INFO
Name | HE'S SO MASC |
Year | 2018 |
Writer(s) | Chris Tse |
Publisher | Auckland University Press |
Type of Text | Poetry |
Artform | Literature |
ABOUT
HE’S SO MASC is the second full-length poetry collection by author Chris Tse, preceded by How to be Dead in a Year of Snakes (2014) and followed by Super Model Minority (2022). The book was featured in the New Zealand Herald’s Best Books of 2018 and The Spinoff’s 20 Best Poetry Books of 2018.
The book is described in its publicity as 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.” Within the world of the text, the author becomes his own dubious shapeshifting character; appearing as a pop star, actor, hitman, self-loathing poet, lover, bandleader, figure in a selfie, rock star, royalty, local celeb, and a gay, Asian person named Chris Tse. As described in John Horrocks’ review, “the number of proposed identities destroys the notion of a stable and circumscribed self”.
In an interview with Paula Green for NZ Poetry Shelf, Tse speaks to the way this particular book incorporates the intersection of his creative identity, ethnicity, sexuality, gender, public and private lives and how they impact the ways he is received by the world:
“It was essential that this book, as unflinchingly open and true to my experiences as it is, also acknowledged the masks I’ve worn to protect, to give myself confidence, and to play. Those masks have been an important tool of survival and a way to make sense of the mess that sometimes builds up in my head. It’s also in part a response to having a somewhat public life now and the expectations that some people have of me as a Chinese New Zealand writer, especially given how few there are of us.”
Much like Tse’s other collections, the book plays with a variety of spacing, line and text configurations across its broad subject matter. The figure of a wolf appears across several poems, and connects the book thematically. The author describes how the wolf’s association with transformation and masculinity are “a good fit for what I wanted to explore... the wolves as an ’emotional barometer’ [is] a really apt description of what I wanted them to do in the book. They seem to have a habit of popping up in poems where I’m feeling uncertain, heartbroken, or angry.”
Tse references several gay male poets whose books he read while writing HE’S SO MASC, including D.A. Powell, Richard Siken, Stephen S Mills, Ocean Vuong, Saeed Jones, Danez Smith, Andrew McMillan and Mark Doty.
HE’S SO MASC is an exploration of an expansive, queer and contemporary identity that presents a departure point from Tse’s first full-length collection, How to be Dead in a Year of Snakes, surrounding the murder of Cantonese gold miner Joe Kum Yung. A quote from the poem ‘Punctum’ appears on the backside cover:
‘This is my blood oath with myself: the only dead Chinese person I’ll write about from now on is me.’