We Shed Our Skin Like Dynamite
In her debut collection of poetry, Conyer Clayton hovers in the ether, grasping wildly for a fleeting sense of certitude. Through experiences with addiction and co-dependence, sex and art, nature and death, she grapples for transcendence while exploring what it means to disengage. What is revealed when you allow yourself to truly feel? What do you ask for to carry you into life, and where do you land when this fails? And when you are finally, beautifully, emptied out, who are you? The poems in We Shed Our Skin Like Dynamite wonder aloud amidst tangled revelations, and yearn to be lifted away.
Conyer Clayton was born and raised in Louisville, Kentucky, and now happily calls Ottawa home. She has six chapbooks: Trust Only the Beasts in the Water (above/ground press), /(post ghost press) Undergrowth (bird, buried press), Mitosis (In/Words Magazine and Press), For the Birds. For the Humans. (battleaxe press), and The Marshes (& Co Collective, 2017). She released a collaborative album with Nathanael Larochette, If the river stood still, in August 2018. Her work appears in ARC, Prairie Fire, The Fiddlehead, The Maynard, Puddles of Sky Press, and other publications. She won ARC’s 2017 Diana Brebner Prize, placed third in Prairie Fire’s 2017 Poetry Contest, and received honourable mention in The Fiddlehead’s 2018 poetry prize. She is a member of the sound poetry ensemble Quatuor Gualuor, and writes reviews for Canthius. We Shed Our Skin Like Dynamite is her first full-length collection of poems.
