We all begin in water and are called back to the water. Blue Blood challenges the rhetoric that trans people are "unnatural" through captivating verses about metamorphosis and meditations on the concept of home. Robin Gow invites readers to resist imposed gender roles and to celebrate identity; to question what their own body means to them.
"These days we only seem to talk about trans people in the news when we talk about bathroom laws. Our bodies are made political. Somedays I just want to exist. I want to crawl into the corn fields before harvest and just be alone with my skin." - Robin Gow
Robin Gow is a queer and trans poet, essayist, and Young Adult author. They grew up in rural Pennsylvania and live in Allentown with their partner, best friend, and two pugs, Eddie and Gertie.
Gow is also the author of the chapbook Honeysuckle (Finishing Line Press 2019), the collection Our Lady of Perpetual Degeneracy (Tolsun Books 2020), and a YA verse-novel, A Million Quiet Revolutions (FSG 2022),
He is a managing editor at The Nasiona, Assistant Editor at Large at Doubleback Books, and a reader for the Young Adult magazine Voyage.
“I don’t want to make sense anymore,” Robin Gow writes in Blue Blood. “I just want to exist.”
In a world where trans people must define ourselves over and over again in order to be seen, Gow’s refusal to offer neat conclusions is refreshing. Instead, these essays and poems—on everything from horseshoe crabs and bearded women to St. Francis and Georgia O’Keefe—lean into the complexities of gender, family, ecology, and mental health. If Gow’s book has a thesis, it’s that who we are and how we see the world are so fluid and shaped by so much that it’s impossible to unravel it all on paper. The best we can do is lean into the mess and pull out what we can, and my what beauty lies there!
In an essay about baking, Gow writes, “Like cookies, holidays are built from processes—a sequence repeated over and over with slight variations.” This seems to be how Blue Blood—which takes a handful of themes and approaches them via diffuse and fascinating angles—was built, too. These essays and poems pull back layer after layer and reveal so much about gender, mental health, family, ecology, ritual, and the many other topics that inspire Gow to put pen to paper.
In an essay about baking, Gow writes, “Like cookies, holidays are built from processes—a sequence repeated over and over with slight variations.” This seems to be how Blue Blood—which takes a handful of themes and approaches them via diffuse and fascinating angles—was built, too. These essays and poems pull back layer after layer and reveal so much about gender, mental health, family, ecology, ritual, and the many other topics that inspire Gow to put pen to paper.
Product details
- Publisher : The Nasiona (November 22, 2021)
- Language : English
- Paperback : 255 pages
- ISBN-10 : 1950124096
- ISBN-13 : 978-1950124091
- Item Weight : 15.8 ounces
- Dimensions : 6 x 0.58 x 9 inches
