TRANZ

by Spencer Williams

In her debut collection, TRANZ, Spencer Williams writes equally riotous and vulnerable poems, penning a love letter to trans people and their audacity to exist in a world that constantly endangers them structurally and individually. Her blistering lyrics and acerbic wit never flatten her subjects but rather filet normative hypocrisy to reveal unspoken truths. Williams observes, “i am not dangerous until i’m made in the mouth / of someone who fears me,” and remembers receiving apologies whose “guilty resonance burns / like a wet willy from god.” She articulates a vast landscape of physical and ideological violence against trans people by illuminating this fundamental “i can’t fear u less until u fear me less—.” And yet the radical poetics of TRANZ is a celebratory self-becoming. Because of Williams’ subversive genius and lyrical grace, every indictment is also a declaration of triumph, a reminder that the ever-dynamic trans community continues to thrive despite, not through, its opposition to an antagonistic cultural discourse. In every place, in every time, trans people are enduring. Extant. “on the milk carton. on the public access / television. everywhere i go i am there so brutally.” 

Genres: Poetry, Transgender, LGBT, Queer, Adult

125 pages, Paperback

Published September 15, 2024

Reviews

[Ally]

trans art is a question
the answer is always

- "ode to panic"

---

kids I grew up with

weren't queer where I could feel it. my first kiss
was an assault. my second concert was one direction.

- "god is a suspect male musician"

---

friend died. cat died. i finally took a breath and nothing
changed except i'm not sucking off men who make beats

with their roommates, am sturdy in my refusal to eat ass
for anything less than an "i love u" text.

- "one dose of anxiety meds later"

---

what i've said: i am no one.

what i meant to say: i have abandoned nothing.

[...]

what past are you staring at.

i already know
there is no body
behind me.

- "i say I am tranz and"

---

it's actually quite
simple: first I was born, then
things got boring

- "if ur gonna be transphobic at least be funny"

---

but sometimes there is love

I don't have language for. sometimes all that is left from a day's
good work is the repeating fear of having said

too much, of drawing out the same joke to a point where the mouth
won't give.

- "friendship, or I want to be where the men are"

---

the first u.s. medical institution

to perform transsexual surgery
found there was no
surgery
to cure
the public

- "tranz (an erasure of The Transsexual Empire)"

[Cherry Cheesman · Rating 5 out of 5]

Oh my god. So blow away by this. “I count the yolks of each broken year in a bowl.” WOW. I haven’t found longer poems as easy to engage with as these in a long time. I feel like I’m having a conversation with Spencer Williams, and I’m constantly at a point where I think it’ll end, but then she effortlessly pulls me back in, and we can have a laugh about it. I am sad that some of the references in here are so in-the-moment and online that they will become indiscernible in a few decades, but I am enthralled by the way in which she speaks to the Gen Z experience. Spencer Williams please please publish more collections.

[T Brown]

Real, loved this. I found her depictions of woundedness to find me through the page. Additionally, I thought the portion of the book that is intended to be read with a mirror to be a really cool, subversive poeticism. I hope Williams keeps writing!

[Jenny · Rating 4 out of 5]

A very blunt and open book of poetry, in a good and emotional way.