Deviant by Patrick Grace

Deviant as a poetry collection not only challenges accepted standards, but excavates beauty from social derision. Grace is surefooted and defiant, torquing queer love and male hostility into language that lulls and then lashes.

Oxford Languages defines a deviant as “departing from usual or accepted standards, especially in social or sexual behavior.” Deviant as a poetry collection not only challenges accepted standards, but excavates beauty from social derision. Grace is surefooted and defiant, torquing queer love and male hostility into language that lulls and then lashes. Consider “Strawberry Island” as both an early queer experience and a taste of the book’s dawning aggressiveness:

He was a boy pushing me

Down with shimmering hands,
A face that intimated a fox jowl.

Nettle breath. I was a boy
and I was lying with another boy,

Terror’s first pinch at my hamstrings,
wolf in my throat and leaping.

As a title, Deviant is unashamed, almost mocking. Although Grace speaks of the boundlessness within queer discovery, sometimes sexual “I proposition the short one around back/with a popped-fly blowjob,” Grace tempers this glee with danger, such as outlining a male domestic violence 911 call in “Document” “don’t hang up/put with those men, simple, easy.” This serves as a harsh juxtaposition of gentleness and harm that grows increasingly potent as the poems continue.

The use of fire, heat or burning is prevalent in this collection. “A Cone of Light” speaks of burning ants with magnifying glasses, that singular burning eye in “Traffic Light,” Someone’s cast fire where it shouldn’t be in “Touch Anywhere to Begin,” the headless fire growing underneath in “The Floor Was Water,” or only a flame/ where his head should be in “Vermilion.” The unpredictable and destructive power of fire runs parallel to the capabilities of men. We may only know the danger of a spark once its heat is licking at our heels. As equally, the trajectory of loving a boy to loving a man may share similarities with this insidious sort of flame.

Subject matter aside, Grace’s language is dark, surprising and effective. “Fullblown” in particular stood out with phrases such as geese V and echo or far from the wreck room shivoo. A personal favourite was My insides chime their separate lakes and sky a vermilion scythe. Deviant is both a celebration of queer love and a warning of what men can contort this love into. Grace shows us a place where it’s impossible not to cross hot tar/and think this is heaven, all this burning.

Patrick Grace is an author and teacher who divides his time between Vancouver and Victoria, BC. His poems have been published widely in Canadian literary magazines, including Arc Poetry Magazine, Best Canadian Poetry, Columba, EVENT, The Ex-Puritan, The Fiddlehead, The Malahat Review, Prairie Fire, and more. His work has been a finalist for literary contests with CV2 and PRISM international, and in 2020, his poem “A Violence” won The Malahat Review’s Open Season Award for poetry. He has published two chapbooks: a blurred wind swirls back for you (2023), and Dastardly (2021), both of which explore aspects of love, fear, and trauma that represent a personal queer identity. Deviant, his first full-length poetry collection, continues to explore these themes. Follow him on IG: @thepoetpatrick.

Publisher: University of Alberta Press (February 12, 2024)
Paperback 5.25″ x 8″ | 80 pages
ISBN: 9781772127416

Nicholas Selig

Editor-in-Chief

Nicholas Selig is a poet from Nova Scotia. His work has been featured by Contemporary Verse 2 and the League of Canadian Poets. He was awarded the Nova Writes Rita Joe Poetry prize in 2023. He is the current Editor-in-Chief for The Miramichi Reader.