Them!

by Harry Josephine Giles

Them! by Harry Josephine Giles is an exuberant collection of poems about trans life as it is lived today, through the lenses of work, technology and ecology.

In Them! Giles excavates the lexicon of sex and gender, singing back with irony, fury and possibility. The visual poetics of Them! create an unusually dynamic reading experience as she finds new ways 'to sing, shout and strike in the cracks of what's possible'. We hear from 'the reasonable people' and the bureaucrats; a bewildered worker contemplates the horrors of neoliberalism; a group of women at a quiet dinner encounter a punitive, spectral guest.

Throughout, Giles weighs the artist's need for reverie against the noise that surrounds the activist. How to be both? Must we set aside the struggle in order to create, or 'to hear a bird'?

‘Poetry’, writes Giles, ‘is the best way I know to magic the rage I feel into something more alive, and to offer that spark to others.’ Drawing on an abundance of influences with subversive wit, Them! is a zestful poetic intervention from one of this generation’s most necessary poets.

'A bold and inimitable tour-de-force' – Guardian

Genres: Poetry, LGBT, Audiobook, Queer

112 pages, Paperback

First published June 6, 2024

About the author

Harry Josephine Giles is a poet from Orkney. Their PhD on the possibilities of science fiction poetry for minority language literature became the verse-novel Deep Wheel Orcadia (2021). Tonguit (2015) was shortlisted for the Forward Prize for Best First Collection, and their second book, The Games (2018), for the Edwin Morgan Poetry Award.

Reviews

[Ruxandra Grrr · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was such a great experience! I listened to the audiobook and I imagine that the physical copy is quite a different experience. Harry Josephine Giles, who wrote the wonderful space-opera-in-verse Deep Wheel Orcadia, performs the poetry and has such a lovely cadence (that I was already familiar with and was looking forward to listening again). It's a collection that's about the life of transgender people in the UK, about art and activism and work.

The production of the audiobook is absolutely fucking special. A lot of the poems have multiple sound tracks, used to very different effects. From "The Worker" (probably my favorite, because it touched some very deep anxieties I have about my own work / future / precarity), where a sort of whispering / humming background becomes increasingly more 'disruptive' to the verses - it's tough for me to talk about this, I'm not nearly clever enough or know the right language. The second track isn't disruptive to the poem itself, you see, because it is a part of it.

Then we have other poems with two competing sets of verses, on two different sound tracks. Some of these effects create noise that does disrupt your experience - appropriate for a poem like 'The Reasonable People', the type of people who take so much space in conversations just to say nothing. And in other poems it sounds like there are different iterations of the poet, coming forth to say their piece in turn, while the rest of them form a chorus, chanting in the background. It's absolutely lovely. And then there's some that I just did not get, but I closed my eyes and surrendered to them and they felt heady and haunting and flowy.

Another standout for me was "Against Waiting", where I wanted to just write it all down, but didn't want to ruin my flow. Waiting is a stationary form of walking and The mouth of a wait cannot speak, an unkind silence were all I was able to jot down. Near the end, there's a beautifully angry eulogy for Brianna Ghey that really moved me. I want to listen to some of the poems again and also read the hard copy, to get an even fuller experience.

Rating is: 4.5/5, rounded down for now, Idk, I will keep thinking about it.

[lys.istrata · Rating 4 out of 5]

“and if home is a knife, keep breathing / and do what you do until home is not a knife"

A collection that makes reading a performance in itself. Intensely raw and real.

[isaiah · Rating 5 out of 5]

i started reading this book with my toxic (borderline abusive) ex. i put it down after we broke up because i couldn’t bear to read it on my own knowing how much she connected with it.

i picked it up again, now months after being apart, and i can say that this collection means a lot to me. my favorite kind of books are ones that feel like they’re fighting back against the reader, and this definitely does. i have NEVER seen poetry formatted like this before, and it just adds to the overall experience of grief, rage, pain, and solitude that giles weaves into every poem. there’s a wit and cleverness in every word and line that i absolutely adore, and i can’t wait to read this again and again and again. <3

[Oli · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book has beautiful and meaningful poetry that speaks accurate and beautifully about trans,queer young rage and I love it although some of the more powerful points are sometimes lost by the incredibly well formatted and beautifully designed pages makeing me unsure if the poem I read is complete without listening to the audio book to get the exact works that are obscured by print and although this does add to the poems it does also add to the difficulty to physically read

[Annina ・ readers_pov · Rating 2 out of 5]

This piqued my interest, but didn't deliver. Granted, I am more fond of classical poetry rather than modern, so perhaps I wasn't the target audience for this. Mostly, I disliked how many of the poems were illegible because of their visuals. These presented more as visual artwork than artful literature.

[Caitlin Holloway · Rating 4 out of 5]

The most interesting poetry collection I’ve ever read. Rather than the honest serenity of your usual poetry collection, this book doesn’t even try to hide how rageful these poems are about the difficulties associated with the trans/queer experience and I love how that manifested in the collection. The structure was so bold and dynamic that it made for an infinitely more interesting read, especially for me who doesn’t often read poetry collections because I can find them a bit overly structured.

[Otone · Rating 4 out of 5]

“Waiting is a monstrous way of giving in.”
This collection traverses both form and thought - some very creative ways to see the thoughts of the poet and how these translate visually to the printed page.

[Phoebe · Rating 5 out of 5]

I thoroughly enjoyed the creative formatting and artistry throughout this poem collection. very fun, very raw and very trans!

My favorite poems were The New Woman and The Reasonable People

[Siobhan · Rating 5 out of 5]

I first listened to the audiobook of Them! and then I read the physical book, so my review is split into two parts:

Them! is a new collection of poetry by Harry Josephine Giles, and the audiobook is read by Giles herself, making full use of audio editing to get across poetic repetition and layering. I usually read poetry on the page or hear it performed, and this was the first poetry audiobook I’ve listened to, and wow, was it one to begin with. The collection is packed full of wit and hard-hitting moments, moving between register and style to explore the modern world of work, technology, and nature, and life as a trans person in that world.

I’m already a big fan of Giles’ work, but Them! is so packed full of things that get to me, from references to vaporwave, the Pokemon Mew, and the game Hades, to powerful commentary about existing. Many of the earlier poems take their titles from words relating to transness and queerness and I really like how these all formed different conversations with each other. A stand-out poem for me is ‘The Reasonable People’, which plays with public discourse around trans people’s existence.

I often form opinions on poetry collections based on whether they inspire me to write poems myself, and Them! was bursting with inspiration for me, and felt like a breath of fresh air, both in style and subject matter. I can’t wait to get my hands on a print copy to read alongside the audio performance and to return to over and over whenever I need it.

-

And now to return having read the physical copy. It is fascinating to see how the two versions of the text work together and sometimes against each other, with some parts easier/harder to get from the audiobook and some from the print book. I loved that the print version of 'The Reasonable People' was much more glitched and messy than the audio version, and that some poems that I didn't quite get from listening I could get a lot more from when I could see their layout on the page.

Some favourites: 'Some Definitions', 'Them!' , 'May a Transsexual Hear a Bird?', 'The Reasonable People', 'No Such Thing As Belonging', 'Elegy'.

I don't think there will be a more vital poetry collection for me personally this year. I'd highly recommend either formats or, really, both if possible.

[Juliano · Rating 4 out of 5]

“I raise my great foot over the city of speech. / My chest is bound beneath two straps. / The one is named diversity and the other is named inclusion. / When I sweep my arms through the thick air, / blessings fall to the folk below. And my foot / answers their prayer: silencing.” There is much to enjoy in Harry Josephine Giles’ poetry collection Them!, which explores ideas of queerness and transness with such rewarding originality and depth. “She aborts her own womanhood. / She takes a wire coat hanger to her own femininity.” There are several standouts, from the title poem to ‘Living’, the devolving ‘The Reasonable People’ to ‘The Hills’, ‘No Such Thing As Belonging’ to the penultimate poem, ‘Elegy’, dedicated to Brianna Ghey. I especially liked Giles’ various reflections on poetry itself: “Have you ever remembered in the middle of writing a poem or doing the dishes that you're going to die? It's banal but also magnificent, this daily confrontation with death, scrub scrub, I'm going to die, scrub scrub, I'm going to die.” “If I cannot remember / to hear a bird I cannot write / a poem. How can I lack the strength / and love to call?” “The shape of a poem is the shape of a door. / A door defines the threshold between one room and another. / A metaphor carries one idea into another, across the threshold between words. / A door can be open or closed. / A poem can be open or closed. / An open poem is legible, while a closed poem refuses reading. / A transition is a movement from one identifiable state to another identifiable state, as from one room to another, but 'trans' names both the state of having completed the movement and the state of being in movement, both the room and its door. / A transition makes public the sex that was private. / A poem makes public that something is wrong.”

[Jess · Rating 4 out of 5]

I particularly enjoyed the audiobook version of Them! Harry Josephine's intonation and use of tone is mesmerising. However, I would also love to see the print version - some parts felt so weighted in an aural production, that I can't imagine them on the page. As someone who is hard of hearing, I also feel I lost chunks of some sections through my confusion - particularly when there were multiple contrasting vocals at the same time. Likewise, my opinion of Them! fluctuated throughout the (one sitting, straight through with my headphones on) listening experience. At times, I got goosebumps, I audibly gasped, I cackled, I sucked air through my teeth, and I watched the hairs on my arms rise. But still, at other points, I was unable to interpret (and therefore connect with) what was being said - again, perhaps for me a print version would remedy this.
All in all, I found Them! to be a thought-provoking and affecting work, that veered from the soul exploring to the mundane effortlessly.
Thanks to Picador and Netgalley for the ARC.

[Grace · Rating 4 out of 5]

I particularly loved the reasonable people, although I understood and connected more to the poem when I watched a performance of it by the author. The worker was a highlight to me too.

I originally started with the audiobook but moved to a physical copy. However, I might go back and listen through as I imagine the performance is spectacular. The physical copy is a masterpiece in itself though and the styling and format of the actual words on the page compliment the subject matter beautifully.

[Steely Dean]

it is a great joy to me to sit and read a poetry book from start to finish! this i was gifted a while ago, and today i was getting a long train to scotland, so i took it for my journey.

i reallly liked a lot of the poems and found them deeply affecting.
enjoyed the themes of nature, linguistics, employment.

found the formatting challenging at places, im not sure i got everything possible out of the book. might investigate the audiobook for a reread/relisten as other reviews said that was a magical experience.

[Daniel]

For me the formatting of the book made this difficult to enjoy, on more than half of the poems the printing overlaps text in ways that makes reading it impossible. As a one off I don't mind, but so much of this experience is ruined by the formatting, it seems people have a better time with the audio book so perhaps go with that.

[Sosse Serpenti]

The audiobook is what i imagine schizophrenia must be like. Very unique way of performing the formatting of the written poems. Literally just had to sit and stare and listen.
Visceral and playful yet deliberate and urgent.
Them! = Dada!

[aubreads · Rating 5 out of 5]

a poetry collection that I will come back to again. definitely a more dense collection that takes some analysis, but when you get there, it can be wonderful

favorite: "May a Transsexual Hear a Bird?"

[Michelle · Rating 2 out of 5]

Not for me, unfortunately

[Isaac Jackson Nock · Rating 5 out of 5]

unbelievably isaac-core

[Kelly (kellyinbookland) · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book should be enjoyed as audio and visual if you ask me. It was so wonderfully bizarre doing it this way. Absolutely brilliant.

[Morgan Greensmith · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book was as strange as it was beautiful. As a trans reader, I saw myself reflected in these pages in painful and aching ways. Giles' frustration, and reveling, in the trans experience, especially focused in the British trans experience, was refreshing and healing. I do wonder how this appears on page considering the sheer amount of overlapping lines and audio design in the audiobook, but Giles' narration of the poetry really gave the words a sense of rhythm and energy.

Thank you to Picador and NetGalley for a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.