The poems in SPECTACLE/SPECTATOR are lent their transgressive thematic allusions from a world in crisis. The opening poem came to me after reading Billy Ray Belcourt’s collection The Idea of An Entire Life, and how political possibilities open up through questioning the role of language. A long poem unpacks various paintings done by Kent Monkman and comics done by Mazan Kerbaj — including a mural of his entitled “Gaza Boy” adorning a wall in Metelkova, an artistic commune located within the bounds of Ljubljana, Slovenia. Other pieces are more meditative, and are inspired by the smallness of my life.
I’ve been trying to write about these large-scale tragedies and genocides through examining my own complicity and my role as a spectator. Likewise, I had the experience of going locally-viral as a teenager for some activism work I was involved in, thereby turning me into a spectacle myself. I also wanted to focus on the lack of details I could include and where our language fails. One of the pieces was written after June 23rd, 2025, when the Evin Prison in suburban Tehran was bombed by Israel — thereby killing, according to the New York Times, “about” one hundred transgender prisoners. This collection is haunted by the “about”, by uncertainty, by grief, and by wanting change.
Noah Sparrow is a Montreal-Tiohtià:ke based writer. His chapbook SPECTACLE/SPECTATOR recently appeared with above/ground press, and a second, Here I am Dying at an Average Pace, is forthcoming with Cactus Press in 2026. He won the Gabriel Safdie Poetry Award, was a finalist for the 2024 Montreal International Poetry Prize, and was shortlisted for the 2025 International Metatron Poetry Prize. Check out his work in The Fiddlehead, Scrivener Creative Review, or find more at noahsparrow.com