The Tattoo Collector ranges between Hong Kong, Scotland, and London, exploring the intertwined relationship between the body, ecology and class – where protests, gigs and the tattooed body form a vital line of connection.
 
Tattoo Collector is Tim Tim Cheng's debut full collection. Her brilliant debut pamphlet, Tapping At Glass, was published by VERVE Poetry Press in 2023.
 
“Tim Tim’s urgent and taut poems articulate the structures we are born to, bound by, and spend a life breaking free from. The Tattoo Collector digs under the artifice of skin, language and even country to recover and define the self, before looking outward, asking “Why do I still believe—like a stranger— / that being understood could save us?” In spare and unrelenting language, these haunting poems explore the journey to—and cost of—chasing that understanding. This is a necessary and vital collection, one that articulates the experience of so many of us.” — Marjorie Lotfi