Emma McKenna [photo credit: Sarah Ziolkowska] is a feminist, bi, disabled writer. Born in Duncan, British Columbia, with a childhood spent in Alberta, she has since made her home in Southern Ontario. She is the author of two poetry collections, Gold Star (Book*hug Press, 2026) and Chenille or Silk (Caitlin Press, 2019). Her poetry examines trauma and class through a lens of disabled/sick femme embodiment.
In the title poem, Gold Star, you explore multiple meanings of the phrase—from childhood rewards to its use within queer communities, alongside its history of exclusion. The poem moves between childhood shame, adult violence, and shifting definitions of identity and belonging. What drew you to place these different meanings in conversation with one another? How did the phrase “gold star” help you reflect on how identity and worth are measured or assigned over the course of a life?
This poem emerged as an exploration of how shame, desire, and danger are learned and stored in the body. How do children experience their bodies as sites of disorder and/or discipline and/or stigma and/or harm? And how do we then, as adolescents and young adults, take that messaging into exploring our own bodies and sexualities? I aimed to put into conversation the ways in which normative gender and sexual roles are internalized at a young age, and how being conditioned as a “good girl” can groom young women for abuse. Additionally, I wanted to show that misogyny can be perpetuated not only in heterosexual but in queer relationships, too, and highlight the fact that bisexual women experience a disproportionate rate of sexual violence.
I want to ask about how you use a page. Across the collection there is variation in form from how Section 271 is presented as Victory Waltz, Verse, Refrain, Chorus, and Bridge to how the poem Spider Legs climbs up the page: I want back there. I went back again. How do you use a page? Form coming first, or the truth of the text making the form?
The collection uses a variety of forms to explore the themes. In writing this book, the necessity of each poem announced itself, and through revision, the final forms emerged. The poems you mention above, Section 271, a suite poem, and Spider Legs, use form to convey the meaning in specific ways.
Section 271 is the section in the Canadian Criminal Code defining sexual assault. The legal subsections contain a lot of repetition, with numerous caveats, conditions, circumstances, etc. These “qualities” inform whether the law can be applied. In “Victory Waltz,” I play with the musicality of a waltz, the back and the forth of it, to dramatize the way in which the law interprets narratives of sexual violence. As one might imagine, who will be victorious is usually defined at the outset, but why not watch the dance unfold?
The following poems in the suite use the form of traditional song structure to capture elements of the relationality of sexual violence. In “Verse,” the singular storyline of the “victim” is set up. In “Refrain,” the poem recites interpretations and meanings of “stop.” In “Chorus,” the lack of pronouns is meant to demonstrate the interchangeability of the subject, and the ways in which the story can be shifted depending on the narrator. Finally, in “Bridge,” the poem grapples with the assigned meanings given to survivors of sexual violence.
“Spider Legs” is written as a domestic thriller in verse, depicting the banality and ubiquity of intimate partner violence. Modelled on the common house spider, each leg of the poem creeps through the hope, apprehension, and risk of maintaining a relationship with an abuser.
In the text, the body is both vulnerable to violence and a source of pleasure and power. You write, I am thrumming with power to come then come again. These experiences exist side by side, intersecting with humour and tenderness in complex ways. How do you understand these overlapping experiences of living in the body? I can feel that tension in the work, but what is it like to hold these contradictions physically, and then to translate them onto the page?
The poem “Howl” was first written as two circles. The two parts are in dialogue, and are envisioned with neither beginnings nor endings, but in an endless cycle. It was also imagined as a chorus, where every repetition saw a new vocal layer joining in. It would be incredible to perform this poem with a group, as that is the true vision of the sound of it in my mind—a cycle repeating, gaining strength, becoming loud, weakening, going dormant—asking, do shame and pleasure always coexist?
I’ve been asking writers this question: I like to read The New York Times’ By the Book, but I don’t always feel a strong connection to the authors it features, as I don’t regularly read contemporary American authors. I’ve found myself wanting a more personal version of that canon, one shaped by the writers I’m reading. So…
Where do you like to read?
I read on the couch or on my husband’s side of the bed.
Do you dog-ear your books?
I try to use sticky tabs but will occasionally fold over a page—I’m not fussy about my books. I also take a lot of books out from the library and despite all the options to make notes, etc., I rarely take advantage of any of the digital tricks.
What are you reading now? What is on your "nightstand"?
I’m currently finishing Julie Chan is Dead, a very fun novel by Liann Zhang. On my nightstand are two books in progress, The Cancer Journals by Audre Lorde, Anecdotes by Kathryn Mockler, and an old favourite, Selected Poetry by Sylvia Plath.
Bennett Malcolmson is a photographer, zine maker, and occasional writer. His photographic work has been presented at Amberhill Gallery and in an offsite exhibition with the Art Gallery of Sudbury. He has also exhibited in group shows, including with La Galerie du Nouvel-Ontario and Play Smelter, presented by The COVERT Collective. He lives in Ottawa, Ontario, with his partner Chloé and their three cats.
