Wound Archive

Wound Archive is a collection of minimalist poems that archives the wound left by the concurrent ending of a relationship and the beginning of a chronic invisible illness. These poems comprise a fragmented archive in which woundedness turns language—figuratively and at times formally—upside down. The symbol of the wound recurs throughout, punctuating the ways both heartbreak and illness are experienced in the body.

"Bold fragments, intensely lyric poems, unafraid of the wounded self.  Brief but not breezy—the spare lines, sometimes tilted, sometimes cracked, make me feel the effort in them.  The wide spaces between lines mean there’s no hiding words among words, trees in a forest of language—each phrase is open to view, fully vulnerable. I want to live the way these poems live on the page." — Sue Sinclair, author of New-Fangled Rose

"So much about infirmity is waiting: like the spaces between atoms, oceans between landmasses, interregna between phenomena, or the punctuations of 'the body’s grammar.' The lyrics of Anna Veprinska’s Wound Archive are all the more consequential for having cracked the disciplines of waiting, and the code of white space. The visual-sensory language of these poems rejects the urge to fill all of the silence, allowing the spare text to breathe as the speaker, and reader, find a new rhythm beyond rupture." — Tolu Oloruntoba, author of The Junta of Happenstance

"Part Paul Celan, part Phyllis Webb, Anna Veprinska’s minimalist intervention in the Canadian book-length poem traces the 'woundboundary' of loss, grief, and illness in intimate and astonishing fragments. The poet meets dislocation in pain and in language with vulnerability and grace, as the body, 'stained with trek / with breath' becomes 'a sainted thing.'" — Cameron Anstee, author of Sheets: Typewriter Works

"Anna Veprinska’s Wound Archive is a body-poem where brevity is pain’s legibility. Veprinska’s minimalist approach breathes in pain and grief and breathes out a path for a new self to emerge after a 'collision: self with self.' Astutely aware of the vastness of illness and its effects on the body, Veprinska caresses the earth of her body and uncovers tenderness and love rooted in the places unseen. Every word on the page becomes a nerve, intensely felt." —Tea Gerbeza, author of How I Bend Into More