Katie Wilson’s book I Need to Be Myself: 100 Transgender Poems is not simply a poetry collection. It is a diary of awakening, a record of years when a life quietly rearranged itself, and a soul finally found vocabulary for feelings that had slept for decades. The poems were written between September 2015 and July 2017, a period when Katie first allowed herself to explore crossdressing and when she finally understood that this exploration was not a curiosity but a recognition of something essential inside her. Poetry had always been her natural language. She had written verses for years, long before she ever took a dress from a hanger or shaped her name into Katie. When her identity began to rise to the surface, poetry rose with it and gave form to what was happening. The result is this collection. One hundred pieces that show the stumbling, reaching, glowing, frightening, liberating messiness of realizing you are a transgender woman.
