With kitchen-table candour and empathy, Charlie Petch's debut collection of poems offers witness to a decades-long trans/personal coming of age, finding heroes in unexpected places.
Why I Was Late fuses text with performance, bringing a transmasculine wisdom, humour, and experience to bear upon tailgates, spaceships, and wrestling rings. Fierce, tender, convention re-inventing—Petch works hard. And whether it's as a film union lighting technician, a hospital bed allocator, a Toronto hot dog vendor, or a performer/player of the musical saw, the work is survival. Heroes are found in unexpected places, elevated by both large and small gestures of kindness, accountability and acceptance. No subject—grief, disability, kink, sexuality, gender politics, violence—is off limits.
A poet so good at drag they had everyone convinced that they were a woman for the first forty years of their life, Petch has somehow brought the stage and its attendant thrills into the book. Better late than. And better.
"Charlie Petch's Why I Was Late is a poetic debut with the wisdom of a sage and the emotional range of an expert comedian. ... Do yourself a favor and read this book. This is a master at work."—Kai Cheng Thom, author of I Hope We Choose Love: A Trans Girl's Notes from the End of the World