Red Washburn

Birch Philosopher X Red Washburn

The experimental, fragmented, and nonlinear poems in Birch Philosopher X are an archive of Red Washburn's intergenerational families of women, including tributes to LGBTQ elders, their grandmother, and their mother, as well as their writing as care work for their ancestors who have transitioned on. In free-verse lyric, narrative, prose, and hybrid poems, the poet explores themes of memory and witness, gender identity and sexuality, ancestry and legacy, love and loss, death and mourning, childhood and imagination, politics and the body, affect and temporality, nature and healing, family and friendship, and LGBTQ and feminist issues. They also address their intersecting identities as a white, trans, nonbinary queer from working-class Irish roots, focusing on tracing their gender transition and healing process, exploring their possibilities for freedom using sound meditation, and embracing the lacunae of nonbinary being and classification. In addition, the volume encompasses different forms of love, such as romance, eroticism, sex, friendship, kinship, chosen family, and animal love, that complicate fixed notions of joy and pleasure in interesting and compelling ways. The collection includes a range of poems that reflect on space, where childhood, nature, and politics coalesce across time and circumstance. The power of this collection is its raw lyricism and experimental artistry in the tradition of LGBTQ expression and resistance.