Raymond Souster Award nominee. Finalist for the Fred Cogswell Award. In 2012, poet Elee Kraljii Gardiner precipitously lost feeling in, and use of, her left side. The mini-stroke passed quickly but was symptomatic of something larger: a tear in the lining of an artery known as the tunica intima. This long-poem memoir tracks the author's experiences with un/wellness and un/re-familiarity with herself. Shortlisted for the Robert Kroetsch Award for Innovative Poetry, Trauma Head disturbs and disorders language and syntax to reconcile appearance with experience. Advance Praise for Trauma Head: "Elee Kraljii Gardiner's Trauma Head is a quicksilvered mirror-a startling and exquisite sequence of poems. The unspeakable' reflected is intensely fierce and sublimely sensual. Difficult, devastating, and meticulously crafted, this work is a rewarding chronicle of persistence through the trauma of recovery and return. Speech and soma are disrupted, shattered, unsheathed and reshaped-and they shimmer with Kraljii Gardiner's luminous strength and control." - Sandra Ridley, author of Silvija (2017 Griffin Poetry Prize Finalist)

Raymond Souster Award nominee. Finalist for the Fred Cogswell Award. In 2012, poet Elee Kraljii Gardiner precipitously lost feeling in, and use of, her left side. The mini-stroke passed quickly but was symptomatic of something larger: a tear in the lining of an artery known as the tunica intima. This long-poem memoir tracks the author's experiences with un/wellness and un/re-familiarity with herself. Shortlisted for the Robert Kroetsch Award for Innovative Poetry, Trauma Head disturbs and disorders language and syntax to reconcile appearance with experience. Advance Praise for Trauma Head: "Elee Kraljii Gardiner's Trauma Head is a quicksilvered mirror-a startling and exquisite sequence of poems. The unspeakable' reflected is intensely fierce and sublimely sensual. Difficult, devastating, and meticulously crafted, this work is a rewarding chronicle of persistence through the trauma of recovery and return. Speech and soma are disrupted, shattered, unsheathed and reshaped-and they shimmer with Kraljii Gardiner's luminous strength and control." - Sandra Ridley, author of Silvija (2017 Griffin Poetry Prize Finalist)

Raymond Souster Award nominee. Finalist for the Fred Cogswell Award. In 2012, poet Elee Kraljii Gardiner precipitously lost feeling in, and use of, her left side. The mini-stroke passed quickly but was symptomatic of something larger: a tear in the lining of an artery known as the tunica intima. This long-poem memoir tracks the author's experiences with un/wellness and un/re-familiarity with herself. Shortlisted for the Robert Kroetsch Award for Innovative Poetry, Trauma Head disturbs and disorders language and syntax to reconcile appearance with experience. Advance Praise for Trauma Head: "Elee Kraljii Gardiner's Trauma Head is a quicksilvered mirror-a startling and exquisite sequence of poems. The unspeakable' reflected is intensely fierce and sublimely sensual. Difficult, devastating, and meticulously crafted, this work is a rewarding chronicle of persistence through the trauma of recovery and return. Speech and soma are disrupted, shattered, unsheathed and reshaped-and they shimmer with Kraljii Gardiner's luminous strength and control." - Sandra Ridley, author of Silvija (2017 Griffin Poetry Prize Finalist)