Our Air
Author: Nora Treatbaby
Publisher: Nightboat Book (2024)
A debut poetry collection about Earth and to Earth that contemplates imposed systems—gender, capitalism, time, wage and exploitation—and how they are mapped onto us, the trees, and the planet.
Immersed in a tangled weave of contemporary life where big box stores and suburban parking lots coexist alongside the instructive silence of juniper trees and a pulsing waterfall, Our Air sketches the possibilities of eco and social interdependence during late-stage capitalism. Their inscriber, Nora Treatbaby, is a trans woman reckoning with the constraints of gender categories, when being a woman is “an implausible dream” and “an insane vibration.” With sincere curiosity and a sprinkling of levity, these poems advocate for the world-building potential available in a material commitment to gentle friendship with all networks of life on Earth.