Heartaches

Heartaches turns private history into a shared encounter. It follows Donovan Lord through love and loss, racism and homophobia, loneliness and identity crisis, mental illness and the complicated work of moving forward.

Drawn from poems written from adolescence into adulthood, the collection creates an autobiographical arc without smoothing away its difficult edges. Artwork and photography by Donovan accompany the poems, giving the book the character of both memoir and visual archive.

The result is candid rather than ornamental: a record of what hurt, what endured and what became possible after the experience was finally given language.