping/ what keeps it alive" is the mark of Benaway's poetic mastery. This is not always an easy read and some of the poems may be too long, however, the conviction is very strong for any reader:
"the most beautiful thing about you, is you."

[Shan · Rating 5 out of 5]

It's been a long time since I've had the reading experience I did with this book. While so many books can be described as "eye-openers" this book takes that to a whole new level. Gwen's experience is one that is so very far from mine and yet I could feel every single emotion, good and bad, coming through this page and hitting me deep within my core. This collection is a revelation, it is important, it is what writing at its best is.

Most importantly Gwen is a force we need in this world. The night this book won the Writers Trust Award for Poetry she was leading a protest against Transphobic hate speech in our city. She is badass, inspirational, and so very deserving of the award and our support.

[Laura Sackton]

This is another book of poetry that I just couldn't get behind structurally, in terms of language. Every now and then there was a line that took my breath away, but for the most part, the language felt vague and indistinct, and it didn't settle itself in my bones. However, the more poetry I read, the more I've come to realize that there is usually a reader for every kind of poetry, and the fact that I'm not that reader for this one doesn't at all reduce the value of this book. There is so much important, angry, heartbreaking beautiful stuff in here about being an indigenous trans woman; I'm so glad this book exists and I'll probably check out future collections from Benaway. The best poems by far for me were the ones where she writes about the physicality of bodies and desire.

[Maria Pahlman]

"For years, Benaway has traded on her Indigenous bona fides, and this aspect of her claimed identity became inseparable from her brand. Will Benaway’s 2019 Governor-General award for poetry be repealed? Will Benaway’s publisher now pulp her books?"
-Hal Niedzviecki-

I went to this not knowing about the problematic past and present of Benaway. Now that I've researched for myself and read NDN letters and calls for clarification on her part, I completely lost the taste for this author.
I didn't read the rest of indigenous poems and skimmed the final ones about transness. I'm so disappointed and sickened by the alligations and them possibly being true. At this time Benaway has yet to give an answer.