feeld

Longlist, National Book Awards 2018 for Poetry

feeld by Jos Charles book cover
ISBN 9781571315052
Milkweed Editions
Charles Jos author photo, credit Cybele Knowles
Jos Charles

Jos Charles is a trans poet, editor, and author of feeld, a winner of the 2017 National Poetry Series, selected by Fady Joudah, and Safe Space, a finalist for the 2016 Lambda Literary Award for Transgender Poetry. More about this author >

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“i care so much abot the whord i cant reed.” In feeld, Charles stakes her claim on the language available to speak about trans experience, reckoning with the narratives that have come before by reclaiming the language of the past. In Charles’s electrifying transliteration of English–Chaucerian in affect, but revolutionary in effect–what is old is made new again. “gendre is not the tran organe / gendre is yes a hemorage.” “did u kno not a monthe goes bye / a tran i kno doesnt dye.” The world of feeld is our own, but off-kilter, distinctly queer–making visible what was formerly and forcefully hidden: trauma, liberation, strength, and joy.

Urgent and vital, feeld composes a new and highly inventive lyrical narrative of what it means to live inside a marked body.

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