Continuing the theme of this year\u2019s LGBT+ History Month: \u2018Body, Mind, Spirit.\u2019 To celebrate and recognize this, the School of English\u2019s Centre for Gender, Sexuality and Writing has put together a list of poems available online\u2014written by LGBT+ poets\u2014that explore and reflect these themes.\n<\/p>\n
Doctrine<\/em><\/a> by queer Jewish poet sam sax (he\/him) is a poem that communicates with force the political consequences of language, playfully exploring the ideological position that states art has the responsibility to resist.<\/p>\n \u201cwhat i meant over breakfast<\/em> \/ is the time\u2019s too urgent for work \/ that doesn\u2019t <\/em>have blood in it.<\/em> \/ what i meant is insurgency \/ is our birthright\u201d<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n one art<\/em><\/a> by 20th<\/sup> century poet Elizabeth Bishop (she\/her) is a villanelle which recounts the inevitable heartbreak of loss by presenting it as a series of instructions on how to master it. Painstakingly crafted\u2014Bishop wrote 17 drafts of the poem\u2014it is a testament to the subtleties of poetic craft.<\/p>\n \u201c<\/em>Lose something every day. Accept the fluster \/ of lost door keys, the hour badly <\/em>spent. \/ The art of losing isn\u2019t hard to master.\u201d <\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n On World-Making<\/em><\/a> by poet and anthropologist Nomi Stone (she\/her) is a meditation upon the ways in which we are called into being through our connection with others. Built around quotes from philosopher and gender theorist Judith Butler, the poem connects the philosophical with the materiality of human experience.<\/p>\n \u201c<\/em>The attachment to\u00a0you,\u201d it is written, \/ \u201cis part of what composes who\u00a0I\u00a0am.\u201d I <\/em>know\/knew \/ those hands, hers. I watched her dust the sourdough with flour \/<\/em>at midnight a moon between her fingers.\u201d<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n Pedagogy<\/em><\/a> by Cherokee Two-Spirit\/Queer poet, activist and performer Qwo-Li Driskill (s\/he; hir) is a thorough account of the precarity of Native American and Two-Spirit bodies and minds; the danger of discussing those precarities in abstract terms within classroom spaces; and the possibilities of language as a weapon of resistance against oppression and incarceration.<\/p>\n \u201cThis class will not save you \/ This class will not save any of us \/ I pray you take <\/em>some words with you \/ like sharpened spoons \/ ferry them away up your sleeves <\/em>\/ under your tongues\u201d<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n Check back next week for the final instalment – Spirit<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Continuing the theme of this year\u2019s LGBT+ History Month: \u2018Body, Mind, Spirit.\u2019 To celebrate and recognize this, the School of English\u2019s Centre for Gender, Sexuality … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":74034,"featured_media":3419,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[21640,230630,124,26567],"tags":[22926,239863],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/english-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3410"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/english-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/english-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/english-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/74034"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/english-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3410"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/english-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3410\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3412,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/english-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3410\/revisions\/3412"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/english-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3419"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/english-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3410"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/english-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3410"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/english-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3410"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}