Publisher's Synopsis
Urtica dioica is more commonly known as "stinging nettle", a name that warns of its capacity to cause harm and discomfort. But the nettle is also valued for its medicinal properties, used to treat a wide number of conditions and ailments. "water the nettles" is an exercise in exploring sources of harm and discomfort - suicide, assault, dysphoria, grief - and trying to find a way of healing, not by ignoring painful things, but by giving them the care and attention they're owed. In a series of sharp-toothed, soft-skinned confessional portraits that speak to existence within a brain, a body, or a world that seems at war with its own truth, the line between beauty and brutality becomes thinner and thinner, right up to the vanishing point.
