Bruising Bone: life in bloom by Perry Gasteiger and Rebecca Payne

About the book: Bruising Bone: life in bloom is a book of art and poetry that examines the nostalgia, anxiety, and angst of growth and loss. Perry and Becca create a layered experience that asks the reader to participate in the creation and recreation of meaning within the book.

About the authors:

Perry Gasteiger (they/them) is a non-binary Canadian poet who focuses on the mundanity of existence through a lens of empathetic consideration. They enjoy exploring phenomenological ideas of lived experience and how they mold our understanding of ourselves and our world. By pushing the boundaries of their own experiences, Perry tries to find universalities in unique situations for people to connect through. Bringing attention to the extraordinary nature of life and pain, they juxtapose the beautiful and the deformed, the congruent and the discordant, and the comfortable and the anxious. Perry draws much of their imagery from the landscapes of northern Ontario where they grew up, and severe bodily exploration and discomfort. They find the connection between human nature and the wider rhythms of the natural world especially intriguing, taking particular pleasure in dismantling the corporeal experience into its component parts and closing the gap between the controlled and the wild.