Basket Books: “Stemmy Things” by Smith Imogen Xtian

FINALIST for the 2023 Publishing Triangle Award for Trans and Gender-Variant Literature

A kaleidoscopic debut collection of poems performing queer excess and lyric ecstasy. 

This flirty collection traces unruly paths of becoming; its sprawling poems build towards an expansive world celebrating fluidity while casting a critical lens on state power, ecological precarity, and the yearning for queer utopia on stolen land. Referencing lineages of poets, musicians, workers and neighbors, as well as conversations between lovers and friends, stemmy things is a vision unraveling, breaking open to make space for glimmering while reckoning with the body’s multiple contexts. Layered, lush, and lavish, these poems offer up tangling, blossoming desire.