books

 

No One Knows Us There

Book*hug Press, Spring 2025

From wherever I am, I will
send word like a golden thread,
roll an unravelling ball through time
towards myself.

In this stunning debut collection, Bronwen Wallace Award finalist Jessica Bebenek presents two distinct and moving portraits of early womanhood. The first is that of the devoted, caregiving granddaughter navigating hospital hallways and the painful realities of palliative care. The second is that of a woman a decade older, compassionately looking back on her younger self, honouring unimaginable loss and turning it into genuine healing.

At once sensual, visceral, and dreamlike, No One Knows Us There takes us from the sterility of the hospital into the sumptuous natural world. We face horror in a manicured garden and discover beauty in a suncapped lake. A theoretical mathematician leads us to an elk encounter, the crooked bodies of birds are found in the spring thaw, and we become our own pet snail in a mason jar.

Ultimately, grief is radically transformed through plainspoken yet lyrical language, and this keen examination of trauma evolves into a striking celebration of the inevitability of change.

 

praise for No One Knows Us There

The Seaboard Review: No One Knows Us There: Poems by Jessica Bebenek, by Bryn Robinson

“One could imagine that a collection of poetry that features the living decay and demise of loved ones to be deeply depressing […] but I instead found her work to be invigorating; a clear voice through the howls of grief that can only be shared and heard by only those who are alive and who understand what it means to have loved and lost.”

Forget the Box: Sentiments, Stitches, and Embodied Poetics by Dawn MsSweeney

“Reading it I could smell the alcohol, feel the evening breeze, and that melancholic sense of the moon’s magic being a mere reflection of the sun. Ah, it's beautiful and poignant, made moreso by the real life infused into the lines. This is not contemplation on the abstraction or philosophy of death, this is the reality of surviving, and I feel it in my bones.” 

Montreal Review of Books: No One Knows Us There reviewed by Frances Grace Fyfe
”For all its restraint, No One Knows Us There looks upon the world with a barely concealed wonder. What makes this an assured debut is its ability to make nature sing and to string the contemporary world to its elemental past.”

CBC Books: 35 great Canadian books to read this spring

CBC Books: 39 Canadian poetry collections coming out in spring 2025

Hamilton Review of Books: What We're Reading: Staff Writers' Picks, Spring 2025

All Lit Up: 30 Books to Celebrate World Poetry Day

49th Shelf: Most Anticipated: Our 2025 Spring Poetry Review

Publisher’s Weekly: Spring 2025 Preview

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All Lit Up: Tributaries: a poem & interview with Jessica Bebenek

"I have always loved poetry for how it gets straight to the bleeding heart of the matter. Good poetry doesn’t faff about with platitudes or long descriptions of scenery to set the mood. Even when poetry is subtle, quiet, and elegant, it is unrelenting and refuses to look away from the wound. A good poem looks directly at the discomfort and names it, unflinchingly.”

49th Shelf: “Going, Going, Gone: Poets Take on Grief” by Jessica Bebenek

“Each of these books is a doorway I’m so grateful to have I’ve stepped through. Each of these books has taught me what it means to transmute your suffering into communion.”

 

chapbooks & zines

 

You Don’t Get Out Much:

a perzine about living with chronic illness

self-published, 2024

This full-colour zine features a personal essay on what it is like living daily with chronic migraines. Featuring beautiful collages made from The Matchlock Gun (1941). 8 pages, measuring 4x5.25"

first edition of 100

I REMEMBER THE EXORCISM

Gap Riot Press, 2022

“This book is Joe Brainard’s classic “I Remember” from the perspective of a woman looking back on a formative but toxic relationship. It’s an exorcism of the lasting possessions of old loves, of insecurities and anxieties, of body politics and indie rock. It’s a reminder that sometimes we see what has to be done for a long time before we’re able—in all the ways we need to get able—to do it. It’s Manic Panic and Weezer and thigh-high socks, but with an ethos that’s so contemporary. Every reader should be prepared for moments of identification, but if you’re a Toronto hipster woman in your 30s with at least one douche ex in your emotional baggage, get ready to be seen, and sorry/not sorry ‘bout it.”

first edition of 50; sold out

 
 
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WHAT IS PUNK

self-published, 2019

This six-page risograph zine is a snapshot, a reflection on what the f*ck it even means to be punk right now. Opens up into an 11x17" poster of Iggy Pop with the full text overlaid.

first edition of 250; sold out

second edition forthcoming

k2tog

Broken Dimanche Press, 2018

k2tog is an interactive art book of knitting patterns for poems, published by Berlin's Broken Dimanche Press. This collection contains an introductory essay and 9 knitting patterns for poems by women in which the authors speak to each other through text & time. The knitted pieces, whether created by Bebenek or the reader using the attached knitting needles and twine, are the next poem in these continuing conversations. Find out more about the project and process.

Canadian edition of 100; sold out

Fourth Walk

Desert Pets Press, 2017

In her third full-length chapbook, Jessica Bebenek explores grief, mourning, and what we are left with: ourselves. These poems unflinchingly trace the end of a romantic relationship and the death of her grandfather, attempting "to give this heartbreak breath / a name.” With grit, honesty and humour, she charts her attempts to explain this year to herself, to admit “This was not a slow slip. There was pain.” 

third edition in print

 
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KETTLE SONG

Grow & Grow Press, 2014

A collection of new poems exploring intimacy and perspective, new love and the loss of it.

two editions; sold out

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THE NOVELLA PROJECT

Jessica Bebenek & Mark Jordan Manner

Grow & Grow Press, 2013

A collaborative project fusing fact & fiction, prose and poetry, fantasy and reality. Includes a short story by 'Kaz Adam Mason' on the infamous poet 'Novella Ebony Danger', as well as a collection of her poems tucked inside a back pocket of the larger chapbook.

first edition; sold out

 

return to projects page              

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I, FAMILY

Loose Ends Press, 2012

Debut collection of poems centring around family and relationships.

two editions; sold out