An Optimism

Poems | Persea Books | forthcoming October 2025

Here in this, another, century of wildfire, century of war, when America is more and less itself/than ever, Cameron Awkward-Rich know[s] all the arguments for/and against [his] life. But An Optimism doesn't show, tell, or try to teach us how to be present to ourselves and this moment. Instead, we are brought, blessedly, into the interior of experience – an assembly of love which includes history, nature, the body, and the mind. This is a book that un-mutes possibility. Re-imagines time. It is our luck that we live now and inside this life, get to listen. Here the sprawl of blackness is reflected across the tenses – a trans pastoral revelation – the beautiful thought: you, you. Alive, alive, alive.

TC Tolbert, author of Gephyromania and The Quiet Practices

An Optimism is an incisive, lyrical work propelled by the unfixed possibilities of We, vexing syntax to reveal vital durations of commitment and togetherness. Lines are channels—to access or to be accessed by. Lines are horizons. To Pauli Murray, Cameron Awkward-Rich writes: ‘As far I know there is no tense, not in English, to describe the shape of time you help me see, the was/will-be.’ An utterance I say back to Awkward-Rich about his exacting, capacious work. An Optimism is an astonishment of theory, analysis, and Black trans/ feminist/queer imagination.

Aracelis Girmay, author of the black maria and Kingdom Animalia