Review for Disintegrate/Dissociate: Seeds of Strength

Today I filled my day with the short but well curated and deeply powerful poetry collection by Arielle Twist (George Gordon First Nation), Disintegrate/Dissociate. Originally published in 2019, the collection now has three different prints published and its popularity isn’t hard to understand. Twist, who’s "About the Author" section characterizes her as “a Nêhiyaw [Cree], Two-Spirit, trans femme supernova writing to reclaim and harness ancestral magic and memories,” is a miraculously powerful writer that is undoubtedly generous in sharing her deeply intimate, complex works with the world. And as if the novel weren’t already amazing enough, this debut collection is edited by another one of my favourite poets, Billy-Ray Belcourt, who also has deeply impactful and beautiful works (that I’ve written a review on as well if you’re interested!). She even writes a poem specifically for Billy titled “MANIFEST” that reads exactly how soulmate friendships feel.

Now, because my academic brain always reads poetry and looks for the little details that I could write a paper about, one of the first literary elements I noticed about this collection is Twist’s use of sound. In almost every single poem, there are instances of alliteration that use fricatives, namely the voiceless kind (f, s, and h), to reflect the repetitive emptiness that flows throughout many of the poems (I think). If the poems are read out loud, it is easy to place emphasis on the ongoing “s” and “wh” sounds in, for example, “I live in a city / where you can hear / whales sing, / siren songs” (Clouds). It produces this eerie feeling of echo that is further emphasized in the intentional empty spaces added in and around Twist’s words: a work of both visual and oral complexity amongst its intellectual expertise.

Twist also has an amazing use of prefixes that dictate the mood of each verse an every poem. Obviously, she uses “dis” often enough to place it in the title of the collection twice, but there is also heavy use of the prefixes “un” and “re” that illustrate the cracking violence inflicted on her body and the sowing of strength that is planted into it, respectively. It is planned, mapped, and connected in so many ways that I likely didn’t even catch in its entirety and is so beautiful to read and watch.

As I’ve been hinting, every detail about Disintegrate/Dissociate is a work of art, with the cover included in that statement. Designed by Eeyou bead artist, Saige Mukash, or Nalakwsis, I think it’s pretty safe to state that they completely understood the assignment. With strawberries and blueberries dancing across the lower half of the page as a call to the poem titled “Berries,” they look to be growing up and around the central figure that is being choked and encased by whiteness (another key theme and image throughout), as though they are growing in and around it despite it. The hair then looks to be made of feathers and flows like water into the red slash in the middle of the title section, effectively ensuring its disintegration, which also reflects the purposeful violence that Twist writes throughout. So, though it’s clear that there is an underlying, silent brutality that permeates the artwork, there is still such beauty that exists in it. This is, I think, similar to how the Canadian government and settlers continue to inflict genuine carnage on to First Nations peoples, who continue to grow and tend to themselves, their community, and the land at the same time.

In conjunction with all the technicalities that make this work as magnificent as it is, my main takeaway from the novel is that it is an Indigiqueer work of art made by and for other queer Indigenous folks that settlers like myself are fortunate to witness and should not take for granted. The imagery of sex as something that is not necessarily healing but rather violent and sometimes needed to fill in the gaps during those moments unreachable to healing processes is blunt and soul-touching in a way that I think is essential for cis straight people to see. Also, the descriptions of love that Twist has for her family, namely her mother and her kokum, are visions of cherishment that reflect one of the truest lessons of love that she emphasizes throughout the complex layers of the collection.

Long story short, Disintegrate/Dissociate is an absolutely brilliant debut book that I hope reaches as many eyes and hearts as it can!