Beast at Every Threshold

• Natalie Wee’s poetry collection joins a number of strong selling, critically acclaimed poetry books from Arsenal by BIPOC authors; other recent examples include Kai Cheng Thom, Larissa Lai, Arielle Twist, Sachiko Murakami, and Tenille K. Campbell.
• Natalie writes from her perspective as a queer South-East Asian immigrant. Her poetry investigates “otherness” as the “beast at every threshold,” informing her identity and her sense of place in the world. She counts Ocean Vuong, Hanif Abdurraqib, Fatimah Asghar, Vivek Shraya, and Nataile Diaz as among her influences.
• In Natalie’s own words: “These poems came out of reflections about my time as a queer racialized immigrant woman in Canada and the violence that I lived through due to my precarious status. The poems resonate with the rage and despair I endured those years, especially without permanent status -- facing multiple barriers to healthcare and employment, living with the constant fear of deportation, being a survivor of a hate crime and sexual assault -- but also reflecting on familiar violence that I had experienced with my family, or growing up queer. It seemed at some point that I was used to enduring violence, that suffering was a constant rather than an anomaly. And so this book was born: if I died in Canada from not being able to access or afford the healthcare I needed, or as a result of xenophobic or homophobic violence, I selfishly wanted to leave a record that I lived, that I had the audacity to continue living even in these unlivable conditions. Each poem became a manifesto and reminder to live on.”
• Blurbs are forthcoming from Billy Ray Belcourt, Jen Sookfong Lee, Canisia Lubrin and others.