Myself A Paperclip

Winner, New Brunswick Book Award (Poetry)
Shortlisted, J.M. Abraham Atlantic Poetry Award

Leaving a drawer open in here
is like leaving your fly undone
is like letting a scab hang off a healing wound.

In Myself A Paperclip, Finlay sketches the internal self and the external whir of the psychiatric ward, laying bare its daily rhythms. Memories, musings, echoes, and meditations on stigma coalesce: quarters dispensed into a payphone to listen to the stunned silence of a partner; Splenda packets and rice pudding hoarded in dresser drawers; counting back from ten as electrodes connect with the temple.

Deeply personal and reflective, Myself A Paperclip confronts abuse and experiences with debilitating mental illnesses, therapies, and hospitalizations, all shaped into the remarkable form of a serial long poem.