TGIRL.JPG
by Sol Cabrini
Roof Books is proud to present the debut poetry collection of an exciting emerging talent, Sol Cabrini, whose work as an indie rapper under the moniker Sol Patches has already established her as a fierce and fearless artist in the vein of Mykki Blanco, Kevin Abstract, and SOPHIE, among others. Holding multiple degrees in Performance Studies from NYU and working under the guidance of the likes of Fred Moten, Cabrini’s poetics are explorative, innovative, and a vital aspect of her expansive multimedia artistic practice.
Tgirl.jpg is a complex verse collection following a Black transgender woman’s life over a decade, from teenage years to adulthood, from Chicago to New York, with hefty philosophical and existential quandaries expressed in the same dynamic, catchy, heartfelt, and challenging voice found in her music. Cabrini’s hip-hop background is fundamentally intertwined through her poetics, with poems transforming into songs and back again, aided by a series of QR codes that make the reader a listener and invite them into a tapestry of interactive word and sound.
This dynamic assortment of poetry, diaries, letters, and songs will take you on a strange journey from innocence to experience, exploring the intricate relationship between self-discovery, social involvement with the world, and personal development—from the perspective of a trans Woman of Color. Cabrini tells a contemporary story of resilience and struggle, reckoning with lineages while forging ahead into an avant-garde realm of Afro-Surrealism and racial intersectionality. Tgirl.jpg is as powerful as it is fun. Discover a new favorite experimentalist in the fascinating Sol Cabrini.
People are Saying:
Tilling the lyrical, Tgirl.jpg sings. Sol Cabrini uses dexterous language for her modular, mischievous positions. Unafraid to play, she burrows into the charmingly critical, (w)raps us up in it, post-consciously. She’s gaining up on the lossy, bearing soul. Tgirl.jpg is an abstraction shaped by its attention to detail, a debut to bop to.
—S*an D. Henry-Smith
Cabrini’s Midwest existentialism does not relent in the tender love and affection with which it holds you. Poets actualize through exposing the wretchedness of the world. Peering in, we find ourselves. Cabrini reminds us that the authorial gaze doesn't have to dissect but can be a kiss impressed upon a scar; a note from our future self to recall that .jpg we downloaded some time ago, referencing how we might be. Cabrini offers a guide to curating our edits to the world, instigating a worlding in us. A future, not of completion but realization. A world surging up in one's self, over generations. This text calls for our ever transitioning formation, playfully resounding in the dark.
—Victor Peterson II
With my ears wide open to her music, I read Sol Cabrini’s Tgirl.jpg and am taken home, sitting as many of the poems do with Chicago and the Midwest at large. Reading this recently returned here, I am surprised to find that I am too unreturned and “turning toward the iteration of anew.” The poems in Sol’s magnificent debut collection put me into the “feeling of matter” and ask me what we do with matter’s changes. I am so glad for this .jpg from Sol not as a record of what may have been, but what was in process of becoming.
—Imani Elizabeth Jackson
About the Author:
Sol Cabrini composes music under the alias Sol Patches. She was part of Free Street Theatre’s ensemble, the artist/activist #LetUsBreathe Collective and has made several experimental films. A PhD candidate in Performance Studies at NYU’s Tisch School, she is an alumni of the EMERGENYC program at Brooklyn Arts Exchange and the Studio Museum in Harlem’s Museum Education Practicum.