Poetry Pause is the League of Canadian Poets’ daily poetry dispatch. Read “Pain” by Tea Gerbeza, from How I Bend Into More (Palimpsest Press, 2025), shortlisted for the Pat Lowther Memorial Award. Due to its formatting, this poem is only available as an image.

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Pain

By Tea Gerbeza

From How I Bend Into More

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Copyright © Tea Gerbeza

From How I Bend Into More (Palimpsest Press, 2025), shortlisted for the Pat Lowther Memorial Award.

Tea Gerbeza (she/they) is the author of How I Bend Into More (Palimpsest Press, 2025), which won the 2026 Saskatchewan Book Awards Poetry Award, and was a finalist for the Writers’ Trust 2025 Dayne Ogilvie Prize for 2SLGBTQ+ emerging writers, the Saskatchewan Book Awards First Book Award and Book of the Year Award. She is also a co-author of the chapbook, Prairie Queers (GridLock Lit, 2026). Tea is a neuroqueer disabled writer and multimedia artist with a very loud laugh. She is one of four Pain Poets. You can find them on instagram @poetgerby. Find out more on teagerbeza.com.

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