[05/05/26] Smith, Imogen: Raw & Zero

Nightboat Books, paperback

Publication Date: May 5, 2026

Publisher Marketing: A book of transition--poetic, political, religious--and its always radical implications.

Occupied with trans spirituality, the genocide in Palestine, and the manifold intricacies of queer love and struggle, the poems in imogen smith's second collection, raw & zero, open up an unabashedly musical incitement to take a stand on honest ground. At the heart of this collection lies the tensions between the philosophical and the erotic. Language unspools throughout long form pieces influenced by concrete poetry, as the poet plays with a sense of shape, space, and symbols. With raw & zero, smith charts medical transition, a budding Islamic practice, and civic resistance, felt in the book's themes of meaning-making, hope, love, lust, identity, and community alongside personal, regional, and global grief.