Patrick Grace's collection of poetry, Deviant, is one of the most anticipated debuts of the year, tracing a tender and salient exploration of queer identity and belonging, as well as Patrick's personal experiences with the systemic dismissal of intimate partner violence that occurs in 2SLGBTQ+ relationships.
We're stoked to have him on this Power Q & A to ask one of our most pressing questions about the collection.
Deviant is available from University of Alberta Press.
Q: Many of your poems concern agency, and often a lack of it. We’re thinking of your poems about childhood and also, the poems later in the collection about stalking and gaslighting. Would you tell us about how you approached these poems, and the challenges you faced addressing these issues?
A: There's an intentional dreamlike quality in these poems, a blurriness that kept me safe when writing the childhood ones, to counter the fear and trauma of writing about my ex-partner's stalking and gaslighting. I spent months writing about the house I grew up in, the streets, the boys I crushed on and the fantasies I had. Some are real and some are imaginary. This was intentional, a blurry dream for the reader to get lost in. In my memories I'm safe in childhood with my secrets and my desires, even if this wasn't reality. In adulthood, in the abusive relationship with my ex, I couldn't hide. I wasn't safe. My biggest challenge was questioning whether to send the poems out into the world. When "A Violence" won The Malahat Review's Open Season Award for Poetry in 2020, I remember being frightened, thinking of what repercussions would come from this. It's one of the most intimate poems in the collection about what I went through. The only truth I hold is my writing. My words give me agency over my life, to take back what was stolen from me over months of psychological abuse.
Poet Patrick Grace.
More about Deviant:
Deviant traces a trajectory of queer self-discovery from childhood to adulthood, examining love, fear, grief, and the violence that men are capable of in intimate same-sex relationships. Richly engaged with the tangible and experiential, Patrick Grace’s confessional poetry captures profound, sharp emotions, tracking a journey impacted equally by beauty and by brutality. Coming-of-age identity struggles are recalled with wry wit, and dreamlike poems embrace adolescent queer love and connections as a way to cope with the fear and cruelty that can occur in gay relationships. Later poems in the collection recall vivid moments of psychological trauma and stalking and explore the bias of the justice system toward gay men. Collecting memories, dreams, and fears about sexual identity, makes important contributions to queer coming-of-age and intimate partner violence narratives.
More about Patrick Grace:
Patrick Grace is an author and teacher who divides his time between Vancouver and Victoria, BC. His poems have been published widely in Canadian literary magazines, including Arc Poetry Magazine, Best Canadian Poetry, Columba, EVENT, The Ex-Puritan, The Fiddlehead, The Malahat Review, Prairie Fire, and more. His work has been a finalist for literary contests with CV2 and PRISM international, and in 2020, his poem "A Violence" won The Malahat Review's Open Season Award for poetry. He has published two chapbooks: a blurred wind swirls back for you (Turret House Press, 2023), and Dastardly (Anstruther Press, 2021), both of which explore aspects of love, fear, and trauma that represent a personal queer identity. Deviant, his first full-length poetry collection, continues to explore these themes. Follow him on IG: @thepoetpatrick.