More Sure
Poems and Interruptions
Description
A book of poems and interruptions, recording instances of love, self-realization, and recovery in non-binary, queer, and autistic lives.
In their stunning debut collection, A. Light Zachary draws power from a vision of life - especially queer and neurodivergent life - as a journey of continuous self-realization. These poems record the experience of locating oneself over and over again, within gender, language, family, labour, sexuality, fear, and love.
Reaching back to claim queer space in the oldest Western canon, Zachary interrupts famous quotations from ancient Greek and Roman thinkers, asking: what advice might Juvenal or Seneca have handed down to non-binary citizens? Elsewhere, in concise and fluid verses that draw from punk rock and quantum physics, they ground the work firmly in the present. Come: invade with the alien. Evade with the coyote. These poems propose a certain supremacy: in these unending journeys of discovery and alienation, "we become more sure of who we are than you."
Reviews
Amazing - vivid, disturbing. Zachary does this so well: moves language into a space that's both political and intimate. Powerful and tightly crafted, work. -Eduardo C. Corral, author of Guillotine and Slow Lightning
In this beautiful debut collection, A. Light Zachary alchemizes a philosopher's intellect with the soul of a poet. Weaving deftly through classic texts and pop culture references, from sharply political to deeply personal, More Sure is a haunting love song to those who live in the shadows. Zachary is a master of their craft and a virtuoso talent, and they balance acute emotion with subtle wit. These are poems that will make you think and feel for a long time. -Kai Cheng Thom, author of a place called No Homeland
Even among the major queer poets of our age like Ocean Vuong and Saeed Jones, Zachary holds their own, dialling into places where common language fails us and only poetry can correct the injustices of language that we suffer without a vocabulary for our experiences. -S. Bear Bergman, Xtra
Zachary's debut collection is a vivid, playful celebration of trans complexity, queer fluidity, and gleeful uncertainty. In poems that are by turns lyrical, incendiary, and formally inventive, they explore gender, wildness, becoming and unbecoming, family, the power of language, the sacredness of trans bodies, and most poignantly, change. -BuzzFeed