Phil Barnett took his debut poetry collection Birds Knit my Ribs Together to Parbold Library yesterday. An appreciative audience more or less cleaned him out of copies! We are hoping for more live events in the future, particularly at bird reserves – watch this space.
Here’s a segment of the online launch, talking about why this book is poetry, when Phil has so many strings to his bow!
We’ve introduced you to the poets who have offered rewards, the poets we’ve published before and the debut poets, now the first half of the biggest group, experienced (indeed well-known!) poets who are new to publishing with us.
Annie Kerr is a working class lesbian writer with poetry published in journals and read live on BBC Radio 3 by Juliet Stevenson. She was selected for New Writing South’s Mentoring Programme for Working Class Writers, their Writer’s Place Poet’s Programme and selected for masterclasses with Mark Doty. She loves walking and sketching in wild places.
Aoife Mannix is the author of four collections of poetry, two pamphlets, four libretti and a novel. She has been poet in residence for the Royal Shakespeare Company and BBC Radio 4’s Saturday Live. @aoifemannix
Desree is an award-winning spoken word artist, writer and facilitator based in London and Slough. Currently Artist in Residence for poetry collective EMPOWORD, Desree explores intersectionality, justice and social commentary. Poet In Residence for Glastonbury Festival 2022, producer, and TEDx speaker, Desree has featured across the UK and internationally, including Sofar Sounds, Royal Albert Hall and Bowery Poetry – New York. Following the sell-out of her first self-published pamphlet I Find My Strength In Simple Things (2017), Burning Eye Books published the pamphlet in May 2021.
Elizabeth Chadwick Pywell was awarded the Northern Writers’ Debut Award for Poetry in 2022. Her latest pamphlet, ‘Breaking (Out),’ was published by Selcouth Station. She has been published in journals including Fourteen Poems, New Welsh Review, Shearsman Magazine, Strix, The Interpreter’s House, Ink Sweat and Tears, Tears in the Fence, And Other Poems and The Alchemy Spoon, has longlisted for the Leeds Poetry Prize and Mslexia Women’s Poetry Competition, and shortlisted for the Ironbridge Festival Prize.
Elizabeth Gibson is a writer, performer, and workshop facilitator in Manchester. Elizabeth has been a recipient of the New North Poets Prize from The Poetry School and a Developing Your Creative Practice Grant from Arts Council England, and has been commissioned by Manchester Poetry Library, Manchester Literature Festival, Superbia at Manchester Pride, The Portico Library, Islington Mill, Oldham Coliseum, and Yorkshire Dance.
Garnett ‘Ratte’ Frost is a dyslexic transman with an English BA from Wirral. He is also an ink and wire artist, though not at the same time. He co-facilitates the Merseyside LGBTQI+ Creative Writing group held monthly at various locations across Liverpool. Published in Writing on the Wall’s (WOW) TranScripts, Moving Foreword, Write Minds and Surface/Below anthologies.
Helen Bowie (they/she) is a queer writer, charity worker and PhD student based in Glasgow. They have published two pamphlets, Exposition Ladies with Fly On The Wall Press, and WORD/PLAY with Beir Bua Press, and featured in anthologies and magazines including Re:Creation, Magma, Under the Radar and The Book of Bad Betties.
John McCullough lives in Hove. His book of poems, Reckless Paper Birds, was published with Penned in the Margins and won the 2020 Hawthornden Prize for Literature as well as being shortlisted for the Costa Poetry Award. His most recent collection, Panic Response, was a Book of the Year in The Telegraph and one of The Times’ Notable New Poetry Books of 2022. It includes the long poem ‘Flower of Sulphur’, shortlisted for the Forward Prize for Best Single Poem.
Joshua Jones (he/him) is a queer, autistic writer and artist from Llanelli, south Wales. He co-founded Dyddiau Du, a NeuroQueer art and literature space in Cardiff. His fiction and poetry have been published by Poetry Wales, Broken Sleep Books, Gutter and others. He is a Literature Wales Emerging Writer, 2023, and is currently working with the British Council to connect Welsh and Vietnamese queer writers. His debut, Local Fires, was published November 2023 by Parthian Books.
You can support these poets by contributing to our kickstarter crowdfund which is raising funds for production and touring of Joy//Us
One of the remarkable things about poetry is that it has such a life off the page, and some of the poets we have included in Joy//Us have shared their work in ways other than in print, or have a creative life aside from poetry. For some this is their very first outing in public. There is always room for debut poets in our anthologies.
You can support these debut poets by contributing to our crowdfund which will pay for the production of Joy//Us and some of the launch and touring costs. Two thirds funded, Just a week left to raise the remaining £533…
Abhi_photo copyright_Behrin Ismailov
Abhi, originally from India and now a Londoner for a decade, celebrates his debut publication, ‘Bread the Love’. His poetry, often delving into dark themes and exploring intersections of sex, sexuality, politics, and queer trauma, takes an unusually joyous turn in this piece. He honed his craft at The Poetry School, London. Beyond poetry, Abhi also hosts a cooking class called ‘The Art of Indian Home Cooking’, through which he has shared the authenticity of his cuisine with thousands of global food enthusiasts over the past five years. So, it’s no surprise that his first published work is a love poem dedicated to bread.
P Burton-Morgan is a non-binary writer & director based in rural Somerset. In 2005 they founded Metta Theatre and have written/directed over 40 productions to date. They won the 2020 WGGB award for musical theatre book-writing on In The Willows. Their first verse play You Lay Your Hand Backwards on My Heart was shortlisted for the Bolton Octagon Prize in 2016 and later turned into an audio drama, and in 2022 they wrote a long form narrative poem to accompany Handel’s Messiah in the West End’s Drury Lane Theatre. This is their poetry publishing debut.
Joshua Linney is a MA graduate for creative writing at Sheffield Hallam, currently writing an lgbtq novel. He also write short stories, flash fictions and is a keen photographer and cacti grower. This is his first successful publication since completing his MA
Khakan Qureshi BEM is an award winning, pioneering LGBT+ South Asian Muslim Activist, He received a British Empire Medal in 2021, and a Points of Light Award. he was shortlisted for the European Diversity Award, National Diversity Award, British LGBT+ Award and Pink News Campaigner of The Year Award. Khakan was the first Gay Muslim to lead the Birmingham Pride parade in its 22-year history. He co-ordinated the first South Asian LGBTI+ conference in Birmingham, and the first LGBTIQ+ Intersectionality and Islam conference. This is his first poetry publication.
Laurie B. is a writer and translator based between London and Buenos Aires. He runs a multilingual poetry Instagram (@pont.neuf). He translates from French, Spanish and Russian. This is his first poetry publication
Mwelwa Chilekwa describes herself as the three B’s: Black, British, Bi. Born in Zambia, she has made Newcastle her home. Writing poetry has given her a sense of belonging and she is now a regular at Newcastle’s spoken word scenes, including performing at Northern stage and Lindisfarne Festival. Her art explores themes of cultural differences, prejudices, societal issues and her personal life more broadly. Despite featuring heavy topics, she still manages to find a place for light and levity in her work.
Tanya Erin Sheehan is originally from Dublin, currently living in London.
A short post from Jeremy Dixon about being a first time anthology editor.
Jeremy Dixon
One of the most unexpected joys of editing an anthology of queer joy poems has been learning the process of how you go about editing an anthology of queer joy poems! When Cherry suggested I co-edit JOY//US: Poems of Queer Joy with her I had only the vaguest idea of what it would involve as I haven’t really edited anyone else’s poetry for publication before. I feel incredibly lucky to have been given this opportunity and to have had Cherry there showing me the ropes. For a start, just the time and mental effort involved in reading the incredible number of poems uploaded to Submittable was a huge insight into the sheer volume of work editors have to do before it is even possible to make an initial selection. I also learned how many more entries than you would suppose fall at the first hurdle because they don’t follow submission guidelines. I think the part of the process I enjoyed most was spending one weekend last November at Arachne Towers sorting through the long list of poems. Gradually through discussion and comparison and emotion and cups of tea and lots of biscuits we whittled the list down into a shining and Joyous collection.
If you would like to contribute to our crowdfund you can do so right here:
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1477491501/joy-us-poems-of-queer-joy-anthology We’ve got 9 days to raise the remaining £696, so we need to average £78 a day…
An introduction to the background of Birds Knit My Ribs Together
a debut poetry collection from photographer/musician/naturalist Phil Barnett
More to follow!
One of the things an anthology editor needs is a BIG table. This is the ‘finalising’ table for Joy//Us – Me shifting poems from pile to pile, while Jeremy took this picture. We spent two days at this, got through a lot of cups of tea and biscuits, and with breaks for me to have a sleep and Jeremy a walk.
The first day we chose the poems, and the second day sorted out the order, and added back a couple we had initially sidelined, and took them out again, and put them back again… Shaping an anthology is all about how poems play off each other – if you read this one first, what does it then say about this one?
As you can see we ran out of space, and my laptop is precariously close to my foot! I managed not to stand on it. The piles were broadly by subject -we got a LOT of dancing at Pride poems, and a lot of first love, and it was a question of which were the best of those, and which were so strange and original that they had to go in. I can’t be certain now but I think the largish pile on the floor far left are the ones that were great poems (they had already be shortlisted) but just weren’t joyful. So many poems were twelve lines of grief and angst with a final cheerful line. Almost a category of their own.
We also had a ‘yes, with an edit’ pile, I think those are the ones folded into my laptop. Not every poet is willing to edit, and Jeremy tended to ‘keep it anyway’ and I tended to ‘lose it anyway.’ We hardly disagreed at all, which was part of the fun. There were a couple of emails later, me saying I don’t remember why this one didn’t go in, Jeremy saying, are we sure about that one? but ultimately the right poems find their way into the final selection.
We are 50% funded for Joy//Us, and need to hit an average of £80 a day to meet our all or nothing target on our kickstarter. If you can help it’s right here: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1477491501/joy-us-poems-of-queer-joy-anthology
We don’t stand still while we wait for the Joy//Us crowdfund to mature (like a bond, or a fine cheese…)
The wonderful Muireann has proofed the book, and raised a few minor inconsistencies in punctuation and a misused word, not much really, and corrections have been made.
We’ve chosen the quote to go on the postcards that our sales partners are producing for us. JP Seabright‘s Short Back and Sides:
Joy upon joy upon relief and release upon joy
at finding someone who understands.
the holy therapeutic hair wash, the brush down, the placing
of your life, your look, your history and identity
into another’s careful hands.
Off the back of this, we are doing a photoshoot with JP in a barbers, details to be confirmed.
I’ve written an opinion piece for Diva Magazine, about International Day against Homophobia, Biphobia and Transphobia (IDAHOBIT), and fighting hate with joy, because nothing annoys a hater more than us being happy. That will be in the issue that will be out around the same time as we are due to publish. It’s helped me hone my thinking on what the blurb should say!
Queer Joy covers many many causes, but for Valentine’s Day let’s explore just one: love.
The average heartbeat of a woman is/eight beats a minute faster than a man’s/and I feel that in the way she loves me.
Desree
Took me a long time/to learn/the freshest thing/in life/is to lie/in your woman’s/ arms
Kate Foley
How I crave/your hot kiss,/your tongue/entwined with mine/the warmth/of your hand/ caresses
Khakan Qureshi
On escalators I stand on the step/below, so we can kiss. We can’t not.
Steph Morris
We caught a bus to Paleokastritsa and instantly fell in love.
Lydia Fulleylove
Speak to us now and always, plainly, freely/of bodies cradled by twilight
Tom McLaughlin
You said it’s called bi-fi and we communicate by falling in love with each other don’t we and I said ha, yes and then I screenshot that and I wasn’t sure why
Helen Bowie
Part two of our meet the Joy//Us poets feature
Normally I wouldn’t be plugging the book-after-next so soon, but with the crowdfund going, I’m sharing info on there, and thought I’d share it here too!
(Without the crowdfund it will be difficult to market the book and that makes it harder to sell, and makes it harder to stay in business.)
These are the poets in Joy//Us who we have published before, although not necessarily poetry!
Alexander Williams is a jazz singer, and host of the popular Dial Up Open Mic Events. In addition to his regular open mics, he stages an LGBT+ History Month open mic every February, and a Black History Month open mic every October. He is author of Secular Verses, a collection of humanist poetry featured monthly in Humanistically Speaking magazine.
Cherry Potts is the Director of Arachne Press, for whom she is editor/co-editor of most of our anthologies, and runs the annual literature and music festival Solstice Shorts. She is the author of a Lesbian fantasy epic and two collections of short stories, and winner of the Quill LGBTQ+ Prose award 2023
Conway Emmett is a fat, queer, nonbinary, neurodivergent poet who was born and lives in South Wales. They worked in higher education for many years, and later as an independent consultant, researcher and writer. They recently came back to creative writing after a couple of decades away. They often use their writing as a way to understand themself, their experiences, and the social world.
Dean Atta is an award-winning Black British author and poet of Greek Cypriot and Jamaican heritage whose works have received praise from Bernardine Evaristo and Malorie Blackman. His novel in verse, The Black Flamingo, about a Black gay teen finding his voice through poetry and drag performance, won the Stonewall Book Award and was shortlisted for numerous further prestigious awards. His poetry collection, There is (still) love here, explores acceptance, queer joy and the power of unapologetically being yourself and fully embracing who you are.
Jane Aldous is an Edinburgh based poet who returned to writing poetry later in life. She has been commended in several competitions and her poems have been widely published in magazines and anthologies. She has had two collections published by Arachne Press, the second of which was a lesbian love story set in 1960s Edinburgh told in 70 poems. She is currently working on a third series of poems which tell a more contemporary and mysterious tale.
Jeremy Dixon is a poet and maker of Artist’s Books. He was born in Essex and moved to the Vale of Glamorgan as a teenager, living there for over 45 years. His poetry has appeared in Butcher’s Dog, Found Poetry Review, HIV Here & Now, Impossible Archetype, Lighthouse Journal, Anti-Heroin Chic, Roundyhouse and other print and online magazines. He has been published several times by Arachne Press, including his debut pamphlet IN RETAIL (2019) and in the recent bilingual Welsh/English anthology, A470: Poems for the Road/Cerddi’r Ffordd (2022). We published Jeremy’s first full collection, A Voice Coming From Then in August 2021 and it WON the poetry category for Wales Book of the Year English Language Poetry…
JP Seabright (she/they) is a queer disabled writer living in London. They have four solo pamphlets published and two collaborations, encompassing poetry, prose and experimental work. They have been widely published and anthologised, and nominated for a Pushcart Prize, Best of the Net, and Forward Prize.
Kate Foley is a widely published, prize-winning poet who has read in many UK and European locations. She was president of the Suffolk Poetry Society until 2022. Her first collection, Soft Engineering was short-listed for best first collection at Aldeburgh. Her working life has ranged from delivering babies to conserving delicate archaeological material, and she also became Head of English Heritage’s scientific and technical research laboratories. Although she has always written poetry it wasn’t until Kate gave up the day job that she began to publish more widely. She now lives with her wife, between Amsterdam and Suffolk, where she performs, writes, edits, leads workshops and whenever possible works with artists in other disciplines.
Once voted “most likely to start the revolution” Rick Dove is a progressive poet and activist from Southwest London. Arriving on the spoken word scene in 2015, Rick has performed across the UK and internationally, with performance credits including The Wandsworth Arts Fringe, the Edinburgh Fringe, Greenbelt Festival, and Shambala Festival.
Dubbed “one to watch” by TS Eliot Prize winner Roger Robinson, Rick has published two collections with Burning Eye Books, Tales From the Other Box (August 2020), and Supervillain Origin Story (Coming May 2023), and was crowned the Hammer & Tongue UK Poetry Slam Champion at the Royal Albert Hall in July 2021. Equally at home on a stage, a page, or on a march, Rick has a vision of a fairer world and he wants to take you with him.
Normally I wouldn’t be plugging the book after next so soon, but with the crowdfund going, I’m sharing info on there, and thought I’d share it here too!
You might like to meet some of the poets, and I’ll start with those who have contributed a reward for the crowdfund. I will introduce more poets around another theme as we go along.
first up: Becky Brookfield, Joy Howard, K Angel, P Burton-Morgan, Rab Green and Steph Morris
Becky is offering a hand-illustrated copy of her poem Moon, or a personalised recording. here’s a taster:
I want the moon in my sky to wane over my lips…
Joy Howard has been writing poetry for over 40 years. It was coming out as lesbian that set the ball rolling. Her collection Exit Moonshine charts the ups and downs of what followed. She has run Grey Hen Press since 2008, publishing themed anthologies (23 so far) showcasing older women’s poetry.
Her own poems have appeared in several poetry journals, been widely anthologised and can be seen online at www.poetrypf.co.uk . She has three collections: Exit Moonshine (Grey Hen Press 2009), Refurbishment (Ward Wood Publications 2011) and Foraging (Arachne Press 2016) and we have published her in several previous anthologies.
Joy is offering a copy of her poetry collection that explores coming out in the 80’s Exit Moonshine.
Joy’s poem in Joy//Us is Don’t
don’t
tease you no okay
don’t make you laugh I’ll try…
K. Angel (they/them) has been published with the Tin House Open Bar, PANK, the New Flash Fiction Review, and elsewhere. A two-time participant in the HBMG Foundation’s National Winter Playwrights Retreat and shortlisted for the Virago FURIES Competition, their projects straddle many forms and genres, with a persistent fixation on consent, desire, intentional community, and metamorphosis interruptus. They live in London, where they sometimes perform as the singing country drag king TrucK.
K is offering a fiction manuscript review
their poem in Joy//us is Flint Knapping is Queer Now
These days I carry a rock in my pocket
that I found with you that day we walked
from Margate all the way around that hump
of worn coastline that former island
those beaches and cliffs…
P Burton-Morgan is a non-binary writer & director based in rural Somerset. In 2005 they founded Metta Theatre and have written/directed over 40 productions to date. They won the 2020 WGGB award for musical theatre book-writing on In The Willows. Their first verse play You Lay Your Hand Backwards on My Heart was shortlisted for the Bolton Octagon Prize in 2016 and later turned into an audio drama, and in 2022 they wrote a long form narrative poem to accompany Handel’s Messiah in the West End’s Drury Lane Theatre. This is their poetry publishing debut.
P is offering a personalised poem
their poem in Joy//Us is When I am Twelve a New Girl Joins Our School
tall girl
with caramel hair
will you be my friend?
Rab Green is a Scottish writer and artist based in London. He can be found at rabgreen.co.uk
Rab is offering a play script review.
Rab’s poem in Joy//Us is Probably Won’t Be a Church Service
I thought
about what I’d leave behind when I die, what would be said at my funeral,
my accomplishments all summed up: …
Steph Morris‘ poems have been published in his pamphlet Please don’t trample us; we are trying to grow! (Fair Acre Press) and in Rialto, Ambit, Ink Sweat & Tears, Under the Radar, Finished Creatures, The North, and in various anthologies and gardens. He was longlisted for the 2021 UK National Poetry Competition. His poetry translations have appeared in MPT and on no-mans-land.org and he translated Ilse Aichinger’s collection Squandered Advice (Seagull). In 2021 he was awarded an Arts Council England grant to develop his visual poetry, seen in Beir Bua Journal, Streetcake, Mercurius, and on various walls. He is an RLF fellow at Greenwich University.
Steph is offering riso prints and stencil prints of concrete poems.
Steph’s poem in Joy//Us is Legacy
Early days, and I found we were sitting out
on the street in the sun with a coffee,
holding hands, my love in pyjamas still,
alongside marigolds in pots…
I’d like to thank all these poets for their support for the crowdfund, and everyone who has backed us so far.
More poets and poems later in the week!
