TRAVIS SHARP YES, I AM A CORPSE FLOWER
"THE QUEEREST BOOK I HAVE EVER READ IN MY LIFE. And the most freeing." - KIRBY
"Sharp’s language is thick, racy, sensual, ruckous and uniquely physical, upturning tables with a flamboyance... YES, I AM A CORPSE FLOWER is an impressive debut" - @robmclennanblog
TRAVIS SHARP
YES, I AM A CORPSE FLOWER
KFB. Poetry.
ISBN 978-1-989355-27-5
Yes, I am a corpse flower composes a queer lyric meditation on body, identification, and subjectivity, proposing a queer poetics not just referential, limited to language’s meaning. These are not poems about queerness, but composed queerly: eccentric, off-centre, oblique, to twist. Poems that failingly and flailingly attempt to define the queer “I,” that skepticize any stable connection between queer self and body, narrate an unnarratable encounter with self-recognition outside of categorizable identity. These poems are composed from a feeling that to state queerness can never be to expound on a single journey, but to gather together a multitude of I’s of which this I, here, writing this paragraph, is only one iteration. I is not this one, but neither is I an other, but a we, perversely licked-linked through language, a sort of tongue: limn me, limn me!
Contents
Yes, I am a corpse flower
Sinister Queer Agenda
The body under valuation: a musical
I guess we should talk about our feelings
Protean Shakes: A Memoir
OrganGrindrTM
Acknowledgements/Bio
TRAVIS SHARP published the chapbook Sinister Queer Agenda (above/ground press 2018), the artist’s book one plus one is two ones (Recreational Resources 2018), and, with Aimee Harrison and Maria Anderson, co-edited a digital book, Radio: 11.8.16 (Essay Press 2017). He has an MFA in Creative Writing and Poetics from the University of Washington, Bothell, and is a PhD candidate in the Poetics Program at the University at Buffalo. Travis is the editor and director of Essay Press.