DADDY

Winner of the 2025 Trillium Book Award for Poetry

If you reloop trauma enough, does it make a danceable rhythm? If you get lost in physical sensation enough, does that make you free?

DADDY is a powerful look at patriarchy, intergenerational trauma, and queer desire that seeks an unravelling of systems of control to reclaim vulnerability. At once confessional, playful, and sonically meticulous, Byrne's poems seek conversation with a voice in the mind that won't quiet. Cruel father figures dissolve into leather-clad muscle daddies on popper-scented dancefloors; the pain of the past sows the seeds of a joyful exploration of queer desire.