The experimental, fragmented, and nonlinear poems in Birch Philosopher X are an archive of Red Washburn's intergenerational families of women, including tributes to LGBTQ elders, their grandmother, and their mother, as well as their writing as care work for their ancestors who have transitioned on. In free-verse lyric, narrative, prose, and hybrid poems, the poet explores themes of memory and witness, gender identity and sexuality, ancestry and legacy, love and loss, death and mourning, childhood and imagination, politics and the body, affect and temporality, nature and healing, family and friendship, and LGBTQ and feminist issues. They also address their intersecting identities as a white, trans, nonbinary queer from working-class Irish roots, focusing on tracing their gender transition and healing process, exploring their possibilities for freedom using sound meditation, and embracing the lacunae of nonbinary being and classification. In addition, the volume encompasses different forms of love, such as romance, eroticism, sex, friendship, kinship, chosen family, and animal love, that complicate fixed notions of joy and pleasure in interesting and compelling ways. The collection includes a range of poems that reflect on space, where childhood, nature, and politics coalesce across time and circumstance. The power of this collection is its raw lyricism and experimental artistry in the tradition of LGBTQ expression and resistance.
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Red Washburn has published in numerous journals and anthologies. Red's articles appear in Journal for the Study of Radicalism, Women's Studies: An Interdisciplinary Journal, and Journal of Lesbian Studies. Their essays are in several anthologies, including Theory and Praxis: Women's and Gender Studies at Community Colleges, Introduction to Women's, Gender & Sexuality Studies: Interdisciplinary and Intersectional Approaches, and Trans Bodies, Trans Selves: A Resource for the Transgender Community. They are the co-editor of Sinister Wisdom's Dump Trump: Legacies of Resistance, 45 Years: A Tribute to Lesbian Herstory Archive, and Trans/Feminisms. Finishing Line Press published their poetry chapbook Crestview Tree Woman. Their academic book Irish Women's Prison Writing: Mother Ireland's Rebels, 1960-2010s is forthcoming from Routledge.