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Joachim Li

@youare_them

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🐈‍⬛ they/them black panther cub
🫀 Devices of Body, (2026, @incision_press)
📚 Westwords Academy 2026

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I am practising parting as a ritual —
to rupture what was left after you.

I wrote less than I planned to in 2025, I think it comes down to my emotions (sadness and grief are among the most accessible) materialising in the form of tears than poesy.

Sometimes when I’m sad I’ll reassure myself that I work for the institute that hires the hottest people.

I’m filling up my body journal; I no longer open up to everyone or believe in time.

I thundered through your city without you. Seeing nothing except an artificial island and a meagre beach.

What if we talked about our polycules in front of the Monogamous Chinese restaurant.

A labyrinth provides safety. An exit doesn’t.

Here, have some egg tarts. They will take the edge off.

When I am done, there will be no crumbs left.

#antithesis

# by @youare_them

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10 months ago

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Still processing the reality that I’m holding my poetry collection in my hands 😵‍💫🥹

So much love from the panel, audience, and everyone who came to support me 🫶🏽

Thank you for making it happen @incision_press @thecoffeecryptt

More thoughts & clips to come

#poetrychapbook #queerpoetry #sydneywriters #debutcollection #antithesis taken in Better Read Than Dead by @youare_them

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7 months ago

•What precedes the sprout of a seed?🌱 What interludes a shared breath? 🌬️And what trails after the afterglow and aftercare? 🌅

Come join @youare_them and @chloe.at.play for a tender conversation in attempt to unfurl these mysteries with poetry and flute and the body in the ecosystem of love🎙️🪈🌖

Open mics for you to share your musings with us.

See you all at The Glebe Hotel, from 7pm, 18 November 2026!

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Joachim Li (they/them) is a nonbinary poet, storyteller and event producer born and raised on China’s east coast and now based in Gadigal. They believe in the power of naming and mythologising the ordinary. Their writings appear in Locative magazine, Petal magazine and others. They are the author of Devices of Body (incision press, 2026).

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Chloe Chung is a multi-style flautist (Western flutes/dizi), with 20 years of creative practice spanning performance, teaching and collaboration. Currently featuring as Deputy Flute Chair of The Lion King Australia (2026), she regularly performs with longstanding collaborators including multi-instrumentalist composer Liz Cheung (The Deebeetees – Do Brave Things), oud player Maxeem Georges (Rahil Duo), pianist-composer Pavle Cajic (Dreamscapes – Sidere Duo debut album), and the Sydney Contact Improv community. Chloe has taught flute as Academic Lecturer of Woodwind at AIM (Australian Institute of Music), and dizi (Chinese bamboo flute) at the Sydney Conservatorium of Music since 2016.

Chloe photo credit: Hugh Stewart
Joachim photo credit: @joymanyc_

#poetryreadings #musingsofwriters #sydneypoetry #sydneypoetrylounge #australianpoetrycommunity by @youare_them

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4 days ago

My moon and star 💫 🌒

You’re a silver shouldered peregrine.
I am a flower clinging to the cliff’s edge,
domed in the skylight sifting through your feathers.

Look for where you and I
become us, and call it the horizon.

#fypppppppppp #naturepoetry #queerpoetry

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A seedling imagining spring 🌱

#fypppppppppp #naturepoetry #queerpoetry

For each night I lie
awake thinking of you,

A star climbs into a socket of cave’s eye
Its heat quelled by an eternity’s drool

Abundance 🌸 (richer than all the data centres combined)

Its arrival was foretold.

Unlike the cliffed flower
we never land the step
over the line by @youare_them

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16 days ago

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“Before Spring Comes” from my collection <Devices of Body> performed at @poeticabondi Mary Oliver tribute.

You guys seem to enjoy this one 🖤
Swipe for the second half.

It was a tough winter for me. I take great gladness in the “was”. I was trapped knee deep in the snow and very degree of temperature drop pushed me closer to being frozen solid. Imagining spring was almost improbable, let alone occasioning a thaw. 🧊

I wrote this piece in the midst of summer however feeling left to my own devices in the snow. The snake 🐍 who’s not a predator in this case, hurt, frozen and defenseless, caught in the process of shedding scale. No spring in sight.

Do snakes stare into their gray, hollow sheddings with disgust like we do? Or do they happen to find gratitude in breaking out what once capped their growth.

We all deserve spring. If we learn to forgive ourselves.

Ps. What a privilege to see @chloe.at.play at play live!

Thank you for capturing this moment @janicecui by @youare_them

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a month ago

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Eleven of swords (mental state) 🗡️🗡️🗡️🗡️🗡️🗡️🗡️🗡️🗡️🗡️🗡️

#fyppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppp #kindachic #lesbiancatmom #poetryofinsta #australianpoet by @youare_them

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2 months ago

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Wake up, you are drafted by the transgender insurgency ⚔️🌸🦋🦢 by @youare_them

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4 months ago

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Things in nature merely purrs 🖤🐾 by @youare_them

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5 months ago

Devices of Body is a visceral archive of survival and becoming — an ode to what the diasporic body endures and remembers. Here is the poet’s world where scars hold their own memory, and how intersecting identities and longing grow into both witness and refuge. This collection stays close to the skin, attentive to all the soft ways we change.

Naming becomes an act of resistance. Moving between English, Chinese, Cantonese, and the liminal spaces between sound and silence, the poet reclaims what risks erasure. When nothing, not even selfhood, feels certain, Devices of Body simply attempts to hold you close, hoping you will stay.

kithbooks.com/shop/p/devices

Praise for Devices of Body:

“No one is safe / from touch” Joachim Li declares in Devices of Body, a sharp and fruity poetry collection. Between “Lord” and “Lorde”, “Borges” and “Ostara”, the self is multilingual, relational, and experimental. Poetic forms stretch and bend their voices are “willing to trade / clatter for cadence / prudence for a purpose”. Such exchanges trouble pre-established boundaries: “skin” is “but the edge of a living cosmos”. The poet, bubbling with possibilities, welcomes the reader to a tactile cartography of the diaspora.

— Tim Tim Cheng, author of The Tattoo Collector DEVICES OF BODY
Joachim Li
cover: a fairy tale-like painting of two bodies holding eachother, entwined. one figure's back faces the the viewer, styled like a cello or violin with strings over their spine and f-holes above their hips. both figures are surrounded by a swirling of yellow and purple and green on a background of multihued blue.

0x 1

I am
a pair of worn shoes
taking flight as kids rock
on a swing, laughing Zippee Do!
The rumours about happiness
were true.

I am
a social GPT that's WIP
scanning & downloading vibes in the room.
I have a fear of spouting out error messages
& silent screams of SEND HELP.

I might
care about tree health & pomegranate prices
& fine dreams tomorrow
through skin and fresh, keen eyes.

I wish
one day it would rain rose petals
and that our galvanised membranes might melt
like sugar domes as we rejoice in tears
& speak the awkward words softly:
think less,
you're enough. by @youare_them

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6 months ago

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Beyond the moon seeing all of your support and receiving tender heartfelt messages for DoB! It really helps to get me through the frigid tundra I’m in now. An act of community matters now more than ever and thank you for everyone who stepped up to support your local black panther cub 🥺🐈‍⬛🧊

Sharing this visceral review from @eunice.andrada ! You are an inspiration 🌒🌊🦋

My Naarm friends! You can now borrow DoB from any Melbourne libraries thanks to the wonderful @mumagainstvapes 🙌🏽✨

Also available at @bbound if you wish to support a local bookstore!

First edition is almost sold out even with small reprint runs! Grab your copy before they are gone!

#queerpoetry #indepublishing #poetrygram #antithesis #australianpoetry taken in Gadigal Land by @youare_them

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6 months ago

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Trans visibility means keep showing up undeterred in a system that’s oppressive and alienating by design and be the change you want to see 🏳️‍⚧️🏳️‍⚧️🦋

• How many cats can you see? 🐾

#altgirlstyle #transdayofvisibility🏳️‍⚧️ #shanghaitravel #adventurecats #altfashion taken in Shanghai,china by @youare_them

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7 months ago

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Growing like a magnolia blossom, leaving post rain gleam and voluptuous petals in my wake 🌸🤍✨

#poetrylover #fyp #foryou #inkedmodel #antithesis by @youare_them

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7 months ago