Travels of a Queer Poet

Yes - that's me! I'm here, I'm queer, and I'm travelling to the States to read poetry and meet two of my Woman-Stirred friends in person for the very first time. I'm sure you've heard me talk about them before! So that really means I'm not here at all. In fact I'm over there - being queer, and friendly, and a poet. Or at least I will be very soon. If you see what I mean.

Here's what's going on. If you're in the Vermont vicinity, please come along and support us. I'm the one with the English accent.


BLACK SHEEP BOOKS presents:

Three Queer Poets:
Readings by Julie R. Enszer, Merry Gangemi, and Nicki Hastie

Tuesday, August 14 at 7:00 p.m.
at 4 Langdon Street, Montpelier, VT

Julie R. Enszer, a Maryland-based writer and lesbian activist, is published in "Iris: A Journal about Women," "Room of One's Own," "Long Shot," the "Jewish Women's Literary Annual," and the "Harrington Lesbian Literary Quarterly." Her book, "Homesteading: Essays on Life, Death, Sex, and Liberation," is forthcoming in winter 2008. For more on Julie, see http://www.JulieREnszer.com.

Merry Gangemi lives in Woodbury, VT, and is the host of Woman-Stirred Radio, a weekly queer cultural journal on WGDR 91.1 fm. Her work is published in the "Paterson Literary Review," "Journal of NJ Poets," "Harrington Lesbian Fiction Quarterly," the "Harrington Lesbian Literary Review," "Vermont Woman," and the "Hardwick Gazette." She produces the annual Tea & Poetry series, a Vermont literary festival now in its sixth year. For more on Merry, see http://www.merrygangemi.org.

Nicki Hastie lives in Nottingham, England. She is a founding member of the Woman-Stirred blog. Her work is published in "Chroma," "Diva," "Trouble & Strife," and also in critical anthologies relating to women's health, coming out stories, lesbian fiction, and representations of lesbians in popular culture. For more on Nicki, see http://www.nickihastie.demon.co.uk.

* * *

Black Sheep Books, a community space and bookstore in Montpelier, Vermont, offers affordable radical and scholarly books, and hosts educational events on cultural and political topics. As an all-volunteer project, we are operated by a five-member collective hand in hand with a group of dedicated volunteers. Our principle focus is to provide access to anti-authoritarian Left ideas in a way that promotes intellectual debate and challenges today’s hegemonic culture. Together with horizontalist social movements and political projects, bookstores, infoshops, and publishers, Black Sheep Books works toward an egalitarian, ecological, and nonhierarchical society.

Black Sheep Books
4 Langdon Street, Montpelier, Vermont
www.blacksheepbooks.org / 802-225-8906
Hours: Tues-Sat 11-6, Sun 11-5, Mon closed



And then, on Saturday 18 August, what better than Tea and Poetry?

You really won't want to miss us in the gardens of Perennial Pleasures for this Vermont literary festival, now in its sixth year thanks to the organisational skills and poetic-mindedness of Merry Gangemi. Voluntary donations benefit the AFSC VT office youth outreach and education program.

Readings are at 1pm and 3pm on both Saturday and Sunday. Julie, Merry, and I will be reading on Saturday at 3pm. Don't forget to bring a lawn chair!

Books are for life

I started cataloguing my book collection once. My lesbian-themed book collection, that is. At the time I started doing this (1993) it was probably seen as a particularly nerdy thing to do, especially using bibliographical software. That did take a certain amount of commitment, and I abandoned the project a few years later. But nothing will dispel my belief that lesbians and libraries really go together very well!

Now, with the help of the latest online tools, it's so much easier for everyone to be a would-be librarian. So I'm trying out LibraryThing, and you can see my most recently acquired books by scrolling down the page and checking out the righthand margin of this blog.

Congratulations to Julie R. Enszer who has two poems published in Queer Collection: Prose & Poetry 2007, and very kindly sent me a copy. This anthology is well worth a read, and the editor is already on the lookout for submissions for the 2008 collection.

Gay's The Word Needs Your Support!

The last surviving lesbian and gay bookshop in the UK is under threat.

I love Gay's The Word Bookshop. Every time I go to London I try to make the effort to get there - and to buy books. We need bookshops. You can browse online, but you can't hold the books in your hand. It's difficult to come across the surprising find, the older titles, online: the history of our struggles and our celebrations.

Please do what you can to support Gay's The Word. You can sponsor a shelf and help safeguard the bookshop's future.

Read about the authors supporting the bookshop in Times Online and Guardian Online.

Bookshops are a vital part of community-building. Our words are our future!

The Twelve Books of Christmas

There is something enjoyable about making lists at the year end, and particularly if the items on those lists have already happened. So I'm going to show you part of my last diary entry from 1986. It makes me feel I already knew myself pretty well back then.

December 30th 1986

So, how was my Christmas?

Not too bad, thankyou, although I did feel decidedly ill Christmas Day. I felt as if I was going to develop a bad case of flu - I was shaking and had thumping headaches all day - but in the end it came out in just a simple cold, so I haven't suffered too much since, apart from feeling slightly as if I'm to be sick every now and then - which is not, I must make clear, due to eating too much or anything like that, for I haven't indulged half so much as I usually do. Saying that, I have just eaten my way through a large bag of Marks & Spencer's spring onion flavour crisps - but that's hardly my fault - I didn't realise what I was doing sitting here, and, anyway, I've got rather a passion for them - even if everyone else complains they smell terrible. I hadn't noticed!

Altogether I had twelve books of different descriptions. I had asked specifically for books this Christmas.

Let's see - what did I have?

• The Concise Oxford Dictionary of English Literature
• The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Quotations
• Roget's Thesaurus
• The Bell Jar Sylvia Plath
• Selected Poems Elizabeth Jennings
• Persephone Jenny Joseph
• Later Poems R.S. Thomas
• Cagney and Lacey Serita Deborah Stevens
• Wifey Judy Blume
• Other Women Lisa Alther
• The Swimming Pool Season Rose Tremain
• and one Mum bought for herself,
  The Christmas Tree Jennifer Johnston,
  but gave to me because she was afraid to tell Dad she had been spending his money on herself instead of on Christmas presents!!

Hmm - that sums it up nicely, including the rather pointed comment about Mum spending Dad's money. Growing up, I did always have the sense that Dad felt he went out and earned the money, that it was his money, and the rest of us simply spent it. I'm glad to say he's far more relaxed about the way finances are shared now, and how they're spent.


As for the books I had for Christmas in 2006? Don't you want to know about those?

• The Best of Smash Hits: The '80s
• Robert Smith: The Cure & Wishful Thinking, an unofficial and unauthorised biography by Richard Carman
• Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic Alison Bechdel

Does that indicate I'm becoming less literary and more musical? Not really. I guess it just proves how nostalgic I am for the 1980s. Mind you, I do have a new musical companion. I call him Spike. He's an i-Cat. We'll be grooving together to our favourite music during 2007.

Gay Yet Wistful

After looking for a poem last night (indirectly reminded of it by one of the other writers on the course), I now have a copy of Verse and Worse: A Private Collection by Arnold Silcock sitting next to me. It's unfair to put books away once they're off the shelves. They need to lie around and be contemplated for a while, especially if they haven't been taken from the shelves for some time.

The poem wasn't in there, but there are some amazing chapter headings that you could probably only find in an anthology first published in 1952. These days, given such titles, you'd expect a very different collection of verse. I certainly would.

Grave Shades from the Churchyard Gaze On Gay Graves that the Churchyard Shades

This reminds me of my trip to Père Lachaise Cemetery (Cimetière du Père Lachaise) in Paris in 1991, particularly searching for the graves of Gertrude Stein, Alice B Toklas and Oscar Wilde. Interestingly, Alice B Toklas is not considered 'famous' enough to be listed on the virtual celebrity grave tour. Trust me, her grave is next to Stein's. I couldn't find a photo I'd taken of the graves, but here's one of me in Paris on the day in question, suitably dressed for a day of grave-searching.

Gay Yet Wistful

Plenty of reasons to be Gay Yet Wistful, not only where love is unrequited. [Pause here: can't you hear the extended GYW sigh?] I can really picture this working as an American bumpersticker, complete with rainbow flag.

Queer People - He on Him and Her: She on Her and Him In Jingle, Verse and Prayer, or Epitaph and Hymn

Very queer indeed.

Then, in the chapter called Old School Books, you'll find 'Personal Hygiene for Pussies'. Not surprisingly, penned by Anon.

My old school books were never like this. But then again, yes, they probably were. Some would say this was the time when language was innocent, before all those 'queer people' ruined such beautiful words as 'gay'. And before Mrs Slocombe discovered her pussy, no doubt. Yeah, right! At least Arnold sent his 'private collection' out into the world.