ARC received in exchange for a review, so I won't copy out any of my favourite lines just in case anything changes.

I absolutely adored this one. Button Poetry really hasn't missed a step yet, as far as I'm concerned, and this is another phenomenal collection. Kantor was previously unfamiliar to me but I'd love to check out more of their work after reading this.

The majority of poems here discuss gender through the lens of performance, and although that might sound trite, it isn't. Kantor's genuine love for the theatre shines through, not just as a metaphor for the performativity of gender and relationships, but for the love of the theatre itself. There's a real respect and adoration for their subject here. I will say that I found the poems which were more directly responding to plays less resonant than some of the ones which used theatre as a more distant metaphor, but that's just because I don't have the frame of reference that Kantor does; I'm not a theatre geek.

For me personally, my favourite poems here were the ones that spoke about their family and in particular the death of their brother. I shed a very small and silent tear at my desk in work a few times reading those. I just love Kantor's use of language and imagery and will absolutely be picking up a physical copy of this one.