Challenging but worthwhile. Belcourt is an immense talent who forces you to read and then re-read, to grapple with what he has to say.

A phenomenal and modern, yet hauntingly beautiful poetry collection. Absolutely stunning and hard to forget.

"wonder
how many deaths it takes for a
country to
call itself
god"

What a powerful book! So delicate, raw, and at times emotional. A must-read for those who love poetry and want to get out of their social bubble.

Not for me. Unfortunately, this book wasn't what I thought it would be. Along with the fact that it doesn't align with what I believe in. In my opinion, the writing is just dreadful. The whole book is idiotic, the metaphors are absurd, & as previously stated, I do not relate with it. It was extremely bad-- I don't know what else to say.

This was an interesting collection filled with a lot of emotion. I'm eager to read more from Billy-Ray Belcourt!

I was only to the table of contents before I knew I was probably going to like this poetry collection, and only to the second poem before I knew I had to get a copy for my 19 year-old for Christmas, and a copy for myself.

I'm in love with Billy-Ray Belcourt's way with words, which will no doubt offend, confuse, anger and annoy plenty of other readers. This is raw, beautiful, ugly, fabulous, inciting poetry of the best kind, where you stop to re-read lines again and again either because they're so artfully woven together or because you want to experience or understand them at a deeper and deeper level.

Sample excerpts...
from THERE IS A DIRT ROAD IN ME:

there is a dirt road in me.
it takes you to a place like a reserve but not
because there are only cree girls
and no one is falling apart in a bad way...

from SACRED:

...and i think about the time an elder told me to be a man and to decolonize in the same breath. there are days when i want to wear nail polish more than i want to protest. but then i remember that i wasn't meant to live life here and i paint my nails because 1) it looks cute and 2) it is a protest. and even though i know i am too queer to be sacred anymore i dance that broken circle dance because i am still waiting for hands that want to hold mine too.

and from A HISTORY OF THE PRESENT:

in the 1990s,
a man raped a little girl
and the reserve caught fire.
it never stopped burning.
i mouthed the word justice
and then forgot how to speak.
if these walls could talk
they would sing country songs
about an entire generation of men who learned how to love on grindr...

After reviewing a host of Instagram throwaway poetry lately, it is so refreshing to read poems that make you think and squirm and feel and work for them.

I read a temporary digital ARC of this book for the purpose of review.

3.5, rounded up.

I don't read much poetry (ok, virtually none), as it's not a genre I either much enjoy nor find easy to parse meaning from, and I actually came across this in searching for more about the author's upcoming autobiography, which I think I will enjoy more. THAT said, these are for the most part NOT difficult poems to understand, and there are some beautiful turns of phrase here. It is also impossible not to be moved by Belcourt's explication of what it means and FEELS like to be both queer and indigenous in this modern world. I COULD have done without some of the academic and semiotic underpinnings here and there, and both the preface and epilogue made me feel I was back in grad school. I'm glad I gave this a chance though.

My sincere thanks to Netgalley and the University of Minnesota Press for granting me this ARC in exchange for this honest review.

*I received an ARC via Netgalley in exchange for an honest review. Thanks for the beautiful poetry collection.*

"This Wound Is a World" by Billy-Ray Bellcourt is a collection of poems about bodies, indigeniety, queerness, love, hate, individual trauma, collective trauma, sex, politics and much more. Even though some poems didn't resonate with me, it was greatly rewarding. "God is trans" is the beginning of one of the poems, sentences that make you stop. Others bits I particularly liked are:

"Colonialism. definition: turning bodies into cages that no one has the keys for." (23)

"femininity is a torch only the bravest men can carry." (34)

Parts of the poems are sad, mirroring the (collective) trauma while navigating identities of a modern, Native American, queer man. Beautiful. Incredibly brave and intimate!

5 Stars

What an amazing work of poetry/memoir/manifesto.

It´s was my first time reading Billy-Ray Belcourt, and I was blown away by his work.

The word wound, in the title, reveals a content that reflects of a lot of pain. Such is a memoir of an indigenous queer person, in this day in age (or many others, I don´t know).

"To be a native and a queer is to sometimes forget how to love yourself because no one else wants to
is to bandage the wounds with strangers you met an hour ago
and count the number of times
they baptize you with words like
beautiful and handsome and sexy
because sex is the only ceremony
you have time for
these days"

#ThisWoundIsAworld
#NetGalley

Thanks to Netgalley for the ARC. This was a very heartfelt collection that I absorbed quickly. I enjoyed the entire book and felt the words completely. This author has great talent.

Wound is a World is a profound collection that's not for the faint hearted. Belcourt's prose is devastatingly affecting and pulls no punches .There were times throughout I had to take short breaks to absorb it all. While the poems didn't quite hit the same mark as the prose sections, they were still of incredibly strong quality.

Look forward to reading more of Belcourt's works in the future.

With thanks to Netgalley and the publisher for the arc.

The Wound Is a World is a heartwrenching and moving poetry collection. Another thing I really appreciated was that it's queer indigenous poetry and I hope that it could pave the way fore more.

I began reading This Wound Is a World with much anticipation based on its critical acclaim. It had been on my Amazon Wish List for months. I finished it with a mix of thoughts, not surprising for a book of poetry. As a memoir, I found myself diving deep into the words and the language and the experience. As poetry, this left me a little disappointed. The recent trend in poetry seems to be riding the modern selfie wave that spreads from reality TV, to the glut of memoirs, and instagram and facebook selfcenteredness. Of course, poetry has been self-centered for a long time. But if a book of poetry is "du jour" it needs to do something different to stand out. I did enjoy Belcourt's book, but for me it didn't stand out.

"This Wound is a World" is a sad and depressing book of poetry from Billy-Ray Belcourt, in which he details his sexual experiences, which seem like empty one-night stands of a lonely person who gives up his body over and over to different men of different ages without any satisfaction or fulfillment. He likens these encounters to the indigenous peoples in Canada, where he is from, and their suffering for decades as well as their hope for the future.

The themes of pain and loss and emptiness are expertly communicated, but this wouldn't be something I would want to buy and enjoy reading in my spare time.

I received this as an eBook from University of Minnesota Press via NetGalley in exchange for an honest and unbiased review of the title. I did not receive any compensation from either company. The opinions expressed herein are completely my own.

Gorgeous, raw, unforgettable! It's always hard to review poetry, because you can't expect to connect with every single poem, every single line. The author's experiences are undoubtedly very different from my own, and so certain poems, specifically the ones focused on his romantic and sexual relationships, left a less of a mark on me than the second part of the collection. Still, the book is just incredibly powerful. Some poems should truly be a mandatory reading. I cannot recommend it enough.

Thanks to the publisher and Netgalley for the arc!

Billy-Ray Belcourt holds nothing back emotionally or creatively in this barrier-breaking collection. The poems range somewhat in form from prose-like entries to shorter stanzas, but the writing is brutally honest.

Belcourt’s work deserves recognition for the infusion of personal narrative, as well as offering a glimpse into what poetry should be and what poets can still accomplish.