Mermaids currently occupy a friendly space in pop culture. Think shell bras and long red hair billowing underwater. But in the past, mermaids were half-woman half-fish monsters that lured sex-starved sailors to their deaths.

Alberta-based poet Skylar Kay uses mermaids differently in her second collection, There’s Magic Here Too: A Trans Woman’s Guide to Being Monstrous. Along with werewolves, they, with their hybrid mythological bodies, are stand-ins for trans people.

“I think decoding these fairy tales and myths, rewriting them in a way that highlights the humanity of a queer community, is important,” Kay says.

Kay found that queer community in Windsor, Ontario, where she was attending graduate school and writing these poems. There, she was able to explore gender in a fun yet profound way.

“For me, gender is so fickle, and exploring that hybridity or fluidity came not only from Windsor being a porous border town, but also from my own experience with body and sexuality,” Kay says.

“It’s all quite fluid, so having an explicitly hybrid not-quite-one-or-another body was quite useful for exploring my own gender and gender expression throughout the writing process.”

Dipping her toes into fairy tales and fabulism gave Kay a new framework for those explorations.

“The concept of breaking the veil and changing bodies or entering other realms is quite common in fairy tales, so I knew I could rewrite some fairy tales for the collection, and villains in these fairy tales (especially some Disney ones) are incredibly queer-coded,” Kay says.

The result is a collection that moves away from the Japanese haibun form of her Robert Kroetsch Award for Poetry–winning first collection, Transcribing Moonlight, toward something that draws on punk and riot grrrl tradition.

“My first collection felt quite soft and gentle, maybe even elegant. It kind of held the reader’s hand through my experience as a trans woman, highlighting inner turmoil and growth,” Kay says.

“There’s Magic Here Too just did not feel like that to me. It’s less of a dignified silence and more of a bloody scream for people to wake up before things get worse.”

Writing and editing these poems was an exercise in anger, humour, community, and self-expression for Kay. It was also a way to work through her return to Calgary.

“I had such an amazing community in Windsor,” Kay notes. “It was the first time in my life that I was really able to surround myself with that many queer folk, especially trans folk. Part of my return home meant I needed to find that community again and the literary community was actually a huge help in that regard, so I am forever grateful.”

In addition to finding work as assistant editor at FreeFall magazine and publicist at Frontenac House, Kay was the recipient of a 2024 Emerging Artist Award through the Lieutenant Governor of Alberta Arts Awards.

“Freelancing in the literary scene has allowed me to focus on my craft a lot more than I could afford otherwise, and I think that is incredible,” Kay notes. “As much as I loved the people I met in Windsor, I think coming back to Calgary was the right move for me.

“Plus, I love the mountains.”