A01=CD Eskilson
Author_CD Eskilson
B movies
Bruce's Beach
Bruce’s Beach
Category=DCF
Category=DS
chronic illness
debut poetry
eq_bestseller
eq_biography-true-stories
eq_isMigrated=1
eq_isMigrated=2
eq_nobargain
eq_non-fiction
eq_poetry
generalized anxiety disorder
horror movies
LGBTQ
monster movies
nonbinary
OCD
queerness
top surgery
transgender
trauma
Product details
- ISBN 9781946724878
- Weight: 141g
- Dimensions: 152 x 229mm
- Publication Date: 22 Mar 2025
- Publisher: Acre Books
- Publication City/Country: US
- Product Form: Paperback
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A debut poetry collection drawing on horror-movie tropes to examine the body—both its traumas and its possibilities.
Scream / Queen, CD Eskilson’s debut poetry collection, examines queerness, mental illness, and transgender identity through the lens of thrillers and B movies. The Creature from the Black Lagoon, Michael Myers, and the Headless Horseman are just a few of the fright-film villains and monsters that populate this book.
Eskilson’s formally innovative poems document how a body—a nonbinary transgender body, a chronically ill body, a body carrying trauma—can be understood, accepted, and healed even in a violent sociopolitical climate. Drawing on the language and images of horror cinema, the poems’ speakers find strength and the means to survive both family legacy and the pain inflicted on them: “I want to behemoth, be the biggest / violence in the galaxy,” says one who thinks about Godzilla and dreams of “learning how to roar.”
Though an atmosphere of trans panic and state legislation against trans bodies pervades the book, Scream / Queen ultimately conjures a world of hope and tenderness through connection and care. It celebrates all the body’s possibilities: the glorious and the monstrous. As a werewolf in the book says, “I kiss the moon; it took so long / to get here.”
Scream / Queen, CD Eskilson’s debut poetry collection, examines queerness, mental illness, and transgender identity through the lens of thrillers and B movies. The Creature from the Black Lagoon, Michael Myers, and the Headless Horseman are just a few of the fright-film villains and monsters that populate this book.
Eskilson’s formally innovative poems document how a body—a nonbinary transgender body, a chronically ill body, a body carrying trauma—can be understood, accepted, and healed even in a violent sociopolitical climate. Drawing on the language and images of horror cinema, the poems’ speakers find strength and the means to survive both family legacy and the pain inflicted on them: “I want to behemoth, be the biggest / violence in the galaxy,” says one who thinks about Godzilla and dreams of “learning how to roar.”
Though an atmosphere of trans panic and state legislation against trans bodies pervades the book, Scream / Queen ultimately conjures a world of hope and tenderness through connection and care. It celebrates all the body’s possibilities: the glorious and the monstrous. As a werewolf in the book says, “I kiss the moon; it took so long / to get here.”
CD Eskilson is a trans-nonbinary poet and translator. They are a recipient of the C.D. Wright / Academy of American Poets Prize, and their work appears in Kenyon Review, Beloit Poetry Journal, The Offing, Passages North, Hayden’s Ferry Review, and others. They were once in a punk band.
