Super Model Minority Book / Publication / Landmark Writing

INFO

Name	Super Model Minority
Year	2022
Writer(s)	Chris Tse
Publisher	Auckland University Press
Type of Text	Poetry
Artform	Literature

ABOUT

Super Model Minority is the title of Chris Tse’s third full-length book of poetry. The blurb suggests it concludes a ‘loose trilogy’ of collections, from the exploration of historical racism in How to be Dead in a Year of Snakes (2014) to queer pop-star coming of age in HE’S SO MASC (2018) to Super Model Minority’s dreams of an expansive future during times of apocalypse, where “it’s enough to look up at a sky blushing red and see possibility”.

Super Model Minority is sectioned into three parts: ‘Super model minority’, ‘Vexillology’ and ‘Poetry to make boys cry’. Themes across the collection involve wrestling with race and sexuality as a queer Asian man, love, history, the future, the climate crisis, and studies of light and colour. As described in the endnotes, the poems in ‘Vexillology’ are based on the colours of the LGBT pride flag designed by Gilbert Baker, with this sequence taking its inspiration from the meanings attributed to the eight colours of the original flag.

Reviewers have noted the use of formatting in this collection, including the ‘signature spacing’ characteristic of Tse’s oeuvre and ‘a conspicuous rotation of forms within this collection… page-wide slabs punctuated by slashes or blank space, long-lined verse in islands’.

Many reviews also picked up on the wide variety of influences and voices that filter into this collection, with poems taking inspiration from works by deceased queer artists such as Grant Lingard and Félix González-Torres, alongside Chinese-American poet Chen Chen, Aotearoa artists Sam Duckor-Jones and Guy Ngan, as well as George Michael, Carly Rae Jepsen, and the Cards Against Humanity game. Sophie Van Waardenberg writes:

In Tse’s work there is always the feeling of a gesture outwards, and an acknowledgement of the work and people of whom and for whom these poems were made. This ramshackle backing chorus of borrowed voices adds warmth and breadth to the collection, while also pointing the reader towards the cross-section of identity and lyric Tse provides on every page.

The book was a finalist for the 2023 Lambda Literary Award for Gay Poetry, and was longlisted for the Mary and Peter Biggs Award for Poetry at the 2023 Ockham New Zealand Book Awards. It was also a finalist for Best Non-Illustrated Book at the 2023 PANZ Book Design Awards.