Since 2012, Sarah Burgess has shaped the St. Catharines slam stage with her pessimistic, sarcastic, dark humoured commentary. Her performances are augmented by cybernetics (like a keyboard vocoder vox), assisted by orthotics, walkers or wheelchairs, and require a support person within reach. The Mule and the Bitch, the fourth chapbook by Burgess, represents the best of her confrontational poetic voice by exposing the bitter outcomes of social conformity, striking an argumentative posture without pedantry.
Burgess embodies the epitome of callout culture in a slam scene powered by the highbrow theorizing of trauma. Her poetry is punctuated with confrontational call-outs, meaning that The Mule and the Bitch will leave her allies, lovers, friends, enemies, and frenemies guessing to what extent she claims the ‘bitch’ identity in the title, and to what extent she names herself in order to justify and dismantle the bitchiness that, in her own estimation, defines her sexually liberated feminism.
Seven poems long, the chapbook’s pages are roughly misaligned, saddle stitched with a single staple. The aesthetic is a tribute to the kind of high school locker zine that amplifies or rebukes ‘mean girl’ whisper campaigns, and then shits on the cheerleaders’ favourite bands. The production aesthetic matches theme: Burgess’s poems reflect on gossip as the social consequence of impulsive behavior. Her work references bisexuality and polyamory, “Every redundant stab wound… Watch as I intimidate, manipulate, and complicate / provoke every involuntary word…”, and “Yes, I’ve done some dumb ass shit / Learn to trust / Allow me to flee… Who is she? / Do you even know?” Burgess contextualizes her need for a confessional poetics in the frustration of unfinished business.
