Apparitions: (Nines)

Injecting the disruptive potential of collective action into the body of the poem, Nat Raha’s invigorating experiment resuscitates Anglophone poetry.

Amidst the violence of capitalism and state and imperial power, there is Nat Raha’s apparitions (nines) in its ＂charred golden minidress,＂ ushering us into a space of grief and resistance, the embodiment and intimacy of queer, trans, and diasporic Black and brown people. Written as a series of ＂niners,＂ a poetic form consisting of nine nine-syllable lines, apparitions (nines) is at once a brash and subversive rejoinder to the Anglophone sonnet, as well as an ode to beauty, collectivity, and tenderness which emerges from--and far surpasses--constraint.

Dr. Nat Raha is a poet and activist-scholar, based in Edinburgh, Scotland. Her work focuses on transfeminism, LGBTQ+ genders and sexualities, practices and collectives of care and social reproduction, racial capitalism and decolonization, and critical theory, across poetry, print cultures, art, politics, liberation movements and hi(r)story. She lives in Edinburgh, Scotland