The Lyme Letters Poems

The Lyme Letters is epistolary verse that spells out a memoir. R, a non-binary femme character, narrates their experience of disease and recovery through recurrent letters to doctors, pets, family members, lovers, and a “Master.” R, in letter form and repurposed religious texts, also explores the paradoxical experiences of queer non-reproductivity, chronic illness and disability, and the healing that can be found in the liminal spaces between.

C. R. Grimmer, who also goes by Chelsea Grimmer and uses she/her and they/them pronouns interchangeably, is a poet, scholar, and Lecturer and Assistant Director of Digital Pedagogy in the Department of English at the University of Washington (UW) Seattle and Bothell campuses. They received their Ph.D. in Literature and Cultural Studies at the UW with support from The Simpson Center for the Humanities' Andrew W. Mellon Foundation Public Humanities Fellowship. Grimmer created and hosts The Poetry Vlog (TPV): a YouTube and Podcast Teaching Channel dedicated to social justice coalitions through arts dialogue. Grimmer's poems and published articles can be found in numerous poetry and literary journals. Their chapbook O–(ezekiel's wife) is available from GASHER Journal and Press. For more information, visit crgrimmer.com.