What Hurts Going Down: Poems

A searing exploration of girlhood in the pre- and post- #MeToo eras from the acclaimed novelist.

CBC Best Canadian Poetry of 2020

What keeps a kind girl alive in the wild? The men in town
are crapshoots, sawbucks, coins striking heads and tails.

Nancy Lee's searing collection of poems confronts how socially ingrained violence and sexual power dynamics distort and dislocate girlhood, womanhood, and relationships. Startling and visceral, the poems in What Hurts Going Down deconstruct a lifetime of survival, hover in the uneasy territory of pre- and post- #MeToo, and scrutinize the changing wagers of being female.