100 Queer Poems: an anthology

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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.

I particularly liked Andrew McMillan's introduction regarding what is queer poetry and how people are labelled. Based on my personal experience here, the literary communities are often allergic to anything autobiographical,” said Pasaribu, whose short story collection Happy Stories, Mostly, translated by Tiffany Tsao, was longlisted for this year’s International Booker prize. The first thing he learned at school, as he watched the girls during break, was that there was a girl inside him.The long-awaited second instalment in Samantha Shannon's Sunday Times and New York Times-bestselling series Tunuva Melim is a sister of the Priory. Thank you to NetGalley, Mary Jean Chan, Andrew McMillan and Vintage for this DRC in exchange for an honest review.

It also a wonderful pair of introductions from the editors—this would be the sort of thing I normally skip over but, in this case, they serve as a kind of mission statement for the collection (and the line right at the beginning from Andrew McMillan about the poems of Thom Gunn make him feel, for the first time, that “who I was might be worth of poetry, worth of literature” hit me hard and immediately in the feels). Nevertheless, I'm very glad to have read this collection because it introduced me to a number of poets to check out in the future, and in general, I just appreciated seeing the numerous ways in which the authors of these 100 poems incorporated queerness into their poetry. Born in Tehran, Iran, he teaches at Purdue University and in low-residency programs at Warren Wilson and Randolph Colleges.

McMillan is a Senior Lecturer at the Manchester Writing School at Manchester Metropolitan University and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. i think i built and furnished mine with space for you to move through it, with me, alone in rooms [. All in all, I did enjoy the anthology as a collection of poems and, if I still have life left in me, look forward to their implicated follow-up anthology in 10 years time. it is so beautifully collated and expressed, and is a real testament to random house/vintage, andrew mcmillan, mary jean chan, and the poets. Also I’m aware I’ve spoken more about the approach of the anthology as a whole than any individual poem but … it’s hard to know how else to speak about an anthology.

However, I’m so happy I picked this one up because it felt like it scratched an itch in my brain, and I’ll definitely be picking up more work from some of these authors.Queer Poems: An Anthology’ is edited by Mary Jean Chan and Andrew McMillan and has been released on 1st June coinciding with the start of U. The English poets that represnt queer history are nothing more than a scattering of odd seeds from English poetry: Douglas, Owen, Brooke and Auden's over anthologised "Funeral Blues," made popular via Four Weddings and a Funeral. Some of my favorites from this collection include "Afterwards" by Carola Luther, "Philomela: Nest building" by Seni Seneviratne, "Reasons for Staying" by Ocean Vuong, and "Shake My Future" by Dorothea Smartt. 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. One Sunday morning, his father took him and his brothers to jog and play soccer on a badminton court nearby.

Later, McMillan states they hope perhaps this anthology might offer the same comfort and inspiration to people who might not otherwise have realised there is a queer space where they can fit in, be comfortable, be comforted.

I admit that I rarely read poetry though always feel that I should try to incorporate more in my reading. 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. While not every individual poem worked for me, the collection as a whole offers something bold, expressive and kind of even … necessary? Together you both will grow old, and be wed before the Three-Branched God – the tree-like god – and have a child named Langit. 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.