I Can Hear You, Can You Hear Me?

by Nolan Natasha

Intimate, nostalgic, and surprising, the poems in I Can Hear You, Can You Hear Me? spark connections that alter trajectory and carry lasting resonance. Encounters across phone lines, over drinks, through walkie-talkies, and unspoken recognitions between queer bodies fill this collection with explorations of what it means to be seen. The micro-narratives in I Can Hear You, Can You Hear Me? both celebrate and grieve the connections they illuminate. Nolan Natasha’s poetry is plainspoken but lyrical, sweet but frank, nostalgic but unromanticized, combining the atmosphere of Eileen Myles with the musical insight of Helen Humphreys. These poems bring an unflinching examination and a keen sense of humour to moments of human connection and self-exploration.

Genres: Poetry, LGBT

71 pages, Kindle Edition

First published October 1, 2019

Reviews

[Jackie · Rating 4 out of 5]

delightful!!! sweet and beautifully written queer love/nature/becoming a person poems.

[Annick MacAskill · Rating 5 out of 5]

Original and charming, Nolan Natasha's debut offers subtle lyric narrative poems that lend insight into moments of connection and queer recognition.

[J · Rating 3 out of 5]

I admit these poems didn’t quite stick the way I feel other poems do. However, I wouldn’t say I was bored with them or anything. I thought Natasha explored some wonderful ideas around queerness, many of these poems having a nostalgic tinge to them. A lot of these poem take a lot of time to reflect on the past and do some self-exploration that I appreciated.

I think the reason these poems didn’t totally connect with me might have been due to the way these poems were organized. It didn’t seem to have a particular flow that made it easy for me to see a kind of journey from one poem to the next that many other collections do.

Some favorites: “Walkie-talkie,” “30,” “Queer,” “I miss you,” “Handmade box,” “Divining,” “Sideways snow,” “From God”

[Sabrina A · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.75 stars; very nice

[Destynie · Rating 4 out of 5]

"I meet expectations now and am lost in the trees.
If there are words
for what this feels like exactly, I don't know them."

[Isabel · Rating 4 out of 5]

Favourites were "Niagara Falls," "Divining," and "National park homo."

Listened to Frankie Cosmos while reading this which felt right.

[Danny Mclaren · Rating 3 out of 5]

These poems are intimate, they feel like they are addressing individuals, places, concepts, directly. My favourites were: celebration, getting married, women’s studies, queer, and arachnophobia.