KIRBY she
"She is joy's pronoun!" —ERÍN MOURE
"She is a capacious city of rich human habitation, where elation is every day’s caring infusion. Her cityscapes are painted deftly—in few words, in pauses, in juxtapositions, in fond attentions, in breath and the difficulty of breath, by a poet who knows deeply that life is fragile and that age comes and alters us. She says: the world loves us back when we love it. Flowers, streets, lovers, skies, persons, walks, in/fusions. She is joy’s pronoun!" —ERÍN MOURE, Theophylline A Poetic Migration Via the Modernisms of Rukeyser, Bishop, Grimké (de Castro, Vallejo)
"She reaches for the skies, as an ambitious sequence of poems, yes, but also in its conceptual stretch upwards, in its candour, its veneration of beauty, and its delicate ventilation of imagery. Here Kirby’s poems exist in a prolonged present, in the complexity of an intergenerational embrace, defying temporality in favour of an experiential ekphrasis—moments exceed chronology and model still lifes, to hold and behold. She supports great tenderness between every line." —KLARA DU PLESSIS, author of I'mpossible Collab and Hell Light Flesh
"Kirby’s She offers up prayers for the quotidian that are at once tender and resilient. Reading this collection reminded me of the ceremony inherent in poetry. A delight."
—ANNICK MACASKILL, author of Shadow Blight
By turns tender and trenchant, breathless and breathtaking, Kirby’s She recalls the small raptures and enduring resiliencies of a remarkable life. These poems—raucously wise and constellated by memory—guide us across decades and over borders, through devastating pandemics and a mother’s failing health, along streets cast with “quiet crisp blue light,” past an old family home surrounded by “trumpet vine shades” and “three kinds of lilacs,” into the intimacy of a morning spent with a beloved, all the while insisting on what matters: love, friendship, community, and a radical commitment to a better, kinder world.” These poems are filled with lines as hard-won as they are true: “who cares what spirits it took what / fates we face,” writes Kirby, “who cares it takes me a little / longer to get anywhere if at all...” —MICHAEL PRIOR, author of Burning Province
"Real joy lives in Kirby's She, joy that aches because it was earned, joy that rekindles itself—until it doesn't (and so must be savoured): "That recipe will go with her." A precious resource, these poems shimmer, and not just the ones I read through tears: grief, desire, inheritance, perseverance." —NEIL SURKAN, Unbecoming, On High
"In these everyday occasionals about friendship, mothers, the pandemic, aging, sex, and the body, Kirby opens themselves to a new hushed form that prioritizes their tender language. This is an intimate conversation you don't want to end. If this is your first time reading Kirby, I am jealous of you and you have picked an excellent starting point." —JAMES LINDSAY, author of Only Insistence
"She licks. She dances. She grieves. She doesn’t hold back. She watches a masturbator on a pandemic-empty street. On Mondays, She buys sameday meat to freeze. She remembers, and She forgets. She faces another day with dread. She night-walks. She acknowledges the half-life of a fluttering moth. She rails against the corporate co-opt. She ponders mortality. She naps at four. She is done. She is heartbreak. She is joy. She is beauty in all her glory. She lives. She is alive. She is Kirby. The book is SHE." —KATHRYN MOCKLER, author of Anecdotes
From the author of Poetry is Queer and This is Where I Get Off, their highly-anticipated new full-length collection.
“Hello my gorgeousness.”
KIRBY
she
KFB
Trade Paperback ISBN: 978-1-989355-63-3
Distributed by Asterism Books
KIRBY’s work includes Behold (2023), a stage adaption of Poetry is Queer (Palimpsest Press, 2021) What Do You Want to Be Called? (Anstruther Press, 2020) This Is Where I Get Off (Permanent Sleep Press, 2019) She’s Having a Doris Day (KFB, 2017) & editor NOT YOUR BEST No. 2, The Queer Ass Fuck Issue (KFB 2021). They’re at work on a follow-up to Poetry is Queer, MORE (2026). Their Substack column, “The First Time” can be found at Send My Love To Anyone. They are the publisher at knife | fork | book kirbyshe.com