The Rise of Genderqueer

by Wren Hanks

A truly incomparable collection, The Rise of Genderqueer constructs a voice with unmitigated and authentic yearning. Its poems soak ink into page from margin to margin, pressing into the reader’s assumptions about gender unmercifully. These poems demand, carry authentic wisdom, deliver keen argument, and disarm with sly wit. Wren Hanks challenges the status quo as neatly as a flower slid into the barrel of a rifle. These are utterly convincing prose forms studded with rhetoric he’s deftly remastered and sampled from our culture and conversations right now.

“I’ll never be denatured, // I am nature,” Hanks’s poems insist, as the reader bears witness to a bigger world, light flooding into every corner, revealing what has always been true, vigorous, and expansive.

Genres: Poetry, LGBT, Queer

39 pages, ebook

First published September 4, 2018

Reviews

[Frank Karioris · Rating 3 out of 5]

I think the difficulty with this is, just how much I wanted from the poems. Not only as the title is so sweeping and broad, but because I needed the poems to really do so much. They, in truth, did a lot; but I need to try and reflect on what they did outside of the scope of what I needed and wanted them to do.

[Alexandra · Rating 4 out of 5]

For me, the most captivating poems were the ones interspersed with the quotes from the anti-trans publications. The contrast was intense and movingly done.

[Danny Mclaren · Rating 5 out of 5]

The poetry in this collection is stunning and moving. I’ve been trying to read books that reflect my experiences as a trans and non binary person and this one speaks to my heart and my life so beautifully.

[Stine Hopsdal · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was so incredibly though provoking and ugly-beautiful that I have no words.

Thank you Read Harder Challenge for making me read poetry.

[Kelly Grace Thomas · Rating 5 out of 5]

This stunning collection should be essential reading for everyone! Fierce in form and fire, an intimate and strong collection you will read and reread.