Trouble the Water

Trouble the Water (2016), a collection of poems by Derrick Austin, probes the intersections of identity, race, art, and queer theory to interrogate and explore what it means to live in a “queer, black body” in contemporary America. The book is broken into four sections that explore place and the idea of where we are located in time and space—much of the book centers on the Gulf Coast of Florida, with a middle section focusing on an imagined Venice. The last section investigates ancestry as a way of locating the self, both through literary and cultural heritage.

Austin is a self-taught art aficionado and lover of ancient history, and his appreciation for ancient worlds and classic art offers a touchstone for his debut collection. In one poem, for example, he uses a photograph as a starting point for a larger narrative about what is happening beyond the still image. Austin is also interested in the ways that art creates heritage and history. In his second section, he writes poems from an imagined Venice, exploring how this cultural site influences contemporary life. Other poems are set inside museums or explore images of God in paintings.

Religion is an encompassing theme of Trouble the Water—the title of the collection comes from an African American spiritual. Austin insists on troubling religious waters here by providing his own interpretations of God and Christian iconography, and by conflating queer sexuality and spirituality. Austin writes about God and Christ as religious figures, but also compares lips to Heaven, and thinks about divinity in a physical and sexual capacity. His conflation of gay love and the Christian religion is unique, offering a space for his religious experience to live beside and within his queerness.



Austin is not only interested in exploring the queer experience, but also blackness, and how queerness and blackness intersect in his understanding of himself and how others view him. In the poem “Blaxploitation,” he writes an adapted ghazal in which every line ends with the word “black.” This constant repetition and instance on recognition of blackness offer the reader insight into how blackness is inherent in every part of Austin's life, and how it weaves its way into every aspect of his identity. In other moments, race takes a backseat to other concerns, only appearing when realized; in this way, Austin explores the presence of race in daily life, while also acknowledging that racial identity is only one lens through which he sees himself.

Overall, these poems offer a vivid sense of place, whether that be a cultural or religious space that Austin is recreating for readers, or a rendition of the humid Gulf Coast of Florida, where many of these poems are set. Using imagery and word choice, Austin crafts an atmosphere that mirrors his Gulf Coast home, while balancing much farther reaching or abstract spaces—for example, cultural histories or the air-conditioned sanctity of an art museum.

Born in Florida, Derrick Austin received his education in Tampa, Florida and Ann Arbor, Michigan. His debut collection, Trouble the Water was selected by Mary Szybist for the 2015 A. Poulin Jr. Prize. Austin, a Cave Canem Fellow, has also served as a Ron Wallace Poetry Fellow at the Wisconsin Institute of Creative Writing.