Chris Tse – författare

Plot a lifetime of joy.Begin with a niece discovering how to dance;end with a poet weeping happy tearsnext to water.— from ‘On joy’Unfolding in the strobe-lit landscape of the club, this latest collection from Chris Tse reflects on joy, nostalgia and legacy – and what it means to make a vocation of vulnerability. Words hit the page like light on a mirrorball as Tse takes us from come-up to comedown, between the spotlight and the shadowy corners, penning both sadbangers and straight-up bangers that are generous, alive and shot through with the magnetic urgency of a club classic.But when the lights come up after the last dance, how do we brace ourselves to face the world outside? Dance-Floor Romance is poetry that seeks answers from the art we turn to in times of uncertainty, that ‘Holds the present as much as it / holds a whisper of the future’, and amplifies it. Someone hand Tse the AUX cord.

In How to be Dead in a Year of Snakes, Chris Tse took readers back to a shocking 1905 murder. Now he brings the reader much closer to home. He's So MASC confronts a contemporary world of self-loathing poets and compulsive liars, of youth and sexual identity, and of the author as character - pop star, actor, hitman, and much more. These are poems that delve into worlds of hyper-masculine romanticism and dancing alone in night clubs. With its many modes and influences, He's So MASC is an acerbic, acid-bright, yet unapologetically sentimental and personal reflection on what it means to perform and dissect identity, as a poet and a person.