Weren’t We Natural Swimmers

Pleasure and beauty pulse with stubborn purpose in Aliah Lavonne Tigh’s debut. The poems, orbiting the climate change front lines in Houston, reveal the physical and physic aftermath of ecological disaster – the unwelcomed flood waters intermingle with economic sanctions, domestic warfare, the erotic, grief, family, the divine, ecology, and the osmosis of pain. Through vivid juxtaposition, electric lyric, and braided narrative, an ardent and unflinching argument for a new American pastoral emerges.

Praise for the Chapbook:

“Confronting entangled climate catastrophe (‘Maybe we plant them… ladder a child climbs to escape the sea’) & US imperialism (‘the God of War is sitting in the desk behind me’), Tigh’s Queer Iranian ecopoems insist on finding love despite impossible times: ‘tell me you want to love me / in the round darkness / of midnight.’ Among my favorite 2022 releases!”

—George Abraham, author of Birthright

“Weren’t We Natural Swimmers is an invitation to look deeply at disasters made intimate and personal — dead and dying fathers and uncles in a landscape of burning refineries, flooded rooms and a looming never-ending war. Despite this terrifying world, despite heartbreak, Aliah Lavonne Tigh celebrates ‘the beauty our eyes can unhide,’ the luminous natural world still present and wondrous.”

—Ching-In Chen, author of recombinant and The Heart’s Traffic