Scream / Queen
Out Now from Acre Books
Through formally innovative poems populated by slasher-movie villains and campy horror creatures, CD Eskilson’s Scream / Queen examines queerness, mental illness, and transgender identity. Though the current climate of trans panic pervades the book, Scream / Queen ultimately conjures a world full of hope and tenderness that celebrates the body’s possibilities.
Poems from the collection have been published in Academy of American Poets, Florida Review, Beloit Poetry Journal, Booth, and Ninth Letter, among others.
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Praise for Scream / Queen
“In Scream / Queen, CD Eskilson unravels the ciphers of the celluloid closet, using horror as a lens and entry point into poems mapping transness, chronic illness, and familial trauma. These whip-smart, funny, tender, and lyrically inventive poems both pay homage to and critique horror, unwilling to overlook the genre's entanglement in ongoing moral panics surrounding transness. Though Eskilson stakes the claim that "So much language," the very building blocks of their craft, "is a hunting ground," and though this collection orbits a series of personal and historical violences, the beating heart at the core of Eskilson's poems is love—for the self, their community, family, partner, and for the genre horror itself.”
— torrin a. greathouse, author of DEED
“If you’ve survived the unsurvivable, is that enough? Are you also allowed joy, pleasure, contentment even? How much? Scream / Queen dances in the impossible tension of creating a new life while reparenting our current and younger selves. Eskilson’s poems scream in their pauses, silences, surprising variations of form, and sharply-forged verbs. Obstacle after obstacle, from external harm to the ghosts of harm that are intrusive thoughts, the voices of Scream / Queen are languaging their attempts to live in unforgettable sound.”
— K. Iver, author of Short Film Starring My Beloved’s Red Bronco
“As preluded by the title of their gorgeously written book, CD Eskilson’s Scream / Queen conjures the throaty power of poetry in defiance of “cruelty made quiet.” With deft formal innovation, these tremendous poems are aimed with command and compassion at the realities and the myths that would refuse trans love and liberation, forging new sacred possibilities from their sonic wakes, resolving to claim all the joy owed. As Eskilson says it, “I lick my lips,// I kiss the moon: it took so long/ to get here.” Amen.”
— Geffrey Davis, author of One Wild Word Away
"Eskilson’s broad talent belies the fact that Scream / Queen is a debut. . . the cohesiveness of the collection makes the book seem almost predestined. . . . The collection is introspective and highly vulnerable, showcasing revealing poemsabout chronic illness and failed relationships. Eskilson writes in conversation with contemporaries, family history and current events, weaving in interviews, pop culture references and other poets’ work for a solid collection that respects the art while pushing boundaries."
— The Associated Press
"[An] imaginative and playful debut. . . Scream / Queen interrogates monstrosity and the monsterification of trans, queer, and disabled/mentally ill bodies through the lens of pop culture, particularly horror films. . . . By radically re-envisioning familiar characters and tropes, Eskilson breathes new life into their stories, granting them agency and also allowing readers who have been marginalized or flattened by harmful language and representation to see themselves reflected, perhaps for the first time. Scream / Queen is a testament to the liberatory power of queer imagination, creating 'Not simply / a new ending, an entirely new script.'"
— Electric Literature
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