"In her lovely, complicated poems, Beyer . . . suggests that queerness isn't relegated to gender or love but is part of the ebb and flow of everything." --Library Journal
"What is remarkable about We Come Elemental is that it effectively queers nature and body without explicitly doing so.... Gender, sexuality, and body coexist with the ever-changing tides, and desire is upheld as a pure form of (re)creation. Beyer has written a nuanced book that deserves a careful, joyous, and thoughtful read." --Lambda Literary
Through "queer:: eco:: poetics," Tamiko Beyer leads readers to reconsider the true meaning and implications of nature and "natural" order. Reclaiming nature as queer, Beyer inspires us to discard gender dichotomies and uncover the intricate relationships between bodies both human and elemental through syntax as unpredictable as the natural world's movements.
From "Look Alive, Dark Side"
Beach walking we
who siphon the wet
step around dumb
lumps gleaming
in moonlight's pull:
creatures the tide
abandons to the shore.
We are not at all like them.
Tamiko Beyer spent the first ten years of her life in Tokyo, Japan. She is the author of the chapbook bough breaks (Meritage Press). She received her MFA from Washington University in St. Louis and was awarded a Chancellor's Fellowship. Beyer is a former Kundiman Fellow, a recipient of a grant from the Astraea Lesbian Writers Fund, and a contributing editor to Drunken Boat. She works as the advocacy writer at Corporate Accountability International.
Industry Reviews
"It is easy to notice that We Come Elemental is beautifully written, a book indebted to the traditions of lyric and yet attentive to language's possible innovations. But it is important to notice that it is a book of complicated dialogue between ecologies, geographies, and bodies. Nitrogen, the plastics of the North Pacific Gyre, New Orleans, Saint Louis, lantern fish, muscles of the body, all of it is there, floating together in the body of the poem." --Juliana Spahr "We Come Elemental introduces us to a poet of uncommon elegance and mystery. These poems act as a tour guide for the human heart, with sparse and fragrant writing. Haunting and full of humanity, these poems lash us to the world underwater and through the body politic with a sizzling ear and eye for what makes the body thrum." --Aimee Nezhukumatahil
"An elegant, dynamic collection immersed in the insistent logic, memory, and drive of water, We Come Elemental invites us to inhabit the possibilities endemic to our relentlessly material living being. Fluid and arresting, subtle yet bold, Beyer's linguistic dexterity showcases a singularly perceptive, refined intelligence and its artful, intimate deliberation upon some of the most critical questions of our time." --Duriel E. Harris "It is easy to notice that We Come Elemental is beautifully written, a book indebted to the traditions of lyric and yet attentive to language's possible innovations. But it is important to notice that it is a book of complicated dialogue between ecologies, geographies, and bodies. Nitrogen, the plastics of the North Pacific Gyre, New Orleans, Saint Louis, lantern fish, muscles of the body, all of it is there, floating together in the body of the poem." --Juliana Spahr "We Come Elemental introduces us to a poet of uncommon elegance and mystery. These poems act as a tour guide for the human heart, with sparse and fragrant writing. Haunting and full of humanity, these poems lash us to the world underwater and through the body politic with a sizzling ear and eye for what makes the body thrum." --Aimee Nezhukumatahil
"An elegant, dynamic collection immersed in the insistent logic, memory, and drive of water, We Come Elemental invites us to inhabit the possibilities endemic to our relentlessly material living being. Fluid and arresting, subtle yet bold, Beyer's linguistic dexterity showcases a singularly perceptive, refined intelligence and its artful, intimate deliberation upon some of the most critical questions of our time." --Duriel E. Harris
