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We Want It All: An Anthology of Radical Trans Poetics
A collection of formally inventive writing by trans poets against capital and empire.
Editors Andrea Abi-Karam and Kay Gabriel offer We Want it All: An Anthology of Radical Trans Poetics as an experiment into how far literature, written from an identitarian standpoint, can go as a fellow traveler with social movements and revolutionary demands. Writing in dialogue with emancipatory political movements, the intergenerational writers assembled here imagine an altogether overturned world in poems that pursue the particular and multiple trans relationships to desire, embodiment, housing, sex, ecology, history, pop culture, and the working day.
Editors Andrea Abi-Karam and Kay Gabriel offer We Want it All: An Anthology of Radical Trans Poetics as an experiment into how far literature, written from an identitarian standpoint, can go as a fellow traveler with social movements and revolutionary demands. Writing in dialogue with emancipatory political movements, the intergenerational writers assembled here imagine an altogether overturned world in poems that pursue the particular and multiple trans relationships to desire, embodiment, housing, sex, ecology, history, pop culture, and the working day.
508 pages, Kindle Edition
First published November 24, 2020
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 75 reviews
January 25, 2021
Some of the poems didn't do it for me but I think that's to be expected from an anthology of poetry. This is perhaps a silly thing to single out but I think the editing of this anthology was brilliant- particularly having the authors' names bold, large, and taking up an entire page. The power behind that, when we are so often forced to relegate our true names to parentheses or hide them behind shameful modifiers like "preferred", really exemplifies the theme of the anthology. Like, fuck you, this is my name and here is what I have to say.
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January 24, 2021I thoroughly enjoyed the intelligence, variety and sophistication of this collection. It is in the tradition of Understanding The New Black Poetry, In The American Tree, The New Fuck You, and the New Narrative Anthology- the necessary creation/recognition of a context while not demanding conformity. There were so many old friends and major poets in this collection, I hesitate to name the stand-outs. Great job by co-editors Kay Gabriel and Andrea Abi-Karam - I love the nods to ancestors - and very much appreciate the conscious political claims, and inclusive community creation. Also beautifully made by Nightboat. Congratulations to all.
August 21, 2021
This book is vast and intense and often very painful. It's also much different than I originally expected, so I had to continuously calibrate my expectations as I read. Although there are a number stunningly beautiful, astoundingly executed narrative poems in the book, there is a much greater focus on the abstract, academic, and experimentally radical. "Poetics," as the title suggests, is a more accurate term than "poetry" to describe the contents here. This anthology isn't so much about cataloguing trans experiences as using a trans lens as context through which to examine revolutionary politics. I can't truthfully say I enjoyed most of it; a lot of it was too weird for me (I respect it as an art form, just not one I care to partake in), and a lot of it was extremely bleak. There is precious little trans joy here, rather, the intent is to spark anger and action. So even though I wouldn't describe this as a fun read, I love that it exists. This kind of collection is incredibly important, and I could easily see myself returning to it over months and years. I came out the other side as a different person. I highly recommend it, with the understanding that it is emotionally tolling to read it straight through. As a reference, though, I wouldn't hesitate to describe it as a vital and necessary resource.
March 8, 2023
A formidable sibling to “Troubling the Line.” With some hesitations around the framing of trans poetics (particularly the devaluation of poetics as praxis) I give this book 5 stars — please read this as one point in a broad project rather than as a singular masterclass or primer.
February 19, 2023
This is why I love anthologies. I think there were 71 (+1) poets/authors in this rather large volume of trans poetics. I found a ton of authors to keep on eye on (especially those whose names didn't turn up any further reading options!) and several other books and collections to add to the list. My only complaint with this collection is the decision to organise it alphabetically by author. I can't think of a less interesting way to go about that, although I get that it's a lot of poems. The formatting and design were beautiful.
Some highlights from the Anthology:
1. Xtian W and Anaïs Duplan's i am not prepared is it essential to change: I don't normally love a poem formatted this loosely, but it was well done and you can read through it multiple ways, changing the meaning slightly each time.
"i keep thinking about this phrase 'amorous friendship' / friendship WHAT / A QUEER / CONCEPT"
or read another way, "i keep thinking about the phrase "amorous friendship" / as the thing i want most / if i have a goal for any of my relationships"
I couldn't find anything else by Xtian W, however, Anaïs Duplan has several poetry collections to choose from and Take This Stallion looks like an interesting read.
2. Xandria Phillips' Nativity: Both of their poems were great, but in particular, I loved the imagery of 'nativity'. Options for further reading include their first full collection, Hull, or the preceding chapbook, Reasons for Smoking.
3. Sylvia Rivera's Bitch on Wheels: This speech was a great perspective and personal account from a trans woman on the Stonewall riots.
4. Stephen Ira: A series of poems on Elizabeths? I'm not totally sure I get these, but I loved the Victorian atmosphere. It looks like he just published his first chapbook/novella in verse and it sounds amazing! Chasers
5. Samuel Ace's Body Parts: Such a clear narrative in this poem, a very sci-fi, dystopic feel to it. Body parts being grown or made in separate rooms and then the hunting down of a rare, intact human. Tons of interesting interpretation to be had. Further reading option: Our Weather Our Sea
6. Rowan Powell's the __ jumped over the _ (along a line a leap a landing): an interesting historical piece. the narrator writes to Marie Germaine, who was hung for living his life as a man married to a woman, the story weaves in other historical trans figures and notable others, like Ambroise Pare, considered a father of modern surgery.
7. Ray Filar's You've heard of Ritalin, now what if I told you governments make bodies into crime scenes for no reason at all: That title alone.
8. Leslie Feinberg (excerpt from Stone Butch Blues): A story told through a letter to an old lover about their days of gay bar nightlife and the brutality of police raids. They really need to reprint this book. It's a classic, I've wanted to read it for ages, and I don't get why it's non-existent.
9. Joshua Jennifer Espinoza's Confessional Poem, as well as Jayson Keery's Me Problem: Kind of darkly joyful, raunchy, life-is-messy poems. Many options for further reading here of Espinoza. It looks like her latest collection is Outside Of The Body There Is Something Like Hope. Absolutely nothing for Jayson Keery.
10. I loved all three of Holly Raymond's poems. Particularly the two goblin-themed ones. I'm pretty sure these came from the collection, Mall is Lost.
11. Harry Josephine Giles' Abolish the Police: Another one that I really appreciated how it was formatted for multiple reads. Deep Wheel Orcadia looks like the latest work.
12. Evan Kleekamp's from The Cloth: Really wish I could figure out if this an excerpt from a larger piece. Maybe it's in here...Once Upon a Time I Was Michael Thomas Taren.
"I left the store and carried my groceries home in a paper bag, hugging it close to my chest without using its handles. I wanted to become the dress, its repeating floral pattern. I hated looking at my face, although I knew my face was attractive. It was not my face, but it belonged to me. Or, rather, my face decided how I was perceived. I didn't care how anyone perceived me. No one perceived me in a manner that seemed to reflect who I was. Even to my close friends, I was often something other than myself. It was fine, it didn't bother me. I put the groceries away and sat down on the sofa, to read."
13. Cyrée Jarell Johnson's harold mouthfucks THE DEVIL: My absolute favourite poem from this anthology. It's dark and raunchy and perfect. Read this next, Slingshot!
14. Cody-Rose Clevidence's FOR THOSE ABT TO ROCK, WE SALUTE YOU: I'm not sure I am in love with the shorthand style of this poet, but I did appreciate the heavy nature themes across all their poems, not just the salute. AUX ARK TRYPT ICH: Poppycock and Assphodel; Winter; A Night of Dark Trees
15. Ari Banias' from The Real Me an erasure of Janice Raymond's The Transexual Empire: Each poem was formatted like a book section, Acknowledgements, Contents, etc. Potentially an excerpt from a larger piece, but I'm not sure where it came from. Read next? A Symmetry: Poems
16. Amy Marvin's The First Trans Poem: I thought this was really clever commentary and applicable to so many more discourses beyond trans. "Every trans person speaks for every trans person, which is to say there is only one trans person." There is one chapbook option, Braided Channel, if I'm hoping for more.
Some highlights from the Anthology:
1. Xtian W and Anaïs Duplan's i am not prepared is it essential to change: I don't normally love a poem formatted this loosely, but it was well done and you can read through it multiple ways, changing the meaning slightly each time.
"i keep thinking about this phrase 'amorous friendship' / friendship WHAT / A QUEER / CONCEPT"
or read another way, "i keep thinking about the phrase "amorous friendship" / as the thing i want most / if i have a goal for any of my relationships"
I couldn't find anything else by Xtian W, however, Anaïs Duplan has several poetry collections to choose from and Take This Stallion looks like an interesting read.
2. Xandria Phillips' Nativity: Both of their poems were great, but in particular, I loved the imagery of 'nativity'. Options for further reading include their first full collection, Hull, or the preceding chapbook, Reasons for Smoking.
3. Sylvia Rivera's Bitch on Wheels: This speech was a great perspective and personal account from a trans woman on the Stonewall riots.
4. Stephen Ira: A series of poems on Elizabeths? I'm not totally sure I get these, but I loved the Victorian atmosphere. It looks like he just published his first chapbook/novella in verse and it sounds amazing! Chasers
5. Samuel Ace's Body Parts: Such a clear narrative in this poem, a very sci-fi, dystopic feel to it. Body parts being grown or made in separate rooms and then the hunting down of a rare, intact human. Tons of interesting interpretation to be had. Further reading option: Our Weather Our Sea
6. Rowan Powell's the __ jumped over the _ (along a line a leap a landing): an interesting historical piece. the narrator writes to Marie Germaine, who was hung for living his life as a man married to a woman, the story weaves in other historical trans figures and notable others, like Ambroise Pare, considered a father of modern surgery.
7. Ray Filar's You've heard of Ritalin, now what if I told you governments make bodies into crime scenes for no reason at all: That title alone.
8. Leslie Feinberg (excerpt from Stone Butch Blues): A story told through a letter to an old lover about their days of gay bar nightlife and the brutality of police raids. They really need to reprint this book. It's a classic, I've wanted to read it for ages, and I don't get why it's non-existent.
9. Joshua Jennifer Espinoza's Confessional Poem, as well as Jayson Keery's Me Problem: Kind of darkly joyful, raunchy, life-is-messy poems. Many options for further reading here of Espinoza. It looks like her latest collection is Outside Of The Body There Is Something Like Hope. Absolutely nothing for Jayson Keery.
10. I loved all three of Holly Raymond's poems. Particularly the two goblin-themed ones. I'm pretty sure these came from the collection, Mall is Lost.
11. Harry Josephine Giles' Abolish the Police: Another one that I really appreciated how it was formatted for multiple reads. Deep Wheel Orcadia looks like the latest work.
12. Evan Kleekamp's from The Cloth: Really wish I could figure out if this an excerpt from a larger piece. Maybe it's in here...Once Upon a Time I Was Michael Thomas Taren.
"I left the store and carried my groceries home in a paper bag, hugging it close to my chest without using its handles. I wanted to become the dress, its repeating floral pattern. I hated looking at my face, although I knew my face was attractive. It was not my face, but it belonged to me. Or, rather, my face decided how I was perceived. I didn't care how anyone perceived me. No one perceived me in a manner that seemed to reflect who I was. Even to my close friends, I was often something other than myself. It was fine, it didn't bother me. I put the groceries away and sat down on the sofa, to read."
13. Cyrée Jarell Johnson's harold mouthfucks THE DEVIL: My absolute favourite poem from this anthology. It's dark and raunchy and perfect. Read this next, Slingshot!
14. Cody-Rose Clevidence's FOR THOSE ABT TO ROCK, WE SALUTE YOU: I'm not sure I am in love with the shorthand style of this poet, but I did appreciate the heavy nature themes across all their poems, not just the salute. AUX ARK TRYPT ICH: Poppycock and Assphodel; Winter; A Night of Dark Trees
15. Ari Banias' from The Real Me an erasure of Janice Raymond's The Transexual Empire: Each poem was formatted like a book section, Acknowledgements, Contents, etc. Potentially an excerpt from a larger piece, but I'm not sure where it came from. Read next? A Symmetry: Poems
16. Amy Marvin's The First Trans Poem: I thought this was really clever commentary and applicable to so many more discourses beyond trans. "Every trans person speaks for every trans person, which is to say there is only one trans person." There is one chapbook option, Braided Channel, if I'm hoping for more.
March 5, 2021
can i give this 10 stars
November 2, 2020
i may be biased as i have a couple poems in this book, but what a stellar array of work & it looks damn good too!
August 22, 2021
fuck. must-read for everyone.
April 24, 2024
4.5 rounded up🏳️⚧️
January 21, 2022
Oh my god
this should be required reading everywhere
thank you to the editors, contributors, and supporters for compiling this book.
it is so, so nice to feel seen.
(also--beautifully typeset/laid out on the page, as some other folks have pointed out!)
this should be required reading everywhere
thank you to the editors, contributors, and supporters for compiling this book.
it is so, so nice to feel seen.
(also--beautifully typeset/laid out on the page, as some other folks have pointed out!)
July 11, 2021
trans writers are doing showstopping things with language and lyric! "radical" seems to have a lot of mainstream currency these days but in the case of this anthology it's totally earned
*
"Abolish The Police" by Harry Josephine Giles
The moon is doing poemy things & so he takes
a police apart: a police is held in the silver column
& extracted from himself. His head, yes, detaches,
but without much drama, & his arms are peeled with the love
of a Cheestring Original, cop-strips inspected
by stubbornly poemy moonlight. The moon spins the dead police
& the dead police uniform & the moon vanishes all
the dead police to the dead moon sea where there is quiet.
“I’m sorry,” says the moon, “that I never did this before.”
& the people forgive the moon & let go their poems.
*
"Pollinate; by hand" by Cody-Rose Clevidence
polinate .by hand /dysph
or [aria{ “of th state of th flesh” what
is this [my nest] go down,
Calliope, catastrophe, my eros
from whim 2 prayer [each
wing bare | o sun o this
weird communion—]
{} several aphorisms: “th throats
of stallions th throats
of egrets th throats
of men.” – 2 get a grip
on [[ oneself, like that—
[show me] own hive
aswarm in sunlight, own hive,
my hand, palm up [o sting]
so soft what’s this
new thing in me | in this
dizzying carousel of
dew n dawn n sunday
afternoon () which kind
of coward are you, which
am I—
*
"Abolish The Police" by Harry Josephine Giles
The moon is doing poemy things & so he takes
a police apart: a police is held in the silver column
& extracted from himself. His head, yes, detaches,
but without much drama, & his arms are peeled with the love
of a Cheestring Original, cop-strips inspected
by stubbornly poemy moonlight. The moon spins the dead police
& the dead police uniform & the moon vanishes all
the dead police to the dead moon sea where there is quiet.
“I’m sorry,” says the moon, “that I never did this before.”
& the people forgive the moon & let go their poems.
*
"Pollinate; by hand" by Cody-Rose Clevidence
polinate .by hand /dysph
or [aria{ “of th state of th flesh” what
is this [my nest] go down,
Calliope, catastrophe, my eros
from whim 2 prayer [each
wing bare | o sun o this
weird communion—]
{} several aphorisms: “th throats
of stallions th throats
of egrets th throats
of men.” – 2 get a grip
on [[ oneself, like that—
[show me] own hive
aswarm in sunlight, own hive,
my hand, palm up [o sting]
so soft what’s this
new thing in me | in this
dizzying carousel of
dew n dawn n sunday
afternoon () which kind
of coward are you, which
am I—
November 25, 2023
this was a LOT. took me a few years to get through it cuz I kept stopping and starting again. there is tons of great stuff here, but like any anthology there was just SO much content that a lot didn’t connect with me. still I think it’s awesome that such a vast and radical (both in the political and “wow, this is cool!” sense) collection of trans poetry exists and I will definitely be revisiting this in the future.
favorite poems (for my own future reference):
- Hey guys (p. 23)
- TO THE COP WHO READ MY TEXT MESSAGES (pg. 29)
- harold mouthfucks THE DEVIL (pg. 119)
- CONFESSIONAL POEM (pg. 199)
- Sunset Vans (pg. 305) & Enclosure (pg. 309)
favorite poems (for my own future reference):
- Hey guys (p. 23)
- TO THE COP WHO READ MY TEXT MESSAGES (pg. 29)
- harold mouthfucks THE DEVIL (pg. 119)
- CONFESSIONAL POEM (pg. 199)
- Sunset Vans (pg. 305) & Enclosure (pg. 309)
April 1, 2026
so good and urgent - great poetry but also doubles as a condensed book of forgotten histories and triples as a kaleidoscopic sampler of philosophies and schools of thought for closer study in the anthropocene (semiotics, somatics, queer phenomenology, ecology, medieval history, many shades of humanism vs transhumanism, etc etc). will def write something longer about this one on substack but still processing my thoughts
November 28, 2024
4.5
super experimental + had to use a lot of brain power to read, but it felt really good to be reading a collection of trans writers who are pushing the boundaries of what it means to look at labor rights / community / the government / sex / etc… the curation of the anthology felt super intentional, as well, with the authors all coming from an incredibly diverse set of backgrounds. loved!
super experimental + had to use a lot of brain power to read, but it felt really good to be reading a collection of trans writers who are pushing the boundaries of what it means to look at labor rights / community / the government / sex / etc… the curation of the anthology felt super intentional, as well, with the authors all coming from an incredibly diverse set of backgrounds. loved!
Read
January 8, 2026I think this is an important addition to the poetry canon. Did every poem hit, of course not. Some of the really great ones stood out and the rest I couldn’t even tell you what was discussed. However, I did pick up a few writers that I will be on the lookout for in the future (Joshua Jennifer Espinoza, Leslie Feinberg, Lou Sullivan, Ray Filar and Ty Little to name a few)
April 24, 2024
I liked a lot of the poems in here, but because this is anthology there were also a lot of “just ok” poems unfortunately. I did enjoy hearing from a lot of trans writers though so overall, glad that I read it.
August 21, 2021
lovely anthology. Some of my favorites off the top of my head were "abolish the police" by Harry Josephine Giles, poems by Aeon Ginsberg, and Companion Poetica by Liam O'Brien.
December 30, 2022
Hard to review such a long anthology, but it was great. Lots of variety in subject and experimentation with form. I've got lots of creased page corners and lots of poets to learn more about!
March 2, 2023
this is amazing. and powerful. and beautiful. and even informative. this is what I want poetry to make me feel like
June 22, 2023
This is a must read.
January 31, 2024
thankful for the love & care put into this anthology. reminded me of pieces i already cherished + introduced me to several new authors
Read
July 6, 2022I have approached this book twice; the first time, I was flippant and treated it like a zoo animal, like something bizarre on display, not something that real people wrote. This second time, I decided I wanted to come at it with more openness, and to actually read the introduction and think about it more. Because if you simply pick up the book and flip to a random page, you’ll likely be blasted by something exceptionally obscene or even uncomfortably funny. But what is the thought process behind this offensive, radical, political project?
Another impetus for me to treat this collection more kindly was the harsh and pathetic words from Jordan Peterson about his Twitter suspension, and his thoughtlessly harmful tweet that finally got him suspended. I was shocked at the lack of wisdom, patience, or tact that Dr. Peterson displayed, and I’m ashamed that I used to listen to his lectures back in undergrad. The worst part is that so many people still blindly agree with him (look at the comment section), despite his countless blunders and shit-takes (which have been increasing exponentially lately).
What Peterson’s tirade showed me was exactly how NOT to approach the entire trans issue. So many people today are quick to jump into one trench or another, when of course the Bible doesn’t talk about this, and it’s not obvious what trans people really are. Is trans-ness primarily a linguistic, gender expression (fashion), psychiatric, or medical issue? All of the above? Is it imposed from without by culture or politics, or is it from within (self-imposed)? In all likelihood, one’s starting assumptions decide how one approaches the entire issue. It is a very new issue, which I think means we should be extra patient with the whole thing.
So let’s hear it from trans people themselves; not, as the introduction points out, a cliched voice, nor a commercialized one, but a radical, political version:
Since the so-called tipping point, opportunistic publishers have attempted to instrumentalize trans writing for profit; we’re asked to transform even a brutal personal experience of abjection into titillating narratives for bourgeois readers eager to consume stories of trans pain. This process more or less represents how capital turns the precarity and violence of trans lives into cultural commodities.
It is this very commercialization which complicates the entire trans issue, because there are a lot of opportunistic surgeons, psychiatrists, and others who I fear may be manipulating people or at the very least profiting off the dysphoria and confusion of others. This is a similar point to what Peterson made in that video, but I’m choosing to couch it in empathy instead of combative frustration. In this introduction, I was reminded of another moment in Peterson’s rise to fame, when he was on a panel on TVO which featured a trans person; the most interesting thing was that the trans person actually agreed with Peterson, and they said that most trans people just want to be left alone, they don’t want the spotlight. But this book, in the tradition of the recent Antiracists and others, prefers exemplifying the differences, not negating or minimizing them (that’s what the reformists would want, after all). The reason they do this is because they see threats to their very trans-ness itself, to their bodies (which is the focal point of their worldview and the movement itself); these threats come from the police, prom prisons, from capitalism, from poverty, etc., all of which tend to be especially harsh to trans people.
But this raises the question of if one has to be a leftist to be a “true” trans person. For example, what about Kaitlyn Jenner and her running for political office as a Republican? What about the parallel issue in race of being “black enough”, like in Biden’s infamous “if you don’t vote for me, you ain’t black” quote? Can one sell out to the capitalistic publishers and give them the “titillating narratives” mentioned above, yet still be a true trans person? In other words, how entrenched in the trans experience is politics? This collection of poems is explicitly radical (it’s in the name), but are there moderate trans people, like the one in the TVO interview? These questions echo throughout the many pages of this tome, and I think they’re mostly left unanswered. Perhaps, like Zizek says about philosophy, the aim was to dig up more questions, rather than answer our pre-existing questions.
Though the introduction stresses that the editors wanted to have “An exuberant–rather than despairing” poetry, there is an exceptional amount of anger and even explicit threats within these pages. This is primarily focused on those in power like law enforcement, bosses, landlords, etc., with police being the most common targets of violent fantasies. These are complicated by sexual linkages, where some of the authors want to be dominated, but also resent the domination (reminding us of how scary it is that sex and death are adjacent in many people’s minds, pain and pleasure).
There are a series of poems all named “ABOLISH THE POLICE” (in all caps) which are particularly radical and cooly violent; typographically they’re impressive because the font chosen by the editors makes the titles (which line up on each page) look like the “POLICE LINE, DO NOT CROSS” tape you’d see around a crime scene. One of the poems in the series satirically says that they read a poem about abolishing the police to a room full of police, and the police applaud, and I wonder somewhat what police think of such poetry. But I stop wondering pretty quick because no one likes poetry, only queer people and weird people and literary nerds (I’m somewhere in there). Which makes me wonder about the purpose of this poetry collection: it’s evidently not for “outsiders”, it’s not intended to proselytize or convert anyone to the side of the trans struggle. My problem with this collection is partially that: because the most radical poetry was exclusively chosen, this collection is so abrasive it will easily turn anyone on the fence against the trans community, unless they’re ready to be very open and accepting of verbal aggression. I understand that this is supposed to be a collection of trans poetry FOR trans people, but if that’s the case, is the entire trans movement and identity one of violence and radicalism? This brings us back to the questions asked at the start.
I find it interesting that the poems in this collection seem to deal more with fluids than fluidity, as there are plenty of tales of sexual adventures, but there ironically isn’t much gray area in terms of politics. We’re all fluid, all people gradually change (I barely recognize myself from just a few years ago), but that exploration in terms of the bodily is not extended to exploration in terms of the political. Implicitly, only one direction is acceptable (radical left/anarchist revolution), which feels stifling and gets repetitive after a while. As such, this feels more like a rallying cry for radical leftist trans poets than anything which is representative of the holistic trans experience. And perhaps that’s exactly what the editors were going for. There is quite a bit of typographical and linguistic experimentation, but all the poems share an eerily similar voice; if you’ve read recent editions of Poetry magazine or if you’ve watched contemporary poetry readings, these fit right into that voice, that pacing. I don’t like or dislike that voice, I just find it notable but difficult to explain.
The poems themselves ranged from surprisingly relatable to utterly incomprehensible. My little cisgendered white male brain couldn’t handle some of these poems, and that’s fine. I skimmed large chunks of this massive tome, and dug up what I could find. Probably my favorite poet of the collection was named Samuel Ace, and his poems felt eerily like my own at times. They combined the darker, more brutal imagery I sometimes use with a surrealism a la Stephen Crane’s more shocking poems like “In the Desert”. I also very much respected a poem called “You’ve heard of RItalin, now what if I told you governments make bodies into crime scenes for no reason at all” by Ray Filar, which echoed my fears about becoming addicted to an amphetamine just to get rid of ADHD. Two related issues were raised. One was of the shaming of ADHD by the capitalistic, competitive society we live in, where you’re bombarded with such attention-destroying media, apps, and personalities, and expected to stay sane. The other was that of mixing such drugs with alcohol, and the suspicion aimed at users of various substances as soon as they go off the roadmap, i.e. the author when they mixed two perfectly legal drugs (alcohol and Ritalin). The interrogation of the control of such substances (and their resultant criminalization outside of strict bounds) is something worth interrogating much further.
Something which also helped me make more sense of the police-hatred were a couple of poems which vividly discussed the “raids” that police sometimes made (still make?) on queer bars and meeting places, and the resultant violence and unjust imprisonment which many of these people have endured. I really had no idea that this even occurred, nor the strange informal requirement of “needing at least 3 pieces of clothing” of one gender to avoid being labeled a cross dresser. It seems that some of the danger of being trans/queer is self-imposed, such as doing unregulated drugs and having sex with strangers, but some of it certainly is imposed from the outside.
Another poem I thought spoke well to outsiders like myself was “Glitter In My Wounds” by Caconrad. This poem specifically outlined the tension that many queer people feel to “perform” by being funny, outgoing, or somesuch exhausting extroversion so that others will tolerate them. A few lines in the middle explained the dilemma well:
you think Oscar Wilde was funny
well Darling I think he was busy
distracting straight people
so they would not kill him
The queer identity is one which at root is highly combative and fraught with tension and fear. There are some more hopeful poems in the collection. These praise the communities that the authors have witnessed, usually “families” comprised of friends, not blood-relatives. They also include impossible utopias (like an anarchy full of love and free health care) and other mismatches between expectations and results, i.e. body dysmorphia, political frustration, etc. I was impressed by the lack of fucks given (which was very punk or metal), but it often grated against my very moderate personality.
Some of the poems were written from a conspiratorial worldview, while others were less frantic and more nuanced. Often it was the most prose-like poems (of which there were a sizable minority) which were the most political, the most like speeches or letters rather than pure poems. By and large, the narrative poems were the easiest to understand and to enjoy, and some of them were very witty (one ended with “She talks about another poet writing poetry about her. / I tell her I probably won’t.”). A couple even had titles that were almost longer than the poem itself, such as “Sonnet for the Intro to Critical Theory Professor Who Made her Negative Feelings About Trans People Perfectly Clear at Multiple Points During Every Lecture After I came Out to Her in That Fucking Gut-Churning “Please Call Me By My Chosen Name and Not the One on the Roster” Email I’d Have to Send Out to All My Instructors Every Term”
I think part of Laurel Uziell’s poem “from T” summed up the collection well:
Things change: this is simul-
taneously true and violently unutterable,
grammar with a broken neck
For much of this book, grammar has had a broken neck, one broken sometimes out of rage, sometimes out of frustration with grammar’s tidy trimmings. The constancy of change as well has grown to a nearly unbearable weight. It’s hard enough to live with sex and sexuality being the center of your identity, but it must be difficult to have one which is so fluid and tentative and fringe. Whatever your initial reaction is to this extreme poetics, make sure it’s not Jordan Peterson’s approach. Thanks for reading.
Another impetus for me to treat this collection more kindly was the harsh and pathetic words from Jordan Peterson about his Twitter suspension, and his thoughtlessly harmful tweet that finally got him suspended. I was shocked at the lack of wisdom, patience, or tact that Dr. Peterson displayed, and I’m ashamed that I used to listen to his lectures back in undergrad. The worst part is that so many people still blindly agree with him (look at the comment section), despite his countless blunders and shit-takes (which have been increasing exponentially lately).
What Peterson’s tirade showed me was exactly how NOT to approach the entire trans issue. So many people today are quick to jump into one trench or another, when of course the Bible doesn’t talk about this, and it’s not obvious what trans people really are. Is trans-ness primarily a linguistic, gender expression (fashion), psychiatric, or medical issue? All of the above? Is it imposed from without by culture or politics, or is it from within (self-imposed)? In all likelihood, one’s starting assumptions decide how one approaches the entire issue. It is a very new issue, which I think means we should be extra patient with the whole thing.
So let’s hear it from trans people themselves; not, as the introduction points out, a cliched voice, nor a commercialized one, but a radical, political version:
Since the so-called tipping point, opportunistic publishers have attempted to instrumentalize trans writing for profit; we’re asked to transform even a brutal personal experience of abjection into titillating narratives for bourgeois readers eager to consume stories of trans pain. This process more or less represents how capital turns the precarity and violence of trans lives into cultural commodities.
It is this very commercialization which complicates the entire trans issue, because there are a lot of opportunistic surgeons, psychiatrists, and others who I fear may be manipulating people or at the very least profiting off the dysphoria and confusion of others. This is a similar point to what Peterson made in that video, but I’m choosing to couch it in empathy instead of combative frustration. In this introduction, I was reminded of another moment in Peterson’s rise to fame, when he was on a panel on TVO which featured a trans person; the most interesting thing was that the trans person actually agreed with Peterson, and they said that most trans people just want to be left alone, they don’t want the spotlight. But this book, in the tradition of the recent Antiracists and others, prefers exemplifying the differences, not negating or minimizing them (that’s what the reformists would want, after all). The reason they do this is because they see threats to their very trans-ness itself, to their bodies (which is the focal point of their worldview and the movement itself); these threats come from the police, prom prisons, from capitalism, from poverty, etc., all of which tend to be especially harsh to trans people.
But this raises the question of if one has to be a leftist to be a “true” trans person. For example, what about Kaitlyn Jenner and her running for political office as a Republican? What about the parallel issue in race of being “black enough”, like in Biden’s infamous “if you don’t vote for me, you ain’t black” quote? Can one sell out to the capitalistic publishers and give them the “titillating narratives” mentioned above, yet still be a true trans person? In other words, how entrenched in the trans experience is politics? This collection of poems is explicitly radical (it’s in the name), but are there moderate trans people, like the one in the TVO interview? These questions echo throughout the many pages of this tome, and I think they’re mostly left unanswered. Perhaps, like Zizek says about philosophy, the aim was to dig up more questions, rather than answer our pre-existing questions.
Though the introduction stresses that the editors wanted to have “An exuberant–rather than despairing” poetry, there is an exceptional amount of anger and even explicit threats within these pages. This is primarily focused on those in power like law enforcement, bosses, landlords, etc., with police being the most common targets of violent fantasies. These are complicated by sexual linkages, where some of the authors want to be dominated, but also resent the domination (reminding us of how scary it is that sex and death are adjacent in many people’s minds, pain and pleasure).
There are a series of poems all named “ABOLISH THE POLICE” (in all caps) which are particularly radical and cooly violent; typographically they’re impressive because the font chosen by the editors makes the titles (which line up on each page) look like the “POLICE LINE, DO NOT CROSS” tape you’d see around a crime scene. One of the poems in the series satirically says that they read a poem about abolishing the police to a room full of police, and the police applaud, and I wonder somewhat what police think of such poetry. But I stop wondering pretty quick because no one likes poetry, only queer people and weird people and literary nerds (I’m somewhere in there). Which makes me wonder about the purpose of this poetry collection: it’s evidently not for “outsiders”, it’s not intended to proselytize or convert anyone to the side of the trans struggle. My problem with this collection is partially that: because the most radical poetry was exclusively chosen, this collection is so abrasive it will easily turn anyone on the fence against the trans community, unless they’re ready to be very open and accepting of verbal aggression. I understand that this is supposed to be a collection of trans poetry FOR trans people, but if that’s the case, is the entire trans movement and identity one of violence and radicalism? This brings us back to the questions asked at the start.
I find it interesting that the poems in this collection seem to deal more with fluids than fluidity, as there are plenty of tales of sexual adventures, but there ironically isn’t much gray area in terms of politics. We’re all fluid, all people gradually change (I barely recognize myself from just a few years ago), but that exploration in terms of the bodily is not extended to exploration in terms of the political. Implicitly, only one direction is acceptable (radical left/anarchist revolution), which feels stifling and gets repetitive after a while. As such, this feels more like a rallying cry for radical leftist trans poets than anything which is representative of the holistic trans experience. And perhaps that’s exactly what the editors were going for. There is quite a bit of typographical and linguistic experimentation, but all the poems share an eerily similar voice; if you’ve read recent editions of Poetry magazine or if you’ve watched contemporary poetry readings, these fit right into that voice, that pacing. I don’t like or dislike that voice, I just find it notable but difficult to explain.
The poems themselves ranged from surprisingly relatable to utterly incomprehensible. My little cisgendered white male brain couldn’t handle some of these poems, and that’s fine. I skimmed large chunks of this massive tome, and dug up what I could find. Probably my favorite poet of the collection was named Samuel Ace, and his poems felt eerily like my own at times. They combined the darker, more brutal imagery I sometimes use with a surrealism a la Stephen Crane’s more shocking poems like “In the Desert”. I also very much respected a poem called “You’ve heard of RItalin, now what if I told you governments make bodies into crime scenes for no reason at all” by Ray Filar, which echoed my fears about becoming addicted to an amphetamine just to get rid of ADHD. Two related issues were raised. One was of the shaming of ADHD by the capitalistic, competitive society we live in, where you’re bombarded with such attention-destroying media, apps, and personalities, and expected to stay sane. The other was that of mixing such drugs with alcohol, and the suspicion aimed at users of various substances as soon as they go off the roadmap, i.e. the author when they mixed two perfectly legal drugs (alcohol and Ritalin). The interrogation of the control of such substances (and their resultant criminalization outside of strict bounds) is something worth interrogating much further.
Something which also helped me make more sense of the police-hatred were a couple of poems which vividly discussed the “raids” that police sometimes made (still make?) on queer bars and meeting places, and the resultant violence and unjust imprisonment which many of these people have endured. I really had no idea that this even occurred, nor the strange informal requirement of “needing at least 3 pieces of clothing” of one gender to avoid being labeled a cross dresser. It seems that some of the danger of being trans/queer is self-imposed, such as doing unregulated drugs and having sex with strangers, but some of it certainly is imposed from the outside.
Another poem I thought spoke well to outsiders like myself was “Glitter In My Wounds” by Caconrad. This poem specifically outlined the tension that many queer people feel to “perform” by being funny, outgoing, or somesuch exhausting extroversion so that others will tolerate them. A few lines in the middle explained the dilemma well:
you think Oscar Wilde was funny
well Darling I think he was busy
distracting straight people
so they would not kill him
The queer identity is one which at root is highly combative and fraught with tension and fear. There are some more hopeful poems in the collection. These praise the communities that the authors have witnessed, usually “families” comprised of friends, not blood-relatives. They also include impossible utopias (like an anarchy full of love and free health care) and other mismatches between expectations and results, i.e. body dysmorphia, political frustration, etc. I was impressed by the lack of fucks given (which was very punk or metal), but it often grated against my very moderate personality.
Some of the poems were written from a conspiratorial worldview, while others were less frantic and more nuanced. Often it was the most prose-like poems (of which there were a sizable minority) which were the most political, the most like speeches or letters rather than pure poems. By and large, the narrative poems were the easiest to understand and to enjoy, and some of them were very witty (one ended with “She talks about another poet writing poetry about her. / I tell her I probably won’t.”). A couple even had titles that were almost longer than the poem itself, such as “Sonnet for the Intro to Critical Theory Professor Who Made her Negative Feelings About Trans People Perfectly Clear at Multiple Points During Every Lecture After I came Out to Her in That Fucking Gut-Churning “Please Call Me By My Chosen Name and Not the One on the Roster” Email I’d Have to Send Out to All My Instructors Every Term”
I think part of Laurel Uziell’s poem “from T” summed up the collection well:
Things change: this is simul-
taneously true and violently unutterable,
grammar with a broken neck
For much of this book, grammar has had a broken neck, one broken sometimes out of rage, sometimes out of frustration with grammar’s tidy trimmings. The constancy of change as well has grown to a nearly unbearable weight. It’s hard enough to live with sex and sexuality being the center of your identity, but it must be difficult to have one which is so fluid and tentative and fringe. Whatever your initial reaction is to this extreme poetics, make sure it’s not Jordan Peterson’s approach. Thanks for reading.
September 23, 2021
Everyone should read this like seriously ACAB as fuck and gay as fuck and some of the best poetry I’ve read in a long time
January 15, 2021
a sweet warm light in a dark + isolating time. don't worry, you don't have to "get" all the poems to enjoy the book and get something good and useful out of it. sometimes it's just nice to be there, surrounded by yr contemporaries and trans siblings!
* i think this book is "radical" in that it talks about abolition, state violence, copless futures, transformative trans autonomy. i never expect poetry to do work that only people, bodies, organizing and community care can do; but, this book made me feel kind, loved & not alone. it's not radical like it'll bring abolition and a utopian ideal to your doorstep in a cardboard mailer but it was nourishing for my heart; do recommend.
* i think this book is "radical" in that it talks about abolition, state violence, copless futures, transformative trans autonomy. i never expect poetry to do work that only people, bodies, organizing and community care can do; but, this book made me feel kind, loved & not alone. it's not radical like it'll bring abolition and a utopian ideal to your doorstep in a cardboard mailer but it was nourishing for my heart; do recommend.
January 2, 2021
wowowowow this book is everything I’ve ever wanted in an anthology of trans writing. some of the most bewitching and brilliant poets are gathered together in this book, and I literally could not put it down
December 2, 2020
a sacred text
March 7, 2021
A lot of this wasn’t really my thing. But I love to see trans people having a good time.
February 4, 2022
some amazing poetry in here, but a lot of the pieces don’t really do it for me
April 11, 2026
There's plenty of stuff in here that wasn't for me and/or which i could not make heads or tails of. but i have just accepted that a lot of poetry is focused on the esoteric or experimentalism rather than connecting with a broad audience, and that's the prerogative of those writers. anyway, this anthology has quickly become a prized possesion of mine and i'm so glad i purchased it from an independent bookstore on a recent trip to the catskills. the stuff i did connect with was stuff that 1) seems not always to exist anywhere else, reinforcing my decision to purchase this anthology and 2) was intensely special, affirming and/or moving, and incredibly refreshing for that.
some of my favs (in order of appearance) include:
•Amy Marvin's "Hey guys"
•Bryn Kelly's "DIVING INTO THE WRECK"
•Caconrad's "You Cannot Return A Stretched Mind"
•Cyrée Jarelle Johnson's "harold mouthfucks THE DEVIL" (excerpt, but the full length piece is also worth reading)
•Evan Kleekamp's excerpt from "The Cloth" (This was one of my favs, easily one of my top 3; just incredible display of craft here)
•Harry Josephine Giles' "ABOLISH THE POLICE" series (10 poems all bearing this title)
•Hazel Avery's "piss sister"
•Joss Barton's "pink_sissy"
•Leslie Feinberg's excerpt from "Stone Butch Blues" (just exquisite writing)
•Nora Fulton's contributions, "To've Never" and "Suqu"
•Ray Filar's "You've heard of Ritalin, now what if I told you governments make bodies into crime scenes for no reason at all" (another top 3 for me; this is exactly what seeking healthcare is like, though my experience is a bit different because the transphobia explored in this piece is almost eclipsed ime by the even more staggering ableism & saneism i also face as a neuroqueer chronically ill/disabled trans person. but regardless, it was deeply affirming to see the destructive, crazy-making and soul-crushing process of seeking care from the medical industrial complex as a multiply-marginalized person laid out so incisively and emotionally)
•Rowan Powell's "The ___ jumped over the __ (along a line a leap a landing)" (v experimental but i appreciated this effort)
•Stephen Ira's contributions from "An Elizabeth" (also v experimental but i haven't been able to stop thinking about it, which i think conveys its effectiveness)
•T Fleischman's excerpt from "Time Is the Thing a Body Moves Through " (this is the third piece I'd put in my top 3)
•Zavé Gayatri Martohardjono's "smoke" and "realidad"
So glad this collection exists and only wish it didn't feel so precious and rare. but that would place us in a much better world, which is exactly the context this book exists in and wrestles with.
highly recommend for anyone who enjoys poetry or just engaging with writing that contends with the bounds of institutionalized thought and knowledge.
some of my favs (in order of appearance) include:
•Amy Marvin's "Hey guys"
•Bryn Kelly's "DIVING INTO THE WRECK"
•Caconrad's "You Cannot Return A Stretched Mind"
•Cyrée Jarelle Johnson's "harold mouthfucks THE DEVIL" (excerpt, but the full length piece is also worth reading)
•Evan Kleekamp's excerpt from "The Cloth" (This was one of my favs, easily one of my top 3; just incredible display of craft here)
•Harry Josephine Giles' "ABOLISH THE POLICE" series (10 poems all bearing this title)
•Hazel Avery's "piss sister"
•Joss Barton's "pink_sissy"
•Leslie Feinberg's excerpt from "Stone Butch Blues" (just exquisite writing)
•Nora Fulton's contributions, "To've Never" and "Suqu"
•Ray Filar's "You've heard of Ritalin, now what if I told you governments make bodies into crime scenes for no reason at all" (another top 3 for me; this is exactly what seeking healthcare is like, though my experience is a bit different because the transphobia explored in this piece is almost eclipsed ime by the even more staggering ableism & saneism i also face as a neuroqueer chronically ill/disabled trans person. but regardless, it was deeply affirming to see the destructive, crazy-making and soul-crushing process of seeking care from the medical industrial complex as a multiply-marginalized person laid out so incisively and emotionally)
•Rowan Powell's "The ___ jumped over the __ (along a line a leap a landing)" (v experimental but i appreciated this effort)
•Stephen Ira's contributions from "An Elizabeth" (also v experimental but i haven't been able to stop thinking about it, which i think conveys its effectiveness)
•T Fleischman's excerpt from "Time Is the Thing a Body Moves Through " (this is the third piece I'd put in my top 3)
•Zavé Gayatri Martohardjono's "smoke" and "realidad"
So glad this collection exists and only wish it didn't feel so precious and rare. but that would place us in a much better world, which is exactly the context this book exists in and wrestles with.
highly recommend for anyone who enjoys poetry or just engaging with writing that contends with the bounds of institutionalized thought and knowledge.
November 16, 2022
I picked up this book because I love poetry anthologies with background information on the writers in the back. I am only ranking this book as average because I didn't have any gripes with the writers but with the structure of the anthology. The biographies and the order of poets was in alphabetical order by first name which was curious although there were poets who worked with other poets, in tandem, so their names were out of place. I thought a poet wasn't included in the book because their name started with a D when instead they where instead one of the last two poets in the anthology. There were as well long written sections I found not poetic and some poets only had one poem included which was unfortunate. Although, there were sections I did find poetic in the longer prose and those poets I include on my list of standouts. I thought there were sweet moments where a poet, who was a defining member of the community, had speeches or journal entries included, which held sentimental, poetic, and educational value. Overall, I saw the vision and themes that were included and appreciated the consistency. Poets I would like to explore more in no particular order: Valentine Conaty, T Fleischmann, Samuel Ace, Levi Bentley, Laurel Uziell, Jesi Gaston, Faye Chevalier, Cody-Rose Clevidence, last but not least CACONRAD. Rising Stars I have: Ty Little, Rocket Caleshu, Raquel Salas Rivera, Nora Fulton, Kashif Sharma-Patel, Julian Talamantez Brolaski, and Amy Marvin. Poets I did not get but saw the vision: Nat Raha. Where is Jackie Ess?
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