Troubling the Line: Trans and Genderqueer Poetry and Poetics
Edited by TC Tolbert and Tim Trace Peterson

Published by Nightboat Books.

Forthcoming March 2013
550 pp.
7×10”
$27.95 Paperback
978-1-937658-10-6
Poetry and LGBT Studies

The first of its kind, Troubling the Line: Trans and Genderqueer Poetry and Poeticsgathers together a diverse range of 55 poets with varying aesthetics and backgrounds. In addition to generous samples of poetry by each trans writer, the book also includes “poetics statements”—reflections by each poet that provide context for their work covering a range of issues from identification and embodiment to language and activism.

Poets include Samuel Ace, kari edwards, Joy Ladin, Dawn Lundy Martin, Trish Salah, John Wieners, Micha Cardenas, Eileen Myles, Duriel Harris, Max Wolf Valerio, Julian Talamantez Brolaski, Kit Yan, and more.

TC Tolbert, a genderqueer, feminist poet and teacher committed to social justice, is the author of territories of folding, spirare, and the forthcoming Gephyromania. Tolbert lives in Tucson.

Tim Trace Peterson is a poet, critic, and editor. The author of Since I Moved In and Violet Speech, Peterson is co-editor of the forthcoming Gil Ott: Collected Writings and lives in Brooklyn.

To see the cover, go here.

We are putting this anthology together because your words matter.  Our lives matter.  The bodies of trans and genderqueer people becoming.  Becoming voice.

The work submitted for this anthology was overwhelmingly important and beautiful.  Inspiring and necessary.  Because we are committed to foregrounding the best work being done by trans and genderqueer authors and making that available as widely as possible, we have decided to include 50 authors in the print Anthology of Trans and Genderqueer Poetry.  We are also putting together a Trans and Genderqueer Poetry online feature for EOAGH: A Journal of the Arts that will feature the work of 20 additional trans and genderqueer poets. This will essentially be a supplement to the anthology, and its release will coordinate with the release of the book (late fall 2012).

We are thrilled with the quality of the work and are so excited to begin editing, organizing, and designing the book and online supplement.  We are blessed to be so totally immersed in some f*ing brilliant writing by this phenomenal trans and genderqueer community we get to be a part of.  Thank you, again and again, for sending in your work.  For your faith in the project and in us, as editors.

May this be only the beginning of trans and genderqueer anthologies.  Of trans and genderqueer online poetry hubs.  Of trans and genderqueer poetry readings, slams, salons.  On and on!

Dear Author,                                                                                                       Dec 11, 2011

Thank you for submitting to the Anthology of Trans and Genderqueer Poetry! We have been absolutely overwhelmed and awed at the sheer number of submissions, the quality of the work, and the generosity of the response to this call!

We have cried more than once upon opening up an email that shares how important an anthology like this is, how grateful the author is to know that it will exist, whether their work makes it in or not. We want you to know how grateful we are for you taking an interest in this project, and sending us your work for consideration. Thank you for your encouragement, for your faith in this book and in us as editors.

So what happens next? Over the next 2 months, we will be printing the poems submitted by you and over 200 other authors. We will be reading them out loud on a purple couch to a 14 year old dog and the echoes will reverberate between Tucson and Brooklyn. We’ll be arguing over them and with them. Taking them to coffee. Taking them to bed.  

We are so grateful to have this time with your words!

TC and Trace

Dear Author,

We want your words.

What is the project: We are creating an anthology. An anthology of the best poems out there by trans and genderqueer writers and we would love to include your work in the book. Our assumption is that the writing of trans and genderqueer folks has something more than coincidence in common with the experimental, the radical, and the innovative in poetry and poetics (as we idiosyncratically define these categories), and with your help we’d like to manifest that something (or somethings) in a genderqueer multipoetics, a critical mass of trans fabulousness.

This anthology is edited by TC Tolbert and Tim Peterson (Trace)—both trans-identified poets. It will be published by EOAGH Books in early 2012, and you can bet it will be widely distributed!

We encourage submissions by people of color, people with disabilities, people educated by life or school or some of both or neither, people with no publications or a gazillion. We encourage bilingual poems, poems by trans folks who are non-native English speakers, poems that do stuff with language we couldn’t even imagine until now. Here’s the deal: we want the best poetry by trans and/or genderqueer identified writers in the galaxy. Please help us make that happen.  Send us your most phenomenal work!

Deadline for Submissions: Nov 30, 2011
What to Submit: 7-10 pages of poetry (no more than 1 poem per page), and a prose “poetics” statement (see below) in .doc, .docx, or pdf format.  We prefer unpublished poems but will consider previously published work.  Please let us know where, when, and by whom your work has been published when you submit.  Thanks!
Where to Submit: email us at transanthology@gmail.com

Why is this anthology important: While trans and genderqueer poets have existed for hundreds, if not thousands, of years, there has never been a collection of poetry exclusively by trans and genderqueer writers that also highlights a diverse range of poetics and other marginalized identities. Each particular understanding of self and gender creates an essentially complex and rich multipoetics that undermines any sort of universal trans aesthetic. Inherently multi-vocal and anti-hegemonic, a singular trans experience simply does not exist and, frankly, we don’t want it to. For this reason, an anthology is the most conducive venue for undoing any attempted whitewashing and/or homogenizing of an imagined trans voice. As we said, we want your words. The words, syntax, perspective, lyric, narrative, image (or the disruption of any of these) that could actually only come from you.

What kind of writing are we looking for: This anthology seeks writing that makes us wet our panties a little bit and wonder what the f* have we been doing with our lives all this time. Subject matter and/or content is open – you do not need to send us only poems about gender (although you may).  While this project exists in a historical context of several important anthologies that gather marginalized and under-represented writers (This Bridge Called My Back, No More Masks, The World in Us, Premonitions, The Open Boat, etc), this will be the first anthology to foreground the poetic writings of trans and genderqueer authors. The book will feature 7-10 pages of work from approximately 35 poets and we hope you will be one of them!

A meta-layer of fabulous: One thing that makes this anthology unique is that it will include a statement on poetics by each participant, along with your poems. This is a chance for you to tell us something about your writing process, writing practice, theory of life, or whatever you like. It might include the relationship of the body and text, or the practice of reading and misreading text and the body, or locations, connections, and divisions of the self amongst text and the self amongst other bodies or…you get the point.

About the editors:

TC Tolbert is a genderqueer, feminist poet and teacher committed to social justice. S/he is the Assistant Director of Casa Libre en la Solana and an Adjunct Instructor at The University of Arizona and Pima Community College. S/he is the creator of Made for Flight, a youth empowerment project that utilizes creative writing and kite building to commemorate murdered transgender people and to dismantle homophobia and transphobia. TC’s chapbook, territories of folding, was recently published by Kore Press. His poems can be found in Volt, The Pinch, Drunken Boat, Shampoo, A Trunk of Delirium, jubilat, and EOAGH. His work won the Arizona Statewide Poetry Competition in 2010 and was a Sawtooth finalist in 2009 and 2010. His first full length collection, Gephyromania, is forthcoming from Ahsahta Press. www.tctolbert.com

Tim Peterson (Trace) is a trans-identified poet, critic, and editor. The author of Since I Moved In (Chax Press), and Violet Speech (2nd Avenue Poetry), Peterson also edits EOAGH: A Journal of the Arts (which published a special issue Queering Language dedicated to trans poet and mentor kari edwards in 2007). Peterson’s poetry and criticism have been published in Colorado Review, EBR, Five Fingers Review, Harvard Review, Leonardo Electronic Almanac, The Poetry Project Newsletter, Transgender Tapestry, and in the recent book NO GENDER: Reflections on the Life and Work of kari edwards (Belladonna/Limus Press). A Ph.D. student in English at CUNY Graduate Center, Peterson curates the TENDENCIES: Poetics & Practice talks series dedicated to queer writing and the manifesto. More information at http://tendenciespoetics.com

We are incredibly excited about this project and look forward to working with you!

Thank you!

TC and Trace