hiiii what’s your poetry book
Shwmae @lilyliveredlittlerichboy !
To clarify a little, my poem "To that Drag Queen in Corfu on the Night of the Eclipse" is one of many in the debut anthology "I Zig and I Zag", published by Margin 2 Margin (M2M) Books (a local indie press set up in an Aberystwyth bar I frequented before it closed last year). The anthology is explicitly made up of contributions from marginalised poets as the publisher is strongly by and for marginalised writers and stories.
I may be slightly biased but it's a fantastic anthology imo! There were contributions from around the world, including from Kenyan poet Masaka Madeda , who wrote the eponymous epic poem "I Zig and I Zag" (found on pages 32 - 147. It's absolutely massive and I'm fortunate enough to have heard Madeda perform an excerpt of his poem via videolink (in the aforementioned bar Iries). The rest of the anthology has works by other incredible marginalised poets and I'm still in awe that my work gets to sit alongside them.
Some personal favourites are Mohammed Abdoel and Ciel Saludes' memoir poem "My Mother's Rose-Tinted Glasses" (page 10) , Rakyah Assam's postcolonial grief poem "You Will Witness This from Wherever You Stand" (page 20) and Brân Denning's poem about the nature of want and maternal figures, "Neglect is a Needle —" (page 18) themed on the cloth mother/wire mother experiment.
My own poem, "To that Drag Queen in Corfu on the Night of the Eclipse" (page 15) is about a real experience of mine while holidaying with my (now-estranged) parents in Corfu. It's about finding other queer people and longing for connection with them while still in the closet. It's also about parents, queerphobia and queer belonging in the natural world.
I so rarely advertise really on here but it would mean a lot if you'd consider picking up a copy of the I Zig and I Zag anthology or the debut novel of G.I. James, Love and Happiness, which features the story of Harriet, an adopted black woman - which is also published by M2M Books.
Get the A4 Book Kindle Edition I Zig and I Zag is a beautifully produced A4 multi-community poetry anthology that revels in the shared human
