Portrait of My Body as a Crime I'm Still Committing

By Topaz Winters

2019

First Published

4.21

Average Rating

Number of Pages

2H06M

Audio Length

Portrait of My Body as a Crime I'm Still Committing is an award-winning, omnivorous collection of poetry residing in the space between confessional & manifesto. Portrait is interested in the immediacy of language; in girlhood as wolfhood; in the cartography of illness; in fractures through the dark; in bodies, human & water alike. Luminous, tender, & unflinching, Portrait cuts straight to the marrow. To all those whose bodies have been more bruise than human—who feel so loudly the sky turns black in fear—this book is for you. Portrait of My Body as a Crime I'm Still Committing was chosen as a finalist in the 2018 Gaudy Boy Poetry Book Prize by Singapore Unbound, & in the 2018 Broken River Prize by Platypus Press. This collection contains the poems "Guidebook for Wild Things Wishing to Be Tamed", "Self-Diagnosis", "Trigger", "For H", "But First, the Stomach", "New York City Probably Has an Anxiety Disorder", "Portrait of My Body as a Crime I'm Still Committing", "Flood Season", "Lightning / Hunger", "If the Body Is an Artefact", "Infernal / Inferno", "When My First Boyfriend Learned I Was on Anti-Psychotics, He Laughed & Told Me He Always Suspected I Was Crazier Than I Let On", "Alternate Names for Gay Girls", "Quell", "On the First Day, God Killed Himself", "Mealtime", "The Night You Are Diagnosed", "Still", "Serenade to Surrender", "Lone / Pack", "High Specific Heat", "Panic Attack as Airplane Departure Time", "Dream Sequence", "Pandora", "Insomnia", "Event Horizon", "50 Words for Snow", "This Is a Story About Mourning", "Healing Is", "July", "Call Me Before You Leave Again", & "Hands".

Avg Rating

4.21

Number of Ratings

245

5 STARS

50%

4 STARS

25%

3 STARS

20%

2 STARS

1 STARS

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Author

Topaz Winters

Author · 6 books

I am an internationally-award winning & critically-acclaimed poet, essayist, editor, performer, artist, & scholar. I’m the author of So, Stranger (Button Poetry 2022), Portrait of My Body as a Crime I’m Still Committing (2019), & poems for the sound of the sky before thunder (Math Paper Press 2017), & the founder & editor-in-chief of the publishing house & literary journal Half Mystic. My peer-reviewed research on poetry & queerness in Singapore is published in the Journal of Homosexuality, & is taught at the University of Southern California’s doctorate programme in educational leadership. My poetry, essays, & art have been published in & featured by venues from The Straits Times to American Banker to the Singapore Writers Festival to the Center for Fiction to the Academy of American Poets. I’ve traveled across the world teaching & performing poetry, & my photography & performance art have been exhibited in Singapore & the United States. In 2017 I gave the TEDx talk Healing Is a Verb. I’m the writer & star of the critically-acclaimed short film SUPERNOVA (recipient of awards from the Newark International, Across Asia Youth, Laurie Nelson, My Rode Reel, Singapore International Student, & CINE Golden Eagle Film Festivals), & from 2015 to 2022 I wrote the annual column Silver-Tipped Swallow for Half Mystic Journal. I’m 23 years old, & I study English Literature, Creative Writing, Italian, & Visual Art at Princeton University. I live between Singapore & Brooklyn. I like used bookstores, rosé, honeybees, classic rock, red lipstick, & the sea.