Refreshingly, Andrew Sutherland’s debut poetry collection does not sanitise queer experience. The poems were written between 2017 and 2021, during which time Sutherland was diagnosed HIV-positive and moved from Singapore to Perth. As a result, his writing captures moments of physical and psychic transition. Sutherland embraces rather than smooths over the messiness of his HIV diagnosis, while also finding rare moments of beauty in liminality.
This poetry is visceral and erotic, moving seamlessly between free verse and prose poetry to defy the limitations of form. Sutherland embraces the abject porousness of the queer body, rupturing its boundaries through pointed subversions of the written word. There are moments of reflection upon diagnosis and treatment interspersed with yarns about millennial pop culture, vampire metaphors and remembrances of past lovers.