Abstract
Dear Thrillseeker is a collection of poems exploring Evangelical deconstruction, kink and sexuality, and adventure-seeking as a contemplative practice. These poems seek to illuminate the ecstatic states of awe that are possible through extreme experience and intense sensation. They find spiritual transcendence, not through dogma and belief, but through play, edge-pushing, and adrenaline-inspired revelation.
Crossing landscapes over North and South America, these poems follow the thrillseeker through various stages of becoming. The collection is woven together by a coming-of-age narrative, showing the process of breaking free from a religious homeschool community, and eventually healing the imprint of fundamentalism by learning to have faith in one’s own body and one’s own impulses. Dear Thrillseeker is a celebration of the freedom and aliveness that can be found after leaving the social and psychological confines of high-control religion. Through various iterations of thrillseeking, these poems gesture towards the value of moving towards fear, practicing stress and dread recreationally, and trusting in the pain of transformation.