He's So MASC

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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.

Reviews

For a definition of "MASC" read: online dating slang for "masculine". It's the kind of vernacular- and its constraints-played with throughout, sometimes comically and, as in the love poem par excellence, Crying at a disco, sometimes tenderly. - Siobhan Harvey, Weekend Herald

Author Bio

Chris Tse was born and raised in Lower Hutt. He studied English literature and film at Victoria University of Wellington, where he also completed an MA in Creative Writing at the IIML. Tse was one of three poets featured in AUP New Poets 4 (Auckland University Press, 2011) and his work has appeared in publications in New Zealand and overseas. His first collection, How to be Dead in a Year of Snakes (AUP, 2014) won the Jessie Mackay Award for Best First Book of Poetry in 2016.