He Told Me, full-length poetry collection published by Capturing Fire Press (2019) – purchase from Powell Books, $10
He Told Me offers a view into queer love, relationships, and family, tied together through intimate portraits and vignettes. The poems blend delicious, juicy joy with the darkness of searching for love and for self. A treatise on the body and how one learns their own body through encounters with others, this debut collection provides a view of intimacy that is at turns lighthearted and dark, deeply honest while simultaneously conjuring a mythology of great desire.
“If there’s a bigger heart in poetry than Tyler French’s I don’t know it. The poems of He Told Me ask over and over how we might truly come to know one another, how we might acknowledge and love our only selves. They answer with the radical power of the queer erotic, and, too, with a full embrace of our gorgeous, hurting world.”
Sarah Browning, co-founder, Split This Rock & author of Killing Summer
“Tyler French’s poems are the smack across the face you didn’t know you needed. All at once start, and painful, and dramatic, and irresistible. This collection serves as a reminder that you like an accented cheekbone, that the taste of blood in your mouth is indicative of your actual pulse. He Told Me celebrates how nuanced concupiscence juxtaposed against exacting and blunt imagery signals the arrival of a genuine poet’s authentic voice.”
Angelique Palmer, author of The Chambermaid’s Style Guide
Poems, Anthologies, and Journals
“A series of poems based on daily tarot card draws in self-isolation” (a poetry-performance video) – Emergent Seed Round 2 Honoree, Nov 2020
“FIVE OF COINS” – Yes Poetry, Nov 2020
“a gender reveal party,” “The Leaves on the Trees in Lafayette Park,” “Smells Like Town or Any of the Other Gay Clubs that Have Closed” – Slipform 2020 Anthology, published by Danielle Evennou , Nov 2020
Arts and Humanities Fellowship, DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities, FY21
“SIX OF CUPS” – When Pens Bloom: a Chapbook Collaboration with Poets Are The Destroyers and Plants & Poetry, Sept 2020
“Dupont Circle c. 2146” – Impossible Archetype – Issue 8, Aug 2020
“Lost Wood” – Homology Lit – Issue 6, July 2020
“Choke,” “Sir, Yes Sir,” “Serenade” – in collaboration with Ben Kline – Bending Genres Journal – Issue 13, Feb 2020
Arts and Humanities Fellowship, DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities, FY20
“Ptown, June 25, 2018” – The Quarry: A Social Justice Poetry Database, Split This Rock, Sept 2018
3 Poems – Stoked Words: An Anthology of Queer Poetry from the Capturing Fire Slam and Summit, Capturing Fire Press (2018)
“5 Role-Playing Scenarios” – Bending Genres Journal – Issue 1, Feb 2018
“Watchmaker” – Beech Street Review – Fall 2016 Vol. 1, Issue 2
5 Poems – Assaracus: A Journal of Gay Poetry – Issue 22, April 2016
