100 Queer Poems

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The other thing the introductions note is 100 Queer Poems is the first anthology of it kind put out by a Big However Many It Is Now (4? 5?) publishing for four decades. I suspect the previous text it’s referencing is The Penguin Book of Homosexual Verse, a collection with a very, very different approach, that feels as rooted in its time as Sappho does in hers. In this context, then, the release of 100 Queer Poems feels long overdue: it is modern, expansive, disruptive and diverse in ways that The Penguin Book of Homosexual Verse simply … uh isn’t (although it might well have been at the time). Ocean Vuong is arguably one of the most famous, beloved, and impactful poetry writing today, especially within the queer community. Andrew McMillan and Mary Jean Chan's luminous anthology, 100 Queer Poems, is a celebration of thrilling contemporary voices and visionary poets of the past. Encompassing both the flowering of queer poetry over the past few decades and the poets who came before and broke new ground, 100 Queer Poems presents an electrifying range of writing from the twentieth century to the present day. Questioning and redefining what we mean by a 'queer' poem, you'll find inside classics by Elizabeth Bishop, Langston Hughes, Wilfred Owen, Charlotte Mew and June Jordan, central contemporary figures such as Mark Doty, Jericho Brown, Carol Ann Duffy, Kei Miller, Kae Tempest, Natalie Diaz and Ocean Vuong, alongside thrilling new voices including Chen Chen, Richard Scott, Harry Josephine Giles, Verity Spott and Jay Bernard. His initial poetry collection, Night Sky With Exit Wounds, made such a huge splash that it felt as though the world suddenly held its breath. They added: “It will be interesting to see what poets today capture of this moment and how things shift in 10 or 20 years.”

Giles said it’s always “grand to be in something that’s doing this sort of survey of work … that’s trying to, I suppose, use anthologising to communicate something broader” about who is writing poetry, and why. The power of the anthology, said Bernard, is that it “showcases each poem and poet doing something interesting with the subject in their historical context”. Canadian poet Jason Purcell is the co-owner of Glass Bookshop, a person who lives and breathes language and literature. And here they put their own command over language to impeccable use. Three months before he was born the Romanian dictator and his wife were executed before a firing squad. To this day his mother still talks about it. In any case: this is a truly wonderful book. While not every individual poem worked for me, the collection as a whole offers something bold, expressive and kind of even … necessary? I am so happy it exists.

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also - please do not skip the introductions! there is a real sense of comfort provided from them, especially as you move through the collection. not all of the poems are explicitly queer, but you can rest easy knowing that they are, and they were chosen for that reason. When he was twenty-two depression hit. One night his mind went entirely blank. His brother found him sitting in a stupor at a gas station by a mall.

They hope that people reading the book will “understand that queerness is not a discrete sexual category separate from everything else, but something that changes colour and texture in relation to history, economics, nationhood, geography”. He ran away. In a bookstore in Jakarta he discovered a book by Herta Müller. Herta wrote about Ceausçescu’s Securitate. It reminded him of his mother. He read every English translation of her work and loved them all.

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Much of the poetry in Sergius Seeks Bacchus is freeform, unrestrained by rhyme and metre as, perhaps, the lives of the queer people of Indonesia should be allowed to be. It’s not directly queer or about sexuality, but when they chose it, it immediately gave me a sense of epiphany,” said Fan. “And of course it is about the body and it is about how we experience ourselves being naked.” Please note: This review may not be reproduced or quoted, in whole or in part, without explicit consent from the author. Self-forgiveness when it comes to pain and trauma is something that takes courage, and Purcell invites you to try.