Dream Rooms by River Halen

“The books in the Essais Series”, says Book*hug Press, “ are forms of vital generosity; they invite attention to a necessary reconsideration of culture, society, politics, and experience”:  Dream Rooms is well-placed here—a trans-genre book informed by poetry, memoir, essay. Its throughlines are a careful and honest declaration of some necessary truths for which the English language remains woefully ill-equipped:

            “If masculinity were not an army, no one would be punished for deserting, and if 

              femininity were not a punishment, the arms could be instruments of pleasure. I 

              would like to elaborate these states because I suspect they are my venue—the dirt

              in which something very me, very I could go shooting up and blooming down, but 

              it is hard to find the words, let alone speak them.”

                                                                                                 The Full Impulse

I calculate (very roughly) that River Halen was somewhere in the early years of grade school, still wearing the uncomfortable mantle of an assigned name and gender that did not fit, when I came out as queer. Those were different times. And not so different. To claim that word as mine, as me, was a powerful experience. It changed my life profoundly for the better. Decades later, good language is still hard to find.

River Halen tells us they are “not a man or a woman but something else, something sort of man-adjacent and at the same time extremely fruity, a person who desire(s) a five o’clock shadow and a closet full of leotards”. They consider the fantastic possibility of a shelter-place where

“…I moved in with all kinds of gender-marginalized people and none of us were gendered from the outside any longer”.

Dream Rooms provides a deft, engaging, witty and poignant view of complex connections across large and small features of queer daily life, whether it be the care of someone else’s rabbit, the removal of an IUD, or the re-examined, now-dubious status of the works of some famously misogynist writers. 

I went looking for the exit, found a sleeve, for example, is much more than an investigation of the power relations inherent in a two year tussle with a moth infestation (initially picked up at the Al Purdy writing residency)—

            “ ….an insect can become

               a patriarch in the eyes of my white queer

               faggy-butch, semi-femme

               dapple-gendered

               medium powerful position”.

The moths flit through multi-layered intersecting stories of a time “when everything was going haywire with us”: 

            “In the haywire time my attention

              was called to small things, for example

              the moths that had been eating my clothes

              for two years, to the point that I did not have much to wear

               except polyester blends”. 

I went looking for an exit, found a sleeve takes the poet and the reader through relationship break-up, hospitalization for pneumonia, the death of a grandmother, reflections on fatherhood and parenthood, the death of  “your ex’s mom”, the dead end road of fossil fuel dependencies—

              “ …a preacher asking people

                 to stop digging up the dead

                 by which he meant oil”.

¾ and brings us to a place worthy of pause:

            “….I chose to break

              what I knew in the abstract existed

               but did not understand myself

               in that moment to be holding.”

At a time when climate emergencies, war and massive human displacements around the globe call into question a wide range of assumptions about our relationships with other humans, with animals and plants and with the planet that holds us so patiently and lovingly, books like Dream Rooms offer important advice about what it means to be a loving human being on this planet, trans-identified or not. I am grateful for the growing list of books, printed articles, social media posts and blogs produced by Canadian and Indigenous writers who are trans-identified and who are courageously choosing to share their stories. People like River Halen, Ivan Coyote, Sophie Labelle, Gwen Benaway, Vivek Shraya…(please forgive me, all of you who aren’t on this oh-so-brief list) are not only offering language, hope and inspiration to the large number of humans who don’t happen to be cis-gendered, white-skinned, heterosexual, identified male at birth and just fine with that. Their writing also points the way to a more courageous, less fearful, kinder world for us all.

“When I think of revolution, I imagine it as a series of small, courageous, flawed

                            attempts to risk everything”.

                                                                        The Full Impulse


River Halen is a non-binary transgender writer of Catalan and Danish descent born in Surrey, BC, on unceded Coast Salish land and now living in Tio’tia:ke (Montreal).

  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ Book*hug Press (Oct. 18 2022)
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • Paperback ‏ : ‎ 200 pages
  • ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 1771667788
  • ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1771667784

Susan is grateful to live on Treaty 18 territory at the southern shore of Manidoo-gitchigami (Georgian Bay) in Ontario, Canada with two human partners and a very large dog. Recent publications include a collaborative chapbook,Hand Shadowswith Michele Green and Suzette Sherman (Wintergreen Press, 2024). Hag Dancesis coming out with At Bay Press in Spring 2025.www.susanwismer.com