Reading: Wain

[white_hart]

I first heard about poet Rachel Plummer's new collection of LGBT-themed reimaginings of Scottish folklore, Wain, last autumn, when the anti-trans brigade on social media started whipping up a frenzy of protest about the first poem published on Twitter as a teaser, 'Selkie', which uses the idea of the skin-changing selkie to explore transness, removing one skin to reveal the hidden self inside. I loved the poem, and when the publishers set up a scheme to allow people to buy a copy for themselves and a second, discounted copy to donate to a school, I took advantage of it to pre-order the book.

My copy arrived last week. It's a beautiful book, with gorgeous illustrations by Helene Boppert, and the poems are delightful and magical, perfectly balancing a contemporary sensibility and approach to gender and sexuality with a deep familiarity with the original stories, using language carefully and deliberately to create something beautiful and thought-provoking. My favourites were 'No Man', the story of an encounter between a trans woman and a kelpie who recognises the woman inside her; 'Nessie', about the Loch Ness monster who has always existed outside the gender binary; 'Green Lady', full of colours; 'Mairead', about a princess who defies expectations to kill her own dragon; and most of all 'Finfolkaheem', about a woman falling in love with a mermaid and leaving behind the things she once knew as certainties. The last two stanzas are beautiful and so evocative of the way aging makes the things we once took for granted appear very different:

Once I loved a human boy
and loved the land he walked on -
his two feet, his strong legs,
the hill that was our home.

But time came like a tide;
eroding life's bedrock
and flooding me with the possibility
of mermaids.

The poems are aimed at older children and teenagers, but I think will have something to say to people of any age.

Comments

[cmcmck]

Some trans women are deeply attracted to mermaids whereas the selkie has always spoken most deeply to me but that may be because I know Orkney well. :o)

[mountainkiss]

Sending love to you.

[perennialanna]

I think we got our copies on the same day - I remember you posting about receiving it on FB, and I bit my tongue and did not tell one replier that she wouldn't like the book, it started with the basic premise that trans people are actual human beings...

I have rather a pile of books that arrived while I had flu and which got put to one side while I got on with dying on the sofa, but I did make time to at least look at this one.

[white_hart]

Ah yes, my Transphobic Aunt made a completely irrelevant comment. I ignored it, as I wasn’t sure if she was being accidentally or deliberately irrelevant but couldn’t be bothered to get into the argument then...