Jody Chan is a writer, organizer, drummer and therapist based in Tkaronto/Toronto. Chan was the poetry editor for the now defunct online literary journal, Hematopoeisis.
Poetry (Chapbook)
All About Our Futures
PANK Books, 2020.
Publisher’s Synopsis (From its website)
Weaving between generations and geographies, all our futures asks what it means to make a life in the face of climate and political crisis— how to let go of the shame that tells us we do not deserve to imagine a future we want, a future we belong in. Ultimately, all our futures says, home is a place we make. Though nothing is guaranteed — not time, not hope — Chan imagines a place beyond climate and political apocalypse (difficult, yes; abundant, yes) where queer, disabled people are needed, valued, loved. This is a book for artists and healers and organizers, and everyone who gives their breath and heart to the hard work, the heartwork, of movement-building.
Poetry (Chapbook)
Haunt: Poems
Richmond, VA: Damaged Goods Press, 2018.
Publisher’s Synopsis
None available
Poetry
Impact Statement
[Kingston, ON]: Brick Books, 2024.
forthcoming
Publisher’s Synopsis (From its website)
Borrowing and disrupting the forms of patient records, psychiatric assessments, and court documents, Jody Chan’s impact statement traces a history of psychiatric institutions within a settler colonial state. These poems bring the reader into the present moment of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual, capitalism and “money models of madness,” and “wellness” checks. Forming a ghost chorus, they sing an impact statement on migration and intergenerational trauma, gentrification, and police neglect of racialized violence against queer communities in Toronto—and how the “wrong” kinds of desire, be it across class, race, or gender lines, or towards other worlds, are often punished or disappeared. And yet, these poems also make space for what can take root, despite the impacts—care teams, collective grief rituals, dinners around a table with too many friends to fit. impact statement imagines, and re-imagines, and re-imagines again, a queer, disabled, abolitionist revolution towards our communal flourishing.
Poetry
Sick
New York State: Black Lawrence Press, 2020.
PS8605.H3545 S53 2020
Publisher’s Synopsis
None available
Awards and Honours
2018 The St.Lawrence Book Award–Poetry (Winner)
2021 Lambda Literary Award–Bisexual Poetry (Finalist)
2021 Trillium Book Award, Poetry (Winner)
Links
Jody Chan personal website
Publisher Black Lawrence Press
Publisher Brick Books
Publisher Damaged Goods Press
Publisher PANK Books