“Rarely do I find everything I want in a poetry collection. The voices in Topaz Winters’ Portrait of My Body as a Crime I’m Still Committing are generous with their confessions of dangerous desire and searching for its end. They’re unafraid to exact these experiences, to repeat the word lonely and its companion want, because they’ve been through worse than the discomfort of naming. Which is why I trust both their warning, be careful what you worship, and their reaching for joy and presence. I needed this book, needed someone to say in Winters’ distinct, undeniable syntax that like some desires, some deaths also have an end.”

—K. Iver, author of Short Film Starring My Beloved’s Red Bronco

“Portrait of My Body as a Crime I’m Still Committing is a moving collection that morphs into prayer. These poems are heartbreaking odes for the body in its loneliness, its hunger, its desire, its wounds, its memories, its queerness, and its survival. Winters offers readers language that questions, repetition that sings, cadence that engulfs, and images that defamiliarize. Fingers become matchsticks, people become sunlight, and the body becomes punctuation in a collection of love poems that is as much mourning as it is blessing.”

—Zeina Hashem Beck, author of O

“Portrait of My Body as a Crime I'm Still Committing is an engulfing book, crackling wildly and wondrously with the sounds, textures, velocities, repetitions, and dangers of want. There is a bigness to the voice in these poems, a voracious heat that seduces us closer even as it makes its warnings clear. I greatly admire the rapid transformations and juxtapositions Topaz Winters magics onto the page. Here is a poet who manifests the constructive and destructive energies of desire in language that seems to spark in every direction at once.”

—Gabrielle Bates, author of Judas Goat

“Portrait of My Body as a Crime I’m Still Committing is urgent and desiring, full of the confessions our bodies lay bare and kisses hungrier than any prayer. Beneath the untetherable thirst is diagnosis and escape, the threat of forgiveness, and sinking into the darknesses that call your name. Here is the pleasure of burning alive in the song of a girl. Here, love is the one definition of light that matters.”

—Traci Brimhall, author of Our Lady of the Ruins

“‘This is the way a girl becomes a bomb,’ Topaz Winters declares, in this ticking register of girlhood, illness, and queer desire. Portrait of My Body as a Crime I’m Still Committing is a palimpsest, upon which Winters writes and rewrites every nightmare and fairytale made up in the caverns of her glorious imagination. The work is haunted with such hope, nerve and tenderness that break the heart open.”

—Logan February, author of In the Nude

“There are few writers that I struggle to pin down as much as I do with Topaz Winters. Something about the way she can twine images so neatly to collective feelings of yearning and persistence and absolute necessity is breathtaking in every sense of the word. Portrait of My Body as a Crime I’m Still Committing is an homage to light and all the ways it touches us and all the ways it abandons us in times of need but still manages to return. This is a collection about love, the ways we both survive it and grow with it, and desire, and the way night fades delicately into the dawn (always, always). There is a loud voice in my head begging me to also state that this is her most personal collection to date, but is it? Is it really? Winters gives you the impression of ‘maybe this, or maybe not’ that is unmistakeable, and lingering, and incredibly effective. You are not meant to know everything. This is clear. This is riveting. You can’t help but keep looking at it. Topaz Winters is a poet to keep your eye on. If you haven’t noticed her yet, you will. She’ll make sure of it.”

—Caitlin Conlon, author of The Surrender Theory

“If you’re hollow, a robotic intellect, an emotional pragmatist, this breathless poetry isn’t for you. If you haven’t known danger because you never rubbed ecstatically against passion’s razor, drawing more than blood every time, this isn’t for you. If you haven’t desired past drowning, clawing or swimming to the surface only to free-fall into shards of light, you haven’t known love, life has been a waste—and this poetry isn’t for you.”

—Cyril Wong, author of The Lover’s Inventory

“Yes, the hype is real. These poems have all the intensity of youth and the sophistication of an established poet who already knows what the hell they’re doing; the freshness of confessional and the dexterity of one who refuses to collapse into cliché.”

—Ng Yi-Sheng, author of A Book of Hims

“Portrait of My Body as a Crime I’m Still Committing throbs with the conviction and passion of young adulthood—it is a force, movement, struggle, growth.”

—Wong May, author of Picasso’s Tears

“These poems construct such tender and yet precarious scenes, with each new line break bringing the poem somewhere slightly new but still familiar, your old bedroom with all the furniture moved an inch to the right. Each poem begs to be read aloud, then read aloud again, reexamined. I have a vivid memory of sitting on my high school auditorium’s stage, just rereading it over and over, utterly consumed by the rich and complicated anger of it. I was very late to class—ironically, psychology—because of it, and to this day have no regrets. Too often the anger of chronic illness, both mental and physical, is lost when we talk about it, but at least for me, it can be difficult to push against irritability when my pain flares, and Topaz gets at this ‘strange syntax we / live inside.’ There's also that soft, firm admission of ‘Just / once, I wanted reciprocity,’ perhaps my favorite moment. I have been thinking often of this in quarantine, how I am both saddened and grateful to have this unfolding when I am alone, no one else to trust except, somehow, knowingly, myself.”

—Courtney Felle, reader

“Portrait of My Body as a Crime I’m Still Committing is a book in which tenderness has given way to hunger, both literal and of the soul. Queer desire, mental illness, and loving a girl likened to the moon in poems sharp and explosive. Love and desire cleave two sick girls together, the journey of their ascent and descent chronicled in poems so bright with want they ache, they cut. This collection ends softly. It ends with forgiveness. Topaz Winters takes you to the edge of destruction and holds out a saving hand, inviting you into the warmth of healing.”

—Crystal Vega-Huerta for Life In Poetry

“These poems are honest and brave and willing to show you the day to day ugly of living at war with your own brain. We find a fierce defense of the struggling self, a collection that holds firm to some truths—that queer love is beautiful and just might save us, that today is today and tomorrow a mystery, that sometimes you don't have to accept it so much as just move on—while recognizing that the road will be slow going and hard, and maybe just finding the right company along the way is the key to getting through.”

—Katharine Blair for Autofocus Lit

“It starts so raw. Open. Dropping you into the deep end. But also: cards close, not showing everything yet. Or ever. Contradictions in all their beautiful and intriguing existence. Feels like all the air punched out of your lungs at once. I feel like Topaz sees things I don’t. Like colours are waves of words, or something. It is a unique privilege, to be able to bear witness to someone writing many things you know are worth reading even if you won’t be understanding them all. It’s brutal and honest and real. You’re not safe. But it’s better here in the light. Even if it’s too bright when it is right on you. Topaz Winters feels inevitable. You cannot escape the touch of her work.”

—Elke, reader

“Portrait of My Body as a Crime I’m Still Committing is brimming with painful, vivid, and emotionally raw moments. It is a poetry collection about a love continually pre-empted, a manifesto about the sheer uncomfortableness of existing in a body that you cannot choose. An existence that you have already learned is unacceptable. Portrait of My Body as a Crime I’m Still Committing speaks of articulation, the difficulty of articulation; it speaks of desire and longing; it speaks of hunger. But in between the fault lines of trauma and despair, there are also moments that capture the beauty of existence—an exhilarating car ride, a clandestine touch, the deep ache of yearning. And so it is this entanglement of hope and despair that characterises Winters' writing, and imbues it with a humanity likened to a ‘soft thing.’ Soft, in the way that it is so fragile, but also soft, in the way that it is so, so strong.”

—Rhea Cai, reader

“This is the most stunning collection of poetry I have read all year. I was in love from the first word to the last. This meditation on sexuality, love, fear, our relationships with our body, and dreams is a masterpiece. Winters has such a unique voice and I love every poem. I will be returning to this collection to read over and over again. Wow.”

—Kim Graff, reader

“Born on the cusp of the new millennium, Topaz Winters has accomplished something that takes many writers a lifetime; that is, the development of a singular, recognisable voice. This voice chimes loudly throughout this collection, a lyrical cadence that builds and softens, whisking the reader along. The poems are smartly sculpted and pay homage to Winters’ masterful command of an impressive range of stylistic devices. This amounts to a clever blend of form and function, to the impression of a writer who knows how to choose the appropriate technique to reach the desired effect, without ever sinking into artifice. The result, as a whole, is nothing short of rapturous.”

—Heleen de Boever, reader

“Where to begin with Portrait of my Body as a Crime I’m Still Committing? A bleeding heart of desire, power, and prayer, this collection is a blessing. Topaz Winters’ writing grabs you by the heart and refuses to let go until you’ve read all of it. It leaves your head spinning in the best way, forcing you to chew on and digest each intricately crafted poem. It’s chock-full of delicious contradictions—war and softness, violence and holiness, anger and peace. Winters also canonizes queer desire in a way that makes me feel at home. For anyone who feels too much, this book is a must read. It is a ‘small terrifying mercy’ to be here to experience Winters’ words.”

—Mary E., reader

“Just exquisite. Here, Topaz Winters puts forth some of her best work. She finds words of intrigue, colors, and movements, and puts them together in all the right ways. Portrait of My Body as a Crime I’m Still Committing paints a devastating portrait of experiences all-encompassing: both universal and specific, both earth-shaking and heartfelt. Brilliantly introspective, this book is for anyone who has fought against and resented and embraced and loved their own vessel.”

—Sophie Falkenheim, reader

“Right from the very beginning, Topaz snatched my breath away. She’s got a gift for spinning light into lyric and gutting you with the sharpest of song. Portrait of My Body as a Crime I’m Still Committing is Topaz at her best: honest & heart-wrenching & unapologetic & beautiful in every way possible. This is a collection about love & loss & dark & despair & inner turmoil & learning how to find the light again. This is a collection about finding bravery in ordinary moments & reclaiming your own body & learning to live with it in the name of self-love. This is a collection about persevering even in the darkest of times & forging your own way back. This is a collection for everyone who has ever loved or hated or been in flux with themselves & their bodies & the lives that they lived, & these poems are balm to remind you that you will survive all of this. Topaz is an extraordinary writer who knows how to pull your heartstrings & steal your breath & give it back. It’s an excellent read, & my heart aches afterwards in the best way possible. Topaz is a magician with words as a craft, & once again she’s outdone herself with this book.”

—Stephanie Tom, author of My Heart is a Mausoleum but Only Out of Necessity

“Sometimes I’ll read a poem and have that moment of thinking, at some point the poet and I must’ve been in the same cloud of stardust marveling at the same sun. There were several of those poems in this collection. An easy favorite.”

—Asha, reader

“Portrait of My Body as a Crime I’m Still Committing tackles the unapologetic nature of girlhood, the mouths we mar with our own, the way our bodies look in the light. With the collection, Winters has created something unashamedly queer and self-sufficient. She asks her own questions and does not wait for someone else to answer them. ‘Must I say it to survive?’ asks the poet. ‘Then I will.’”

—Trista Mateer, author of Aphrodite Made Me Do It

“With Portrait, Topaz Winters manages to break your heart and reassemble it within the same story. There’s a fever present beneath the words, all at once delicate and severe. From the heatstroke of falling in love with something just out of your grip, to the all-too-familiar quiet turmoil we suffer through mental illness—Topaz writes as if she’s rehashing a personal conversation, and we’re all pressing our ears to the door, overeager eavesdroppers, desperately wanting to know how the end plays out.”

—Angelea Lowes, reader

“What I think must be said about Portrait is that it is not a book you read and forget about. Topaz Winters strings words together like a melody, and, like a song, her words stay in the back of my mind, always there. It’s a thought both comforting and frightening, that words have the power to stay with you in such a permanent way. Either way, I think it says a lot about the kind of writer Topaz is; that is to say: a magnificent one. If any piece of writing has ever made me believe that there’s hope and that healing is a possibility, this is it. Topaz Winters has been one of my favourite poets for a while now and, after reading this collection, I love her words more than ever before. If you’re a lover of poetry or if you always wanted to get into reading it, I recommend this collection with my whole heart and soul.”

—Hannah Rosenthal for Ink & Myths

“I loved Portrait of My Body as a Crime I’m Still Committing in a way that I haven’t loved a piece of literature in a very long time. If you take nothing else away from this review, know that Topaz Winters will touch your heart, squeeze it, rip it out, then offer it on a plate as nourishment, sometimes in the course of a single poem, and in the end, you will be grateful to have witnessed it. With explorations of sexuality, body image, identity, and love, every poem in this collection felt raw and honest, at times like looking in on an intimate moment that I wasn’t sure I was meant to witness. Every single poem was rich with voice and urgency, and I never felt like the collection was lacking or slowing in pace. Portrait of My Body as a Crime I’m Still Committing gave me everything I wanted. It filled me with light, with warmth, with want, and never left me feeling unsatisfied. It is a collection of poems I will be thinking about for a long time.”

—Kristian, reader

“This collection is a triumph for contemporary poetry. The composition is undoubtedly a dually accessible and elegant linguistic masterpiece. After reading, Winters’ poems are constantly ringing in my head. Absolutely marvelous!”

—Laura, reader