Iain Morrison’s debut collection I’m a Pretty Circler is experimental without being intimidating; conversational without being casual; and outrageous without shedding tenderness. Within its pages, Emily Dickinson rubs shoulders with drag queens, while Japanese composers are as likely to be referenced as dating apps. Morrison balances punchy, patterned short poems with longer more conversational or collaged works that explore ways in which sexuality, tribe, culture and community intersect in lived experience.

From “Drag Queen Poems” (p. 7)

I forget that I’m real sometimes
until some body mirrors it back
to be applauded, uploaded, applauded

Reviews

“A vast and vigorous vivisected joie de vivre. Although the poetry always flows forth according to its own autonomous and inimitable sprung algorithms, it is also incisively open to the world’s detritus, including voices that are carefully unassimilated into the poet’s voice. But no matter who or what it makes present, it is all made out of music: mostly, it erects a lattice of stents within the pre-existing musicality of speech. This is life, writing (noun, verb), ever infectiously brave in its self-probing and self-enabling: shucking off your hackles as it sucks off its shackles. Mobile, shrewd, obstinate, grand, and sexy, singing not only with its mouths but with its wounds.” – Jow Walton