Shortlisted for the ReLit 2022 Poetry Award
Smart, raunchy poems that are sorry-not-sorry.
One minute she’s drying her underwear on the corner of your mirror, the next she’s asking the sky to swallow her up: the narrator of Exhibitionist oscillates between a complete rejection of shame and the consuming heaviness of it. Painfully funny, brutally honest, and alarmingly perceptive, Molly Cross-Blanchard’s poems use humour and pop culture as vehicles for empathy and sorry-not-sorry confessionalism. What this speaker wants more than anything is to be seen, to tell you the worst things about herself in hopes that you’ll still like her by the end.
“Sticky, sad, and sultry, Exhibitionist is a merry-go-round circling back to the tender, awkward parts of ourselves. Molly Cross-Blanchard allows her poems to ask the reader out for ice cream, to fart at a dinner party, to sprawl out on a chaise lounge, stare through a dusty skylight and whisper that they think they may love you. And that love will be unmistakably mutual.” —Mallory Tater, author of The Birth Yard and This Will Be Good
“Multiple orgasms appear in the first line of the first poem in Exhibitionist. Multiple orgasms, as a relative image or a practice, elicit everything from mystical worship to moral panic. Molly Cross-Blanchard understands this diametric power. She nods to this power with countless crisp and explicit images throughout her debut collection. Read her poems first to marvel at the well-crafted voicing of sexuality. Read a second time to appreciate Cross-Blanchard’s beautiful charge of juxtaposition. Again and again, she places the erotic beside mundane so that both are transformed — a dirty basement carpet becomes the backdrop of profound intimacy and gas station coffee acts as a symbol of self-discovery.” –Amber Dawn, author of My Art is Killing Me and Sodom Road Exit
"If this book had a fragrance, it'd be a Britney perfume, any one of them really, but with hints of prairie in the dry late-summer, notes of the sweet ocean smell that passes through Vancouver when the wind gets high, and a fabulous pair of overalls.” —Katherena Vermette, author of River Woman and The Break
Reviews
In Exhibitionist, Cross-Blanchard’s speaker could be the poet herself, and the depiction of desire here is tender yet awkward, fumbling. She sketches memories and lays out her longing for love and for aspirations she can never reach in language that is blunt – and at times painfully honest. —Starred Review, Quill and Quire
“Multiple orgasms appear in the first line of the first poem in Exhibitionist. Multiple orgasms, as a relative image or a practice, elicit everything from mystical worship to moral panic. Molly Cross-Blanchard understands this diametric power. She nods to this power with countless crisp and explicit images throughout her debut collection. Read her poems first to marvel at the well-crafted voicing of sexuality. Read a second time to appreciate Cross-Blanchard’s beautiful charge of juxtaposition. Again and again, she places the erotic beside mundane so that both are transformed – a dirty basement carpet becomes the backdrop of profound intimacy and gas station coffee acts as a symbol of self-discovery. ” —Amber Dawn, author of My Art is Killing Me and Sodom Road Exit
"To be naked may be to be embarrassed or empowered; it may signify innocence or knowingness; it is to be stripped bare or to be natural and whole; sexual or infantile. Exhibitionist takes on all of the above. " —Carousel Magazine
“Sticky, sad and sultry, Exhibitionist is a merry-go-round circling back to the tender, awkward parts of ourselves. Molly Cross-Blanchard allows her poems to ask the reader out for ice cream, to fart at a dinner party, to sprawl out on a chaise lounge, stare through a dusty skylight and whisper that they think they may love you. And that love will be unmistakably mutual. ” —Mallory Tater, author of The Birth Yard and This Will Be Good
“If this book had a flavour, it'd be caramel. If this book had a sound, it'd be a snicker followed by a guffaw followed by that umm sound you make when you read something seemingly familiar but drawn so differently it makes you think about it in a whole new way. this sound is on repeat. If this book had a fragrance, it'd be a Britney perfume, any one of them really, but with hints of prairie in the dry late-summer, notes of the sweet ocean smell that passes through Vancouver when the wind gets high, and a fabulous pair of overalls. ” —Katherena Vermette, author of River Woman and The Break