On Small Losing (Stephanie Ritzema)

Unfurling in distinct yet inseparable phases, On Small Losing is not a recollection but a real-time journal of confronting, and being confronted by, illness.

Situated within the uncertainty and absurdity of everyday life during crises, debut author Stephanie Ritzema animates the narrator and her family with vivid and depthless life in these profoundly normal moments; when going to the supermarket with her father suffering from cancer, and waiting for the train while feeling the weight of surgery scars. Across this story, layers of deceptively incidental images seep through the pores of thoughtfully-shaped poetry and warm prose, breaking the boundaries of written form and structure.

Ritzema simultaneously grounds and submerges the reader into the narrative through mindful recitation; examining the narrator through the kaleidoscopic itinerary of things she has lost, before coming face-to-face with the things she may yet lose.