In JUST LIKE I LIKE IT, Danielle LaFrance combines poetry and autotheory as a means of targeting ideological infatuation, spilling into an obsession with ideological abolishment. JUST LIKE I LIKE IT searches for ways to kill and abolish "it," seeking means to get it done right, even when attempted slowly and stupidly, even if the only way out is death. LaFrance draws on stupidity, sadomasochism, pretend power, parasitism, and violent revolutionary desubjectification to shape a felt experience, not so much asking as inhabiting a series of questions, including: "What are the implications of abolishing the self as it is racialized, gendered, and classed?" and "Can a theoretical framework hold every contradiction in tandem when every contradiction is substantial and felt?" Each page of JUST LIKE I LIKE IT pokes "it" awake all over again, culminating in a number of accomplished failures, including "It Makes Me Iliad," a reworking of Homer’s Iliad. Poetry, it seems, is the best weapon for wiping it out with fewer casualties – which is why it is never enough.

Following the would-be poetics mapped in JUST LIKE I LIKE IT (Talonbooks, 2019), Danielle LaFrance arrives at thinking and acting from a position where illusions are just that, illusions, and can be destroyed. She authors Friendly + Fire (Talonbooks, 2016) and species branding (Capilano University Editions, 2010).Their fourth poetry project #postdildo thinks and writes through the limitlessness and limitations of sexuality and desire. Focusing on the dildo as sexual object and social relation, they ask “How shall You fuck without causing harm?”Her poetry and critical writing have appeared in The Capilano Review, LESTE, Tripwire, and Organism for Poetic Research, among other journals and magazines.They try to live and hate to rent and work on the stolen lands of the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm, Sḵwx̱wú7mesh, and Səl̓ílwətaʔ peoples.

Danielle LaFrance's profile page

"Generative rather than conclusive, generous rather than aloof."
—The Capilano Review

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"emotional rawness and vulnerability ... and a swagger that refuses to slow or tone down"
—rob mclennan

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