In another debut that makes me hopeful about the future of poetry and the world, Kiara Lindsay’s A Portrait of Me Running as Fast as the Plant is Growing (No More Poetry, 2023) spills over with warmth and everyday goodness. Lindsay’s voice is casual and conversational, making you feel as if you’re with a friend the whole way through. Where Tung plays with form and the placement of letters on the page, A Portrait of Me Running as Fast as the Plant is Growing gently probes the idea of what a poem can be. Throughout the collection, scanned pages of handwritten notes appear, often as mirror images or layered upon each other. On one page, the words “It will take a long long time” are printed in all caps, the text flipped right to left and layered on top of itself until it becomes an unintelligible mass of ink (14). Even the very charming full colour photo of (presumably) the poet curled up in bed with her dog in the front inside cover feels like a poem. This sets a playful, sweet tone that carries through to the end of the book.
In ‘Remember how we both had long, long hair when we first met,’ the speaker expounds on the beauty and wonder of meeting up with a friend:
Oh wow, I really did come, and oh wow, he really waited for me, we really are doing all that with the other in mind (22)
In elevating this as the subject of a poem, Lindsay holds the mundane up as being worthy of attention. This moment we might take for granted is revealed as extraordinary, something to treasure. Likewise, in ‘poem for my little doggy,’ the simple adoration of Lindsay’s poem feels perfect and almost holy:
I have a dog who doesn’t care if I’m funny or not, if my haircut’s up-to-date just that I have the hand that holds her I exist around her and that’s it (12)
What more could any of us want? Even the word ‘doggy’ is a surprise and a delight to come across in a title (and brings to mind one of the best poems ever written, Mary Ruefle’s ‘A Morning Person,’ where the line “not a doggie is walking” appears from nowhere like a gift).
A Portrait of Me Running as Fast as the Plant is Growing is also delightfully, domestically queer, like drinking coffee in the sun with the love of your life. In ‘binding ties / I’ll look forever,’ we begin with Catherine Opie, the American photographer known for capturing queer life, particularly in domestic spaces. The Catherine Opie exhibition the speaker visits is reflected out into the world of the poem, which feels real and good and familiar:
we’re so safe together, we’re getting burgers and it’s so sunny. having a beer, driving you home, only to bring you with me when I leave again. reading lou sullivan’s diaries to you in bed, you releasing my hips because you know so much about the body. this is a love poem and I don’t care (47)
The last caesura feels like an organic breath after the momentum that’s built in the previous few lines, so when we get to the final words it feels like a beautiful release.
In ‘Tell me (I’m good),’ the speaker recounts their days as if holding them up for us to judge:
I don’t always do something kind but I try. I go to work and come home. I don’t always have a beer, though I’d like to. I measure myself against anything I can find. I read a few chapters of a book. (34)
In the middle of the poem, an unexpected pause from the list of daily activities, the lines, “There are people who / want people like us / either dead or gone” (34). This direct acknowledgement of homophobic and transphobic sentiments is quietly devastating amidst the earnestness of the poem. We go about our lives and try to be good, but it does something to you, knowing that this feeling is out there. It goes without saying that this is connected to the rise in transphobic and homophobic violence and specifically anti-trans legislation in the last couple of years. Lindsay manages to capture this muddle of fear and anger and how it bleeds into everyday life, sitting underneath everything you do.
There’s a real sense of nostalgia and bittersweet memory throughout this collection. In ‘our house as a colour map,’ the speaker moves through the different rooms of the house in colours (10-11). The bedroom is “tinged a gentle red,” the backyard a “precious, / unintrusive pink” (10). In the lines that stay with me the longest, we’re in the sunroom with friends and it’s a “bright white with a bluish hue” (10). Lindsay writes, “there was a time when the sunroom didn’t have / a colour, until we sat in it with our dead friend, he / was really really with us, laughing laughing and it’s / had a colour ever since” (10). A Portrait of Me Running as Fast as the Plant is Growing feels ultimately imbued with hope and warmth not despite but because of these moments where Lindsay writes into grief and sadness, placed next to moments of almost tangible sweetness.
The poems in A Portrait of Me Running as Fast as the Plant is Growing flow in and out of feelings, as well as in and out of the speaker’s body, exploring the shape of a life. The perspective flows into other animals and other beings, in one moment part of the river – “in fact now / I am in a / body of water” (‘carry me off,’ 27) – in the next peering down from a bird’s eye view – “I can see / it all, and like a bird I’m just / looking, not judging or holding / on to anything” (‘I spend a lot of time walking around,’ 42). And then, later, “feeling more like a lizard / on a hot rock, cheek pressed up / against it” (42). Like Robyn Maree Pickens, Lindsay dissolves the boundaries between her human self and the rest of the world, but here there’s a sense of searching for something to ground her. More often than not this is a piece of fruit, or a cup of coffee, or the love of a friend.
A Portrait of Me Running as Fast as the Plant is Growing deserves to be read in the sun, lounging on the deck with a coffee or maybe a beer, and perhaps a cat or a sweet little dog sleeping nearby. It’s a generous read that feels bright with colour and full of love, easy to hold and be held by. Lindsay’s debut is one I’ll return to many times, whenever I need a reminder that summer is coming and people can be good.
