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Junie Désil is of Haitian ancestry, born of immigrant parents in Montreal and raised in Winnipeg. Her debut book of poetry, eat salt | gaze at the ocean (Talon $17.95) explores the themes of Black sovereignty, Haitian sovereignty and Black lives using the original Haitian zombie as a metaphor for the treatment of Black bodies. It was short-listed for the 2021 Dorothy Livesay Poetry Prize (BC and Yukon Poetry Prizes).
Désil has performed at various literary events and festivals and her work has appeared in Room Magazine, PRISM International, The Capilano Review, and CV2. She is a UBC alumnus and a participant in Simon Fraser University's Writer's Studio.
BOOKS
eat salt | gaze at the ocean (Talonbooks, 2020) $17.95 9781772012651
allostatic load (Talonbooks, 2025) $18.95 9781772016062
[BCBW 2025]
*
REVIEW
BCBW 2020
Born in Montreal and raised in Winnipeg by parents who immigrated from Haiti, Junie Désil came to Vancouver at the age of nineteen to attend the University of British Columbia. As a student, she says she was “unused to a thirty-two-thousand-plus student body, isolated, and one of the few Black students.”
She struggled and a fellow student in an African American history class who, “noticing my struggle (sobbing openly in class, etc.),” facilitated a connection with their professor. That led to Désil being hired as a research assistant and sparked her interest in “examining and following the ‘colonial trace.’”
While still at UBC, Désil became involved with a group called Colour Connected Against Racism UBC. It was through this association that she was encouraged to publish a poem in a special race issue in The Ubyssey and started “what looks to be a lifelong passion for writing angry and impassioned poetry,” says Désil.
It all culminated in a debut collection of poems, eat salt | gaze at the ocean, exploring Désil’s experiences growing up “Black on stolen Indigenous lands” combined with her personal narrative about slavery, Black sovereignty and contemporary Black lives.
Désil probes the meaning of a zombie, often used as a metaphor for the treatment of Black bodies. Indeed, the book’s title is a reference to a supposed cure for zombification.
“feel but not too much / don’t look up” writes Désil in the poem, zom-bie | / ’zambi /. “don’t feel [because] we can’t feel [ourselves] / hearts eyes / dulled do/what/we’re/told/to so we do / what we’re told.”
Désil weaves in historical documents, newspaper articles and other ephemera as she probes the lives of Black slaves in Haiti and their fight for freedom, including a newspaper report of a slave revolt on March 13, 1792. She writes of America’s occupation of Haiti from 1915—1934 and links it to an American company that exploits Haitian workers.
“bring bodies / more / bodies / harvest bitter / sugar” she writes in gon-zo | / ’ganzou /. “those dead folks working the sugar-cane fields like it’s 1820.”
Désil continues up to the present times and the Black Lives Matter movement. In one extended poem she writes, using lower case letters: “i took a snapshot of 2016. i counted, over two hundred deaths in one year. if we’re being comprehensive, this right here does not include the dead from the transatlantic slave voyage, those who leapt to their deaths, who died beneath the cargo hold, once stolen from their ancestral lands. those who died in violent capitalist servitude, who died in violent encounters with white holders of enslaved Black people… Black trans folks. they will need another page… this list is a list of names of Black people who have died south of this ‘border,’ so you might almost want to say this list is not Canada – i dare you… this is a piece that will go on for a while till you feel as paralyzed as i continue to be.”
Her last verse is poignant: “i look at the ocean / it breathes loudly / i stare at the ocean and wonder / when will i feel alive” 9781772012651
***
allostatic load
by Junie Désil
(Talonbooks $18.95)
Interview by Beverly Cramp (BCBW 2025)
Following on from her breakout poetry collection about zombies, eat salt|gaze at the ocean (Talonbooks, 2020), which was shortlisted for the Dorothy Livesay Poetry Prize (BC and Yukon Book Prizes), Junie Désil’s allostatic load (Talonbooks $18.95) delves into the ongoing wear and tear of global racial tensions and systemic injustice. She advocates for healing despite an inhospitable world. A UBC graduate, Désil has worked in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside and is currently employed at a financial organization as manager of diversity, equity, inclusion and reconciliation. She is also a mentor for The Writer’s Studio at SFU. BC BookWorld’s Beverly Cramp interviewed Désil.
BC BookWorld: Did you discover the term allostatic load first, or did you find the term after you had written your new poems?
Junie Désil: I encountered the term allostatic load after the poems had already begun to take shape. At the time, I was reading Christina Sharpe’s In the Wake (Duke Univ. Press, 2016) and co-editing The Capilano Review’s “Weathering” issue with Phanuel Antwi. I was already engaging with Sharpe’s concept of “weather” and “total climate,” which she describes as the ongoing, atmospheric conditions shaped by Anti-Blackness. I was especially struck by her notion of “weathering” as both literal and metaphorical wear and tear. When I came across allostatic load, it felt both revelatory and deeply familiar—like a naming of something I had long sensed. It offered a scientific and sociological frame for what I had been experiencing and observing for years: the cumulative toll of constant adaptation. These concepts—weather, weathering and allostatic load—felt interconnected. Together, they gave me a language and an entry point to write about the compounding stress of living under systems that devalue Black life. They helped me articulate the chronic wear and tear, the slow violence and the pernicious toll these systems take on the body.
BCBW: Are these poems meant to be understood as coming from you personally, or is the narrator a literary composite?
JD: The narrator is deeply personal and also a composite. I originally intended the voice to be more diaristic, rooted entirely in my own experiences. And yet, as people read the collection, I noticed how often they recognized themselves in it. While I began in my own voice, I also considered making the narrator more of a composite—but I resisted creating too much distance, so there’s a balance of mostly me and incorporating others’ general/similar experiences. That said, it is important for readers to know this is me speaking, these are all true experiences. I could not have made them up. The narrator carries my voice, my questions, my memories; I wanted her to be specific and also porous.
BCBW: Does writing about racial microaggressions help you deal with them? Or is it a way of educating the broader world?
JD: Both, and more. Writing is a way for me to metabolize what might otherwise fester inside. It helps me name harm, resist erasure and sometimes even reclaim agency. My primary goal is not necessarily to educate—though if readers learn something, that’s incidental. When that happens, I try to offer enough context, but it’s ultimately up to the reader to explore further if they choose. I write to remind myself that I’m not alone. I write to connect with others who share similar experiences and to make visible what is so often dismissed or minimized. I write for those who genuinely want to expand their understanding of what it means to live in this world—for those who are willing to witness and hold the multiplicity and complexity of human experience beyond their own.
BCBW: What is your experience with “carewashing” and the impact of colonialism on healthcare?
JD: I coined the term “carewashing” to describe how systems claim to care, through messaging, language or surface-level gestures while continuing to cause harm. In healthcare, this is especially dangerous. I also try to highlight how systems of care are often underfunded, offloaded and structured to provide little more than bandage solutions. This is not about blaming individual healthcare practitioners. There are kind and committed people working within even the most harmful systems—but that’s not the point. The point is that these systems are extractive, colonial and often cause harm by design. Those working within them can become complicit—sometimes unwillingly, sometimes unknowingly and sometimes without concern. I want us to take off the rose-tinted glasses and recognize the need for truly caring solutions: ones that are holistic, community-rooted and not designed to serve profit over people. My own experiences include being dismissed, misdiagnosed and disbelieved. But these poems aren’t an indictment of individual doctors. They’re a critique of a system built on colonialism, ableism and racial bias, among other forces. I’m interested in what it means to survive, and sometimes heal, within a system that wasn’t built for us. And perhaps, how we begin to dismantle those systems and imagine something better.
BCBW: The protagonist gets some relief by communing with birds and the natural world. Do you find time to replenish in nature? What else works for you?
JD: Yes. I’ve had the opportunity to live in a remote, off-grid community where nature has become a refuge. I’m surrounded by trees, I watch eagles, ravens, vultures and hummingbirds overhead and up close. I see feral sheep and their lambs grazing, go barefoot, swim in the ocean and sit in silence—immersed in a living, vibrant landscape. These moments help me return to myself. I bake. I preserve food. I nap in the sun. Read, write. There’s something radical about moving slowly, paying attention to the natural world and disconnecting from constant noise and urgency. For me, it’s not just about healing—it’s about remembering pleasure and care in ways that exist outside of capitalism, as much as possible.
9781772016062
Désil has performed at various literary events and festivals and her work has appeared in Room Magazine, PRISM International, The Capilano Review, and CV2. She is a UBC alumnus and a participant in Simon Fraser University's Writer's Studio.
BOOKS
eat salt | gaze at the ocean (Talonbooks, 2020) $17.95 9781772012651
allostatic load (Talonbooks, 2025) $18.95 9781772016062
[BCBW 2025]
*
REVIEW
BCBW 2020
Born in Montreal and raised in Winnipeg by parents who immigrated from Haiti, Junie Désil came to Vancouver at the age of nineteen to attend the University of British Columbia. As a student, she says she was “unused to a thirty-two-thousand-plus student body, isolated, and one of the few Black students.”
She struggled and a fellow student in an African American history class who, “noticing my struggle (sobbing openly in class, etc.),” facilitated a connection with their professor. That led to Désil being hired as a research assistant and sparked her interest in “examining and following the ‘colonial trace.’”
While still at UBC, Désil became involved with a group called Colour Connected Against Racism UBC. It was through this association that she was encouraged to publish a poem in a special race issue in The Ubyssey and started “what looks to be a lifelong passion for writing angry and impassioned poetry,” says Désil.
It all culminated in a debut collection of poems, eat salt | gaze at the ocean, exploring Désil’s experiences growing up “Black on stolen Indigenous lands” combined with her personal narrative about slavery, Black sovereignty and contemporary Black lives.
Désil probes the meaning of a zombie, often used as a metaphor for the treatment of Black bodies. Indeed, the book’s title is a reference to a supposed cure for zombification.
“feel but not too much / don’t look up” writes Désil in the poem, zom-bie | / ’zambi /. “don’t feel [because] we can’t feel [ourselves] / hearts eyes / dulled do/what/we’re/told/to so we do / what we’re told.”
Désil weaves in historical documents, newspaper articles and other ephemera as she probes the lives of Black slaves in Haiti and their fight for freedom, including a newspaper report of a slave revolt on March 13, 1792. She writes of America’s occupation of Haiti from 1915—1934 and links it to an American company that exploits Haitian workers.
“bring bodies / more / bodies / harvest bitter / sugar” she writes in gon-zo | / ’ganzou /. “those dead folks working the sugar-cane fields like it’s 1820.”
Désil continues up to the present times and the Black Lives Matter movement. In one extended poem she writes, using lower case letters: “i took a snapshot of 2016. i counted, over two hundred deaths in one year. if we’re being comprehensive, this right here does not include the dead from the transatlantic slave voyage, those who leapt to their deaths, who died beneath the cargo hold, once stolen from their ancestral lands. those who died in violent capitalist servitude, who died in violent encounters with white holders of enslaved Black people… Black trans folks. they will need another page… this list is a list of names of Black people who have died south of this ‘border,’ so you might almost want to say this list is not Canada – i dare you… this is a piece that will go on for a while till you feel as paralyzed as i continue to be.”
Her last verse is poignant: “i look at the ocean / it breathes loudly / i stare at the ocean and wonder / when will i feel alive” 9781772012651
***
allostatic load
by Junie Désil
(Talonbooks $18.95)
Interview by Beverly Cramp (BCBW 2025)
Following on from her breakout poetry collection about zombies, eat salt|gaze at the ocean (Talonbooks, 2020), which was shortlisted for the Dorothy Livesay Poetry Prize (BC and Yukon Book Prizes), Junie Désil’s allostatic load (Talonbooks $18.95) delves into the ongoing wear and tear of global racial tensions and systemic injustice. She advocates for healing despite an inhospitable world. A UBC graduate, Désil has worked in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside and is currently employed at a financial organization as manager of diversity, equity, inclusion and reconciliation. She is also a mentor for The Writer’s Studio at SFU. BC BookWorld’s Beverly Cramp interviewed Désil.
BC BookWorld: Did you discover the term allostatic load first, or did you find the term after you had written your new poems?
Junie Désil: I encountered the term allostatic load after the poems had already begun to take shape. At the time, I was reading Christina Sharpe’s In the Wake (Duke Univ. Press, 2016) and co-editing The Capilano Review’s “Weathering” issue with Phanuel Antwi. I was already engaging with Sharpe’s concept of “weather” and “total climate,” which she describes as the ongoing, atmospheric conditions shaped by Anti-Blackness. I was especially struck by her notion of “weathering” as both literal and metaphorical wear and tear. When I came across allostatic load, it felt both revelatory and deeply familiar—like a naming of something I had long sensed. It offered a scientific and sociological frame for what I had been experiencing and observing for years: the cumulative toll of constant adaptation. These concepts—weather, weathering and allostatic load—felt interconnected. Together, they gave me a language and an entry point to write about the compounding stress of living under systems that devalue Black life. They helped me articulate the chronic wear and tear, the slow violence and the pernicious toll these systems take on the body.
BCBW: Are these poems meant to be understood as coming from you personally, or is the narrator a literary composite?
JD: The narrator is deeply personal and also a composite. I originally intended the voice to be more diaristic, rooted entirely in my own experiences. And yet, as people read the collection, I noticed how often they recognized themselves in it. While I began in my own voice, I also considered making the narrator more of a composite—but I resisted creating too much distance, so there’s a balance of mostly me and incorporating others’ general/similar experiences. That said, it is important for readers to know this is me speaking, these are all true experiences. I could not have made them up. The narrator carries my voice, my questions, my memories; I wanted her to be specific and also porous.
BCBW: Does writing about racial microaggressions help you deal with them? Or is it a way of educating the broader world?
JD: Both, and more. Writing is a way for me to metabolize what might otherwise fester inside. It helps me name harm, resist erasure and sometimes even reclaim agency. My primary goal is not necessarily to educate—though if readers learn something, that’s incidental. When that happens, I try to offer enough context, but it’s ultimately up to the reader to explore further if they choose. I write to remind myself that I’m not alone. I write to connect with others who share similar experiences and to make visible what is so often dismissed or minimized. I write for those who genuinely want to expand their understanding of what it means to live in this world—for those who are willing to witness and hold the multiplicity and complexity of human experience beyond their own.
BCBW: What is your experience with “carewashing” and the impact of colonialism on healthcare?
JD: I coined the term “carewashing” to describe how systems claim to care, through messaging, language or surface-level gestures while continuing to cause harm. In healthcare, this is especially dangerous. I also try to highlight how systems of care are often underfunded, offloaded and structured to provide little more than bandage solutions. This is not about blaming individual healthcare practitioners. There are kind and committed people working within even the most harmful systems—but that’s not the point. The point is that these systems are extractive, colonial and often cause harm by design. Those working within them can become complicit—sometimes unwillingly, sometimes unknowingly and sometimes without concern. I want us to take off the rose-tinted glasses and recognize the need for truly caring solutions: ones that are holistic, community-rooted and not designed to serve profit over people. My own experiences include being dismissed, misdiagnosed and disbelieved. But these poems aren’t an indictment of individual doctors. They’re a critique of a system built on colonialism, ableism and racial bias, among other forces. I’m interested in what it means to survive, and sometimes heal, within a system that wasn’t built for us. And perhaps, how we begin to dismantle those systems and imagine something better.
BCBW: The protagonist gets some relief by communing with birds and the natural world. Do you find time to replenish in nature? What else works for you?
JD: Yes. I’ve had the opportunity to live in a remote, off-grid community where nature has become a refuge. I’m surrounded by trees, I watch eagles, ravens, vultures and hummingbirds overhead and up close. I see feral sheep and their lambs grazing, go barefoot, swim in the ocean and sit in silence—immersed in a living, vibrant landscape. These moments help me return to myself. I bake. I preserve food. I nap in the sun. Read, write. There’s something radical about moving slowly, paying attention to the natural world and disconnecting from constant noise and urgency. For me, it’s not just about healing—it’s about remembering pleasure and care in ways that exist outside of capitalism, as much as possible.
9781772016062
