100 Queer Poems: an anthology

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There are many, many fine pieces here, and as I was reading I was making notes of new poets whose work I will be seeking out. This is an important collection but never worthy and deserves to be placed onto the shelves against other works which supposedly determine the "canon".

I was looking forward to working my way through this anthology, edited by Mary Jean Chan and Andrew McMillan. The 103 third parties who use cookies on this service do so for their purposes of displaying and measuring personalized ads, generating audience insights, and developing and improving products. Some of the neighbours forbade their kids from playing with him and his brothers because his family was Batak and Christian.While not every individual poem worked for me, the collection as a whole offers something bold, expressive and kind of even … necessary? The year's most notable anthology is 100 Queer Poems , edited by Mary Jean Chan and Andrew McMillan. queer poems’ is split into seven sections, which i admit i was dubious of first (for how can one define poetry?

i also appreciate that it acknowledges the trauma behind the word “queer”, which made me feel more welcomed into an uncertain space. This is a love it or hate style and, for many, takes some getting used to and, perhaps, is better suited to either performance or a simple recital by a poet to get the flavour of the sound. it’s hard to rate this book as i wouldn’t give every poem in it a 5/5, but i think the way they have been chosen and structured is a 5/5. They've sequenced each poem to flow seamlessly to the next and there were surprises that made me re-read, read aloud, and read to friends on the phone. That criteria means that some American poets enter the garland of poetical flowers, Mark Doty, Jee Leong Koh, Ocean Vuong, Chen Chen, and Jericho Brown whereas other contemporary American voices are ignored.

If you’re in a bit of a reading slump, looking for a starting point in poetry, or just want to discover some queer work, I really recommend this book. Aside from poets I already know and admire, there were some other names I now feel interested enough to look at in more depth. Chan and McMillan have thoughtfully curated queer poems that push the boundaries of language, touching upon all sensations — profundity, grief, ecstasy, longing, ambivalence, unease.

Further disclaimer: Readers, please stop accusing me of trying to take down “my competition” because I wrote a review you didn’t like. One day he eavesdropped on his parents – his father was worried because according to him their firstborn son acted like a girl. Gregory Woods, who was Professor of Gay and Lesbian Studies at Nottingham Trent University, probably exemplifies "queer" poetry better than any other poet in this volume. When I was starting publishing my writing, people would focus on the things they considered autobiographical and talk about them as if they were the weakness of my writing. Pasaribu though, said the last thing they’d do is worry “about how hetero people see me or my writing.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). The poem’s title refers to a prefecture in Japan that contains geothermal hot springs, which Fan has visited. This Pride month, a new anthology featuring the work of queer poets such as Langston Hughes, Ocean Vuong and Kae Tempest is “questioning and redefining what we mean by a ‘queer’ poem”. 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”. The sections that spoke to me most directly to me upon a first reading were, somewhat predicably, Queer Relationships, Queer Landscapes and Queering Histories.

There were so many beautiful poems, this is definitely the type of book you’ll want to annotate (if you like to! I particularly liked Andrew McMillan's introduction regarding what is queer poetry and how people are labelled. Overall it was pretty solid but not as emotional as I was anticipating and that's a big thing for poetry with me.I always think that anthologies are a great way to discover new authors and poets, but often miss the mark so I don’t find myself reading them often. Curated by two widely acclaimed poets, Andrew McMillan and Mary Jean Chan, 100 Queer Poems moves from childhood and adolescence to forging new homes and relationships with our chosen families, from urban life to the natural world, from explorations of the past to how we find and create our future selves.