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Tweaking working-class colloquialisms into new forms of elegy and song, Gwen Aube’s hilarious and uncompromising poems chronicle a precarious, debaucherous carnival of trailer-trash divas and Discord autistics, living and delighting in survival at the edges of technocapital.
Like a digital-age Wanda Coleman, like a transsexual Kevin Killian, like Elizabeth Smart infused with Sybil Lamb, Missed Connections with Tall Girls establishes Aube as a brash and unstoppable singular voice for a monstrous new world.
PRAISE FOR MISSED CONNECTIONS WITH TALL GIRLS
"Bold and brazen and full of heart and downright hilarious at times. It rolls like a memory, harkening the greats of street poetry. Gwen is my favourite kind of poet, the kind with clear eyes that truly see other humans, renders them beautiful."
—katherena vermette, author of procession
"Weaving through frigid squats, drug addled sorta-ecstasies, and masturbatory escapades at the state funded gallery, Gwen Aube’s transsexual, working class pastorals posit grime first as grime, then as glamour & necessity, amongst the broad taxonomy of strange looking women. Assured and conversational, each line reads like a portal through which we “know each other off the grin alone, drawn together, amassing a girlish storm.” In shelters, trainyards, & skeezy doctor’s waiting rooms, Aube’s poems sing and slang the tattered glories of tranny life and how we live it. It’s all work—as in labor and love—and reading these fucking real ass poems, I reinvented myself in the company of our holiest freaks."
—imogen smith, author of stemmy things
"Equal parts funny and furious, private and protective, Gwen Aube's writing pushes our battered language right to its ecstatic, aesthetic edge. Smart and street wise, rich in the way they portray poverty and the beauty of trans lives, these poems joyfully and painfully re-write the “broad taxonomy which holds us together.” Missed Connections with Tall Girls is serious, necessary work, but don't expect solemnity; Aube's book is a roaring good time."
—Alexander MacLeod, author of Light Lifting and Animal Person
"Evokes a city of sound and shifting spaces. Here, tears “glonk” on the sidewalk, mattresses are sometimes a chalice, sometimes a bowl, sometimes a god, and one’s own body does not always provide a home. Canny, understated, moving, seeking a passageway for trans lives and lives in transition, the poet’s voice creates a haunting stillness in the noise."
—PEN Canada New Voices jury citation
"WOW! Gwen Aube makes a speedway for poems, racing up your neck and into the mouth of your surprised, opening face! You think you know what's coming next? NO! HAHA! There is something incredible waiting for you here."
—CA Conrad, author of Listen to the Golden Boomerang Return
Product Details
Publication Date: April 7, 2026
ISBN: 978-1-96432209-7-1
Page Count: 104
Dimensions: 6.25” x 8.25”
