Writing the Body, a Review of Troubling the Line: Trans and Genderqueer Poetry and Poetics

How do trans and genderqueer poets write the body onto and against the page?What expressions and forms—even if amorphous ones—does the body use and take in its poetic becomings? Troubling the Line: Trans and Genderqueer Poetry and Poetics (2013), edited by TC Tolbert and Tim Trace Peterson, is a collection that grapples with these questions and many more. It is the first collection to explicitly highlight trans and genderqueer poetry even as neither the work in the collection nor the editors of the collection define what trans and genderqueer poetry is. In fact, both editors note in their respective introductions that they had no desire to categorically define, much less police, the gender identities of the poets whose work is present in the text (Peterson: 15; Tolbert: 10). Both editors express a need for opening up, through poetry, the possibilities, nuances, and multiplicities of trans and genderqueer. Some of these poets have been published multiple times;for others, this marks their first publication (Peterson: 15).