nothing special forms the bulk of this chapbook. It is documentation, a recording, of my lived experience as a mother during the first years of my children’s lives (the first year with my son, the first year with my daughter). I wanted to write into that space where you cannot write. I wanted to see the descent on the page – the movement of self into this new, deeper place, where I had to begin fully anew, where every mother/birthing person begins anew. I recorded thoughts, whispers of self, happenings, memories. It is raw material, & it is shaped.
nothing special is also a refusal – a rejection of silence, of not writing about mothering & transformation of self. It is a rebuke of all those who advise women against writing about this & who keep our experiences out of journals, books, etc. It follows the voices of many other mother-writers, many whose works I cherished during these years … Anne Waldman, Adrienne Rich, Daphne Marlatt, Louise Erdrich, Carmen Giménez Smith …
aversions came before nothing special, & is the beginning of a god/religion exploration, playful & undetermined in form. The two, aversions & nothing special, seemed to fit together, this constant uncovering of self & identity, this yearning to be uncontained.
may 2022
Wanda Praamsma is a poet and writer based in Kingston, Ontario. Her first book of poetry, a thin line between, was published by Book*hug in 2014, and her chapbook, aversions // nothing special, was published by above/ground press in 2022. Her poems have appeared in periodicities, ottawater, eleven eleven, Lemon Hound, and The Feathertale Review, and non-fiction pieces have appeared in the Toronto Star.