Chris Tse (謝浩賢) is the New Zealand Poet Laureate for 2022-25. His writing explores Chinese–New Zealand history, the intersection of pop culture and queer joy, and his Hong Kong ancestry. He is the author of three books: How to be Dead in a Year of Snakes, HE’S SO MASC and Super Model Minority (a Lambda Literary Awards 2023 finalist for Gay Poetry), all published by Auckland University Press. He recently edited Ōrongohau | Best New Zealand Poems 2023, and co-edited Cordite Poetry Review 114 with the poet Joel M. Toledo.
In the past two years, Chris has presented and performed his poetry throughout New Zealand and in Australia, Bali, the UK and the US, where he was a 2024 fellow of the University of Iowa International Writing Program Fall Residency. He lives in Wellington, New Zealand.
Despite his clear homoerotic depiction of French-Canadian boxer Lionel Daigle, Marsden Hartley’s painting Madawaska—Acadian Light-Heavy was praised by critics as a display of heteronormative masculinity. This poem explores how queer artists use their creative outlets to explore their sexuality.
Body of work—Marsden Hartley
Madawaska—Acadian Light-Heavy, Marsden Hartley, 1940
young man, show me your fists / demonstrate how you burst / splendid ruby in the ring / punches that land like / strawberries on the lips / we can split our bodies in two / & relish the mean meat of physical delirium / young man, pose for me / I’ll shape an ideal form / from your tone / limbs more nimble than truth bent into gossip / let air quotes signal scandal / your jaw, your chest: the ultimatum I refuse / to negotiate for myself / young man, show me discipline / & how it devours / a man’s composure / every part of him open for business / down to the oiled knots / of his aging body / that remember what it felt like to be in season
Forbidden
Guo Pei: Fashion, Art, Fantasy—Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki, 2024
There’s a pattern inside all of us that arranges itself into protection.
Every day we wake and choose an auspicious second skin.
Each thread and seam is tested for its most valuable properties.
Whether camouflage or exhibition, without such rituals
some of us wouldn’t have survived into adulthood.
When I was a teenager, I was told which colours and drapes I could wear
to ensure I adhered to the Hutt Valley masculinity dress code.
All hail the standard issue blue of boys will be boys.
All hail the black and white of gender conformity.
All hail the sports brand sirens of pick your battles
until you are in the safe zone.
I made a wish to wear the clothes of the emperor and the empress,
to imitate the way daylight slips on its cape to riot under the spell of night.
Tradition becomes luxury, each stitch tied to hopeful breath
with a clove hitch. A knot for me. A knot for my dragon,
taking flight after years of captivity. A knot for all the times
the idea of a dress made me feel wild but I was compelled to hide my blush.
Which knots must we nurture to realise it is our birth right to call
to the heavens with such desire in our hearts?
There’s a knot that stands in for operatic fantasy, and another that tethers me
to Mulan’s adventures in boy drag and how her transgression paid off.
If I convince each knot to keep me bound to my ancestors,
which beacons should I trust? Tighten each knot
until I have the upper hand, so that every pattern I reconcile is
my way of reclaiming a territory once lost to shy desire.
It might take a crisis, but eventually I forgive the faults, disregard them
like fruit peels. Some joys are only made visible
when the needle catches in just the right way, when we use colour
to rebel. The hardest lesson is realising that no amount of diversion
can deny shimmers that stay shimmers even when under pressure.
The trick is knowing what triggers retreat and using it to my advantage,
to treat every garment as a poem so I can savour the moon and its lucky song.
Nowadays I step in and out of the past, no longer trapped by how the seasons
have layered upon my skin, the leaves like flames licking at whatever legends
are cocooned in my body, keeping my spirit intact. I remind myself:
there are no seams in heaven.
The dance floor has long been a place of escape and empowerment for queer people. In ‘BRAT by Charli XCX by Chris Tse’, the poet celebrates an album that defined the pop culture landscape in 2024 while reflecting on its themes of introspection, anxiety and self-worth.
BRAT by Charli XCX by Chris Tse
‘Tis the season for reflection & there’s a line
to be drawn. The line is salvaging the existence
of daylight in a room with no windows where
our faces melt & drip from our skulls. In this poem
I will try to make something meaningful out of
the controlled burn of the past two decades
but I still can’t shake the homosexual urge to pound
my fists & knees into this dance floor until the room
slips off its axis & I pass out from a different kind of pain.
I’m old enough to know that every zeitgeist is destined
to become nostalgia—this is how we learn to move
in time with whatever sadness keep us grounded.
When I go to the club I want to be slimed & devastated
because these days the source of my stress is
accepting that after strobe-light euphoria comes a wave
to shatter the illusion. Even hope can destroy us.
I try breathing slowly. I try making peace
with the horse bolting under scattered mirrorball gleam.
Part of me wants to go back to when forever was
a selfish wish & all I wanted was to be made & used
& told by a father figure that I am a very good boy
at being made & used. I used to trust the mirror & accept
what it told me: that every gay sidekick is a dumb bitch
with a heart of gold & no matter how much
main character energy they carry they will always have
to make do with never getting what they want. Give me
that blindness one more time, when happy endings
never existed in my mornings after, at least
not in the traditional sense. I try to think about those days
in a way that absolves me. I try to remember what it was like
being so carefree, when a night out meant the promise of
hooking up with someone in a dark corner, their hands
grabbing me in time with the music. Instead I got
a stranger in the bathroom hovering behind me
at the urinal asking to see my cock. All I wanted was
to fulfil my desire, to let go of the masks of my daily lives
& work through my escape plan with my hands in the air.
Was it surrender or ecstasy? You tell me.
