In Your Nature by Estlin McPhee

“I delete my history / badly,” writes Estlin McPhee in this searing, witty, lyrical, and elegiac debut collection of poems about intersections of trans identity, magic, myth, family, and religion. The line refers at once to a young person’s browser data that reveals an interest in gender transition; an adult’s efforts to reconcile complicated relationships; a culture’s campaign to erase queerness and transness from the historical record; and a religion’s attempt to pretend that its own particular brand of miraculous transformation is distinct from the kind found in folktales or real life. Populated by transmasculine werewolves, homoerotic Jesuses, adolescent epiphanies, dutiful sisters, boy bands, witches, mothers who speak in tongues, and nonnas who cross the sea, this is a book in which relational and narrative continuity exists, paradoxically, as a series of ruptures with the known.

Praise for In Your Nature

“Estlin McPhee captures the rage and revelation of youth with tenderness, generosity, beauty, and sophisticated, far-reaching intelligence. The refined, inviting lyricism of these poems ground their complexity and invention, where pop culture is sacred and Christian mythology is folkloric, messy, and queer, where images and stories echo and transmute across time, empowering in one turn and devastating in the next. Buy this book for yourself, your past self, and every young person you know.”— Kim Fu, author of Lesser Known Monsters of the 21st Century and How Festive the Ambulance

“In this powerful debut, real humour coexists with aching grief and palpable, necessary anger. There is a fierce and ‘crackling magic’ in these poems which brim with haunting imagery and concise, original language. ‘For God so loved the world / he created five-piece boy bands,’ proclaims Estlin McPhee and also, ‘the moon / an eraser mark / in the smudge of afternoon.’ I love everything about this book!” — Kayla Czaga, author of Midway and Dunk Tank

“These poems cast spells, open portals, and illuminate safe passage through the cruel and restrictive binaries of our world. At the heart of this magic, the question ‘If I was making myself up, so what?’ reveals what’s at stake here, especially for bodies that are ‘worth so much grace, and anger.’ I am utterly charmed by this vital and deeply-realized collection. It does what I want all poetry to do: somehow transport me while leaving me feeling more inside my skin than before.” — Raoul Fernandes, author of Transmitter and Receiver

Reviews

“The book argues that when you are a boy in a body that doesn’t fit (or vice versa), media images are the only thing that reflects the self. In McPhee’s world, this is freedom, not as an open-ended concept, but as freedom-from. I like that.” — Harold Rhenisch, The BC Review