This Wound Is a World

This Wound Is a World is a poetry collection by Indigenous scholar and writer Billy-Ray Belcourt. The book won the 2018 Griffin Poetry Prize and the 2018 Robert Kroetsch City of Edmonton Book Prize. The poems examine queerness, indigeneity, and life on the Driftpile Cree Nation reserve in northern Alberta. Through verse and prose poems, Belcourt writes about love, desire, grief, and the body. Drawing from Indigenous knowledge and queer theory, Belcourt's work considers both personal and collective trauma. His poems move between intimate encounters and broader reflections on colonialism, sexuality, and healing. The collection challenges Western frameworks while exploring how poetry can become a space for Indigenous resurgence and joy. Through raw confessional writing and academic discourse, the work maps new possibilities for Indigenous queer futures.

Readers emphasize the raw emotional impact and innovative structure of Belcourt's poetry. Multiple reviewers note how the poems blend academic theory with intimate personal experiences. Liked: - Powerful exploration of Indigenous and queer identity - Creative use of form and white space on the page - Complex ideas expressed in accessible language - Incorporation of social media and modern references Disliked: - Some found the academic language too dense - A few readers wanted more narrative cohesion between poems - Several mentioned difficulty connecting with the abstract theoretical sections Ratings: Goodreads: 4.3/5 (1,000+ ratings) Amazon: 4.6/5 (50+ ratings) Representative review: "Belcourt writes with such precise language about grief while weaving in Instagram, hook-up apps, and critical theory - it shouldn't work but it does." - Goodreads reviewer Another notes: "The academic framework sometimes creates distance from the emotional core of the poems." - Amazon reviewer

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🏆 "This Wound Is a World" won the 2018 Griffin Poetry Prize, making Billy-Ray Belcourt the youngest winner in the prize's history at age 23. 🎓 Belcourt wrote much of the collection while pursuing his Rhodes Scholarship at Oxford University, where he was the first First Nations person from Canada selected as a Rhodes Scholar. 🌟 The book blends multiple genres, including poetry, prose, and theory, while exploring themes of queerness, indigeneity, and love through a distinctly NDN (Indigenous) perspective. 🖋️ The title comes from the concept that colonialism creates wounds that transform into worlds of their own—spaces of both pain and possibility for Indigenous peoples. 🏳️‍🌈 The collection specifically addresses the intersection of being both queer and Indigenous in contemporary Canada, creating what Belcourt calls "NDN love in a colonial world."