100 Queer Poems

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His father punished him with beatings. One day he eavesdropped on his parents – his father was worried because according to him their firstborn son acted like a girl. He peered into the mirror, to the little girl inside. And he saw it was good. 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. These poems are harrowing and harsh, funny and furious and unsettling and beautiful. They feel so much and make you, in turn, feel exposed and raw and understood and hopeful. Curated by two widely acclaimed poets, Mary Jean Chan and Andrew McMillan, 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. It deserves a place on the shelf of every reader keen to discover and rediscover how queer poets speak to one another across the generations. 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.

the only slight criticism i have is i would love the inclusion of the pronouns of the poets, as i would hate to misgender them. 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.He was awful at making friends and spent most of his time reading or playing Nintendo and Sega. The first book he read was a book of Japanese folktales. 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. In a collection that passes across the scope of lives and relationships, The Human Body is a Hivealso moves through the spectrum of human emotion. These are relatable experiences but the way that Jason digests and expels them gives them a new light, and a possible new way for you to understand them.

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. 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. This was followed by one of the most intimate and emotionally sensitive debut novels one could ever read: On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous. Some poems are grounded in his life and experiences; others are incredibly, beautifully abstract. They communicate through tone and emotion and language, even if the theme or concept isn’t clear. McMillan and Chan are both acclaimed poets themselves – McMillan has won the Guardian first book award, the Somerset Maugham award and the Polari prize for his work, while Chan’s debut collection Flèche won the 2019 Costa poetry award.

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Please note: This review may not be reproduced or quoted, in whole or in part, without explicit consent from the author. Harry Josephine Giles’ poem May a transsexual hear a bird? touches on how their life is politicised. “I’m somebody that leads a very political life and has been very involved in activist movements for a long time,” they said. “And for me, poetry is a space where I can kind of talk out the experience of that.” He made it into the best high school in the city – where the government officials sent their kids. His only friend from middle school started avoiding him. The bud of loneliness blossomed into first love. 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. Some of the neighbours forbade their kids from playing with him and his brothers because his family was Batak and Christian.