We are now in a position to announce the lineup for Joy//Us: Poems of Queer Joy, which we are publishing to coincide with International Day Against Homophobia, Biphobia and Transphobia (IDAHOBIT) on 17th May 2024.
It’s been a long process, starting in January last year with our first announcement and discussion of what we were looking for, followed by workshops and submissions, shortlisting and then a weekend of shifting printouts about on the big table, making the anthology as joyful and queer as we can.
We are thrilled and proud to be working with these wonderful writers, and have lots of events in the planning. We are going to have to crowdfund to achieve those events, as we didn’t get ACE funding and we don’t expect people to travel far, for no recompense. That’s for the new year, in the meantime, you can help by getting your order in early, so we know how many to print. The bigger the initial order, the cheaper the unit cost and the more there is left to get out and about with this wonderful book.
As a writer, I have always tried to show marginalised groups in my stories. I have often included characters of various colours, sizes, ages, and abilities. I have always been ‘plus sized’ and dislike the lack of flattering representation of larger women in advertising media and entertainment industry media. I think, as they say, that representation matters.
As the mother of six grown children, three of whom are autistic, I’ve often worked autistic charters into my writing. Having become physically disabled with limited mobility myself recently, I’ve also included wheelchair users and others with physical limitations in several stories. I like to show all these diverse characters in positive and accurate ways.
I have found my stories about able-bodied young men are accepted and published at greater percentages than my stories with a female lead character. My stories featuring characters who are disabled seem to bring about an even lower acceptance rate.
Though not a minority nor a disability, older women are nonetheless rarely focused on in any forms of media. It is, alas, similar to how underrepresented disabled characters and characters of colour are in movies, television, advertisements, and books. I write many stories where the lead role is that of an older woman being as amazing as we older women often are.
I was thrilled to have the chance to write a story focused on a menopausal aged woman in my favourite Science Fiction genre, where sadly, women of my age are even more left out than they are in other genres.
I was so pleased with how the story turned out. I was aiming to cover the subject with humour and accurate information on menopause and the changes it brings about in women’s bodies and in their lives. I hope it not only entertains the readers but educates them on what to look forward to when they go through the change…or when the women they love go through it. I used that ‘look forward to’ phrase there on purpose, as way too many fear and mourn the changes we go through in menopause, rather than celebrating our new cronehood stage of life and all the magical, helpful, and creative energy that it brings to us, and through us, to those around us.
I am thrilled that my story, The Change, is included in the upcoming Menopause: The Anthology.
Ginger Strivelli
Ginger Strivelli is an artist and writer from North Carolina. She has written for Marion Zimmer Bradley’s Fantasy Magazine, Circle Magazine, Third Flatiron, Autism Parenting Magazine, Silver Blade, Cabinet of Heed Literary Journal, The New Accelerator, various other magazines and several anthologies. She loves to travel the world and make arts and crafts. She considers herself a storyteller entertaining and educating through her writing.
We have events on 6/10/23 1pm Online, 14/10/23 5.30pm Brixton Village Studios, 18/10/23 7pm online, 25/10/23 7.30pm Juno Books Sheffield, and more to come… ALL DETAILS
A reminder that the deadline for our JOY//US anthology is 11th October.
Co-editor and winner of 2022 Wales Book of the Year English language Poetry Award, Jeremy Dixon, is running a series of workshops for poets on writing Queer Joy. He’s already done one in Liverpool and one in Edinburgh, and the next one is next Monday, 19th June, in Brixton. Further workshops over the summer are in Sheffield (free) and Bristol (small donation). There are also two online in September (free). Full details on Eventbrite, book now!
To get you in the mood here is Jeremy performing ‘Like My Jealousy’ his Kate Bush inspired poem for A470, and two poems from his triptych for Liberty Tales
We’re really pleased to be joining forces with Brixton bookshop, Round Table Books, for a week of events in celebration of Independent Bookshop Week 2023, and of the brilliant community of independent publishers, booksellers, readers and writers in South London.
Independent Bookshop Week, which takes places from 17 – 24th June, is a Bookseller’s Association campaign, designed to celebrate and promote indy bookshops and all they do to keep the UK book trade diverse, eclectic and engaged with local communities.
We love getting know our local independent bookshops (as well as those further afield!) so we’re delighted to be hosting four events at Round Table Books during Independent Bookshop Week, showcasing recent and forthcoming Arachne Press titles. All the events are free to attend:
Monday 19th June, 6.30pm: Writing LGBTQ+ Joy with poet Jeremy Dixon. Ahead of the submission deadline for Arachne Press’ LGBTQ+ poetry anthology, Joy//Us, (October 11th) join poet and co-editor Jeremy Dixon for a workshop on writing queer joy. Suitable for all levels of poetry experience, this is an opportunity to explore the theme of queer joy, and perhaps produce a poem to submit for the anthology. Jeremy Dixon’s latest collection, A Voice Coming From Thenwon the Wales Book of the Year English language poetry category in 2022. Pre-booking essential, book now.
Tuesday 20th June, 6.30pm:Poetry reading with AJ Akoto. Debut poet AJ Akoto gives a pre-publication reading from her forthcoming poetry collection UnMothered (13 July 2023), followed by a Q and A session with Round Table Books Co-Director, Meera Ghanshamdas.Inspired by a desire to break the silence surrounding difficulties in mother-daughter relationships, UnMothered uses storytelling and myth to capture the complexity, and contradictions, that define the mother-daughter bond. Book now.
Thursday 22nd June, 8pm:poetRhiya Pau reads from her award-winning debut collection, Routes. Exploring the routes taken by Rhiya Pau’s parents and grandparents across multiple countries to arrive in the UK, Routes lays bare the conflicts of identity that arise from being a member of the East African-Indian diaspora. Book now.
‘We are delighted to be partnering with Arachne Press for Independent bookshop week, not only are they really local to us, but we are on very much the same page (pun deliberate) on the importance of inclusive publishing. Arachne’s focus on LGBTQ+ and disabled writers, as well as their championing of Global Majority writers, sits really well with the aims and ethos of our organisation. I’m really looking forward to meeting all the authors who will be reading or running workshops with us.’
We are really looking forward to being involved in #IndieBookshopWeek and hope to see you at one of the above events. And remember, a bookshop is for life not just Independent Bookshop Week!
We will be publishing Byways, an anthology of poems and stories that take us off the beaten track this time next year, for the Spring Equinox, a time for getting the caked mud of winter off your boots and getting out for a walk!
Here are our contributors, mainly from the UK and USA, including a handful of poems in Welsh.
We are delighted to announce the contributors whose work we have chosen for our Menopause anthology. We are still considering a title for the book as a whole, ( is THE Menopause Anthology too obvious??) and still in discussion with a couple of authors, but the current roll call stands like this.
Thank you everyone who submitted and congratulations to our contributors.
The Menopause Anthology will be published on Menopause Day, 18th October 2023. When, we have decided, all menopausal women should celebrate their last period, since we never actually know when it happened. Memorial or celebration, you choose, but we will be having cake. Put the date in your diary!
We’ve counted the votes, disqualified the people voting for their own work (tsk, tsk, did you think we wouldn’t check??) and can now announce that (subject to contract) the folowing poems and stories that will join this year’s winners, in the Solstice Shorts 2022 ‘best of’ ebook Hiatus, are:
After Before by Mandy Macdonald After Sun, Before the Stars by Jane Aldous Against Daylight Saving by Gabriel Noel (This year’s competition winner) At the Hotel de la Lune by Sarah James Beach Clean by Ness Owen Fire at Midday by Susan Cartwright-Smith Fisherman’s Daughter by Claire Booker In Between Dog by Pippa Gladhill Jackdaw by Elaine Hughes Mock Posh & Tatters by Moira Quinn Pause by Karen Pierce (This year’s competition winner) Rewilding by Jackie Taylor Sir Thomas Wyatt’s Catby Elinor Brooks Stone Baby by Sarah Evans The Surgeon’s Mate by Maria Kyle Volunteer by Jane McLaughlin Wednesday Afternoon by David Mathews What He Doesn’t Know by Frances Gapper Yes, Twilight by Math Jones
Where there was a dead heat (which happened several times) I’ve included both. We’ll announce the winner of the prize draw shortly – going to experiment with the cat doing the draw…
We’re pleased to announce that we will be at Lambeth Readers and Writers Festival on Tuesday 17 May with a panel event based on Where We Find Ourselves: Poems and Stories of Maps and Mapping from UK Writers of the Global Majority.
Join us at Clapham Library for readings and a Q & A discussion with:
Solstice Shorts – our annual celebration of original poetry, stories and music for the shortest day – is rapidly approaching. We asked Solstice regular, poet and writer Rob Walton to share some memories of the festival, and accompanying anthologies, from years gone by. This year’s theme is Words from the Brink – writing and music in response to the climate crisis.
Rob Walton: I count myself lucky to have been included in more than one of the Solstice Shorts books, and fortunate indeed to have had my work performed/read by others. It was a great thrill to hear ‘Words on Paper’, a story of which I’m very fond, read aloud in Carlisle. It’s a story that’s close to my heart, and I’m chuffed it was recorded for posterity and also appeared in print.
Ben Brinicombe reads Words on Paper by Rob Walton, BSL translation by Karen Edmondson
I’ve definitely enjoyed seeing some of my more, er interesting pieces reach a range of audiences – I wonder what the crowds (I’m guessing) in Lisbon and Maryport made of ‘The Dowager Duchess of Berwick-upon-Tweed May or May Be Bottling It’? I’ve written micro-fictions shorter than that title!
This year’s offering, ‘Mr King Has Decided to Pursue Other Avenues’, is inspired by a long-standing commitment to environmental change and, possibly, that time I had to leave my primary school class behind on the beach trip when I was stung by a weaver fish. These things stay lodged somewhere and appear, transformed, years later…
Read an extract from ‘Mr King Has Decided to Pursue Other Avenues’:
It was a liberal and progressive school – some would say slack and lackadaisical – and when Mr King said he wanted to stay at the beach at the end of the trip, they wished him well and happily set off without him. It was almost time for the long holiday, and when he wasn’t there to take registration the following morning they arranged temporary cover, and later replaced him with somebody younger with a similar name and the same tattooist. (Mr Prince would be pleased to get the job because Hokusai’s expertly inked The Great Wave off Kanagawa, which covered all of his back, had been very expensive. And quite painful. Also, he knew it would be a star turn on a staff night out.
We talked to poets Colly Metcalfe and Emma Lee about what it means to be published in What Meets the Eye?and how both their works tackle perceptions of D/deafness and disability.
What Meets the Eye? The Deaf Perspective
– What does having your work included in What Meets the Eye mean to you?
Emma: Firstly, I’m delighted to be alongside an impressive list of names. I’ve known Josephine Dickinson’s poems for a long time and I know Liam O’Dell’s work as a journalist but haven’t encountered his poems before. Raymond Antrobus’s preface is a generous consideration of identity and bias around being D/deaf and hard of hearing. Secondly, I’m really pleased at being included. I was nervous about submitting because I wasn’t sure if I was “deaf enough” to qualify – I can pass as hearing although was deaf as a young child and am hard of hearing now – and I’m unsure of where the boundary lies. In the event, I decided to submit because if I didn’t submit, there was no chance of acceptance. I shifted the responsibility for the decision to the editors and thought it was better to submit and get a rejection than find out afterwards my poem might have been accepted…but I still left it until the deadline.
Colly: I almost didn’t submit my poem! I saw the call-out but I scrolled past, thinking it wasn’t for me. I’ve only been writing for 3 years and I had no thoughts that my work would be even a smidge good enough to be published by Arachne Press, in a proper book!
I accidentally joined a (hearing) writing circle, but that too wasn’t easy to follow, but something ignited in me. I read some of the women’s writings in the group and thought they were fabulous! I was invited to some poetry reading events, but being deaf, they were completely inaccessible, and my confidence was shaken. I had no ‘baseline’ to draw from; no peers to learn from about what works, what doesn’t and how to actually write.
I was (still am!) pretty clueless when it comes to ‘proper writing’. One of the local poets called my writing ‘childish and immature’, which could have really turned me off writing, but I’m not easily broken. Maybe that comes from being deaf – thick skin and all that. Then I took part in a fully accessible writing course for deaf, disabled and neurodivergent writers run by Spread The Word; the first time I’d been able to do something where I felt equal… and I did. I didn’t know any of the people on the course, but it was led by the marvellous Jamie Hale and had people like DL Williams and Raymond Antrobous amongst so many others. I wasn’t intimidated, because I didn’t know them, never having been in the writing arena.
I think this is the reason I pressed the ‘submit’ button. Because other people believed in me, so I thought – why not? Nothing to lose! To have my poem Coffee Shop published in this anthology with such incredible people – and edited by Sophie Stone – is just inspiring! I’m so proud that my words are in print! For a new writer who is deaf and pretty much winging it, this is a huge buzz! I mostly write for performance and I know what ‘looks good’ on a stage; I’m bold and fearless and happy to try things out, so seeing that my piece occupies a valid space in a book amongst other authors, is wonderful.
Colly Metcalfe
– Both of your poems address issues around the social definitions of deafness and disability. Why did you want to explore this in your work?
Colly: Because it comes easy to me. It’s my lived experience and I could spend all day – all week – telling you sob stories and horror stories about how life is inaccessible (eg the poetry events I don’t go to, or the theatre performances I miss out on), but I don’t want to feel angry and frustrated all the time. I spent years feeling like that, and hearing people stop caring after a while. Writing poetry from a personal experience with some humour, gets the point across more effectively for me. I use my voice a lot when performing live, and I inject BSL as a visual ‘accent’ and often with voice off, which really makes an audience see my point. I’m told that because I use humour, it can ‘disarm’ an audience into thinking it’s fluffy and funny – but the honest twists of experience can make hearing people think about what it means to be deaf, and with deaf audiences, the shared experience makes us nod and agree because we’ve all been there. I don’t always write about deafness, but there is often an element of ‘silence’ in my poetry, which alludes to the inability to hear. I think with Coffee Shop, the references are very relatable for lots of deaf people. I’ve written several pieces on ‘movement’, but this fit the brief and being an anthology of deaf writers, seemed appropriate.
Emma: My poem is about my journey into deafness, crossing the deaf/hard of hearing boundary and the difficulties created by having a largely invisible disability. At home alone, I don’t have to worry about how loud or quiet my voice is. I am in control of what background noise there is and my being hard of hearing doesn’t stop me doing anything that I want to do. However, in social circumstances, barriers are erected. Hearing people don’t think about background noise, someone knocking a glass on a hard floor is an annoyance rather than something that disrupts a conversation, why you might want to text rather than call, why it mattered that subtitles recently disappeared from TV channels, why it’s important that they are accurate, or why I ask how I sound after a poetry reading (and no one answers that question, except to say “you read well” or “you sounded OK” even though “well” and “OK” are not actual sounds).
I don’t want all venues to be library-quiet, but I would like people to think about how noise travels and echoes in spaces and what might be done to accommodate those who can’t or struggle to hear. During the pandemic, when events moved online, it brought accessibility to event organisers’ attention and more effort was made to accommodate those with accessibility needs. I hope that continues as festivals and events open up again. There’s one venue in Leicester that gets it so wrong. When I have to go there, I go straight to the event without stopping for a coffee first, during the interval I do not leave to get a snack or drink and afterwards, I leave and walk to a nearby cafe bar for a drink because I cannot hear a conversation in the venue’s cafe and bar areas and the frequent interruptions from their tannoy (which I only hear as a muffled noise and have no idea what the attempted communication is about) make it difficult to focus to lip-read.
When it comes to equalities monitoring forms and the question “Do you have/consider yourself to have a disability?” I tend to tick “Prefer Not to Say” or “No” if that’s not an option. Especially if it’s part of an audience survey at an event which made zero accommodations for anyone hard of hearing. I don’t want to be responsible for the organisers thinking their event was accessible because they had a tick in their ‘disabled’ box. It’s not about every event having a BSL interpreter (although, in an ideal world, that would be good), but to encourage people to think about their audience and how organisers can meet the audience half-way, instead of expecting the audience to fit a venue that isn’t as accessible as it could be.
Emma Lee
– What do you think of each other’s approaches to these issues?
Emma: I love Colly’s humour and am jealous of people who can write humorously. I think it helps that the surly barrista is someone we’ve all met and we welcome the idea of her getting her comeuppance. A few finely-judged details not only set the scene but build characters so they’re not just cyphers. It’s a good way of holding up a mirror and asking: which character do you identify with? How would you handle the situation? Would you have intervened and forced the barrista to serve people in the queued order? Coffee Shop manages to be both light-hearted in tone and thought-provoking.
Colly: I related 100% to Emma’s piece. Her reference to the teacher saw me immediately sitting in the 1970s Maths classroom, and Mister Taylor who talked to the blackboard and threw chalk at me. I never heard anything he said, and I didn’t know I was deaf then; I thought I was stupid… Emma’s words brought all those feelings back, and I completely empathise with her experience. I, too, struggled for a very long time with the ‘border between hard of hearing and deaf’. ‘…hear in monotone’ – oh goodness yes. I read Emma’s dialogue in this conversation too, about feeling that she’s not deaf enough and again, it hit me on a very personal level. And that feeling of being in almost no-mans-land; neither hearing nor deaf. I absolutely felt that. For me, this is all in my past tense; I decided that I would not use the label ‘hard of hearing’ as I grew deafer, I became more comfortable with the word ‘deaf’. It wasn’t easy; I speak well, I too can pass (bluff?) as a hearing person so the word ‘deaf’ took a long time to associate with, but it is right for me now.
– Is there anything that you would like to say to each other, after reading one another’s work?
Colly: I like your piece, Emma. I’m glad (if that’s the right word?) that you felt deaf enough to submit your piece, because it’s certainly how younger me felt about becoming deafer. I’d forgotten how difficult it was, and how far I’ve come in confidence as a deaf person. Your piece describes it perfectly, and I wish you well on your journey. Your writing is clear and powerful and I’d really love to read more. Thank you.
Emma: Please continue to write and share your writing. I think Colly’s background in theatre and performance is a good foundation and her ability to create characters from a clutch of telling details and capture conversation in print will take her far.
– How do you think your own poem sits within the wider collection of work in What Meets the Eye?
Emma: The strength in What Meets the Eye is its diversity of experiences, it touches on the barriers D/deaf and hard of hearing people face, on politics, emotions, prejudice, navigating a hearing world, being part of a family, and it also that there is no one definitive definition of deafness. The voices are various because they belong to people who still have a desire to communicate and be more than just a label. My poem is, rightly so, just my experience.
Colly: I think Coffee Shop sits well as a ‘diary-style-funny-we’ve-all-been-here-and-felt-that-moment’ poem, amongst the incredibly personal and touching words. I write in a relatable way, and Coffee Shop reads like a good ‘lift’ amongst the beautiful, thoughtful and rich pieces. I don’t know what I expected, and I don’t know how I thought I’d feel seeing Coffee Shop with other works, but I’m very proud and happy with the placing of it in the pages, and how the very different styles gel as an anthology – because of their very diverse approaches. A huge success, I feel – and I’m very humbled to be there with these talented deaf writers.
Join us at Clapham Library for readings and a Q & A discussion with:
