Calgary poet-critic Nikki Sheppy reviewed my chapbook, Femme (above ground press, 2016), in the newest issue of Arc Poetry Magazine. Although the journal is not available online, above/ground editor rob mclennan was kind enough to share this excerpt of the review on the press’s blog:
In this collection, the room is a feminist forum inhabited by poet Sylvia Plath, conceptual artist Gillian Wearing, literary theorist Hélène Cixous, and postcolonial queer theorist Sara Ahmed, among others. These lines of influence are named and engaged: Polyck O’Neill invokes several titles that absorb her attention: Plath’s “Elm,” Cixous’ Stigmata, and Ahmed’s “Affective Economies.” The effect is to expand the subject, the body and its language to surrounding feminist genealogies, engendering an inquisitive dialogue that is genuinely rhizomatic. In the matter of communication, “Hers is a field model.”