MissSettl

“Kamden Hilliard’s language addresses the present, wherein ‘thot’ replaces thought—and the military-industrial complex and its several violences has proven merely a ‘warflik’ we might choose to watch (or not). I’m continually drawn in by Hilliard’s ‘Nickelodeons,’ not just the one Nickelodeon (which is itself confined to a particular 90s moment we will relive) but the televisual multiplicity of myriad concurrent Nickelodeons that MissSettl evokes. Where else do we get to see, hear, or succumb to the dangerous play Hilliard is embroiled in here?”

“In MissSettl, Hilliard unsettles QWERTY and queers linguistic bedrock to unlock readers from our own stiff poetic leanings and beliefs about the ‘Clotted sign, cloying signifier’ that celebrity and academicians alike accommodate for small change. These poems make hypersense, are tricksters baffling the OED with alphanumeric chimeras and lines so long they yawn at their pantomime because what they mimic bores with bullshit violence: ‘The university didn’t mean to offend that hair ,/ but was just so demographically curious about where you come from.’ MissSettl embraces everything Black and queer and I’m here for it, am shown how fuccd I am through these critiques of capitalism, ableism, and [insert hetero-entangled-ism]. No book has been this bitingly generous to me in years.”