Conyer Clayton

Conyer Clayton is an award-winning writer and editor whose multi-genre work often explores grief, disability, the climate crisis, and gender-based violence through a surrealist lens. She is the author of But the sun, and the ships, and the fish, and the waves. (Longlisted for the Pat Lowther Memorial Award and Raymond Souster Award, A Feed Dog Book, Anvil Press) and We Shed Our Skin Like Dynamite (Winner of the 2021 Ottawa Book Award), and many solo and collaborative chapbooks. They are the Nonfiction Editor for untethered magazine, a Poetry Editor for Augur, the Social Media Coordinator for Canthius and a member of VII; an Ottawa-based poetry collective. Her poetry, essays, and criticism appear in Best Canadian Poetry 2023, Room Magazine, filling station, Canthius, Arc Poetry Magazine, CV2, The Capilano Review and others.

Photo by Manahil Bandukwala

News:

-New Review of But the sun, and the ships, and the fish, and the waves. with Arc Poetry Magazine

-But the sun, and the ships, and the fish, and the waves. longlisted for the Pat Lowther Memorial Award and Raymond Souster Poetry Award!

-Three Poems co-authored with Manahil Bandukwala in CV2's Animal Issue

Order Through Anvil Press or your favorite local bookseller!

LONGLISTED FOR THE LEAGUE OF CANADIAN POETS PAT LOWTHER MEMORIAL AWARD

LONGLISTED FOR THE LEAGUE OF CANADIAN POETS RAYMOND SOUSTER AWARD

The narrator of But the sun, and the ships, and the fish, and the waves. weaves through aquatic landscapes—water parks, beast-filled lakes, vast oceans—reverting to childhood and back, foreshadowing the inevitable with a calm born of accepting the absurd. Conyer Clayton's poems, explore how we question the validity of our own memories, especially those of abuse and assault, and the way we forget—or obsess over forgetting—memories of those who’ve died. These poems validate dreams and all internal experience as authentic…even when we don’t know it.

"There is so much pain contained with this book, and through it all, the narrator survives and perseveres. While the poems do not shy away from facing suffering, neither do they crumble under its weight. ...But the sun, and the ships, and the fish, and the waves. is a powerful testimony of survivorship. Set in a surreal and dreamy landscape, these poems overflow with raw emotion and wash away expectations."

—Meaghan Flokstra, The Ampersand Review

"Clayton’s exemplary collection of surreal prose poems teaches us that surviving CPTSD is a lifelong process. A process whereby we learn to move “beyond the break.” Beyond “the sun, and the ships, and the fish, and the waves”—all those extraneous details threatening to anchor us in the abyss (“The Break”). Because those who stop treading water and “forget how to fight for life, […] are the ones who fall screaming” (“Love Interest”)."

—Elena Bentley, Arc Poetry Magazine

"From beginning to end, Clayton’s dream world remains kaleidoscopic, as ominous and cheerful as a circus or a surrealist painting. Still, the speaker in the poems remains determined, hell-bent on survival, protection, revenge. There is meaning everywhere, these poems seem to say, if you are willing to dowse for it. Or, in other words, as Clayton’s dream-self croons to a deer in a field: “I know / my hand seems empty but I’m telling you it’s / not” (44)."

—Dessa Bayrock, Canthius

"Clayton expresses the trauma of abuse and its lasting impact in viscerally evocative images...Yet this isn’t a grim book, partly because the scenarios often feature weird, funny details...but also because the speaker in these nightmarish situations actively seeks a way out."

—Barb Casey, The Toronto Star

The surrealist dreamscape of Conyer Clayton’s latest collection provides one of the most honest and visceral depictions of living and slowly healing from CPTSD that I have ever read. While the collection can be deeply triggering and terrifying at times, it is ultimately a testament to intentional and persistent survival.”

—Emma Rhodes, The Puritan

“If dreams hold metaphors, they also hold the edge of real knives, words that could cut through the page to reveal or resolve a trauma—if only the dream didn’t lurch away. In the ruthless logic of dreams (do I abandon this pig or my family?), violence and death float into view, then bubble to the surface, evaporating. The dreamer morphs through roles—woman, child, sister, daughter, lover, survivor—circling danger with the calm remove of wakefulness. Conyer Clayton’s elegant prose poems are more than a dream diary. They are a testament to survival.”

—Sachiko Murakami, Author of Render