Friday, 8th December 2023

Queer Reparative Poetry Display

Find out what queer reparative poetry is, explore our collection of queer poetry and pick up a FREE anthology.

Manchester Poetry Library recently ran a series of queer reparative poetry workshops. The outcome of these workshops is an anthology, curated by Tom White, full of writing from participants. You can now come and visit the library to explore a display of this poetry or you can download a PDF of the anthology here.

Here’s a taster from the introduction:

Is queerness a practice, a different way of being and behaving in the world? If so, how might that affect the way we write? Those were the questions raised in a series of workshops that I delivered at the Manchester Poetry Library in August 2023. The poets who attended those workshops responded in very different ways.

Is queerness a way of being and behaving in the world? The theorist Eve Sedgwick[1] suggests that there is a practice which queer people excel at; namely, the ability to find sustenance in a culture which tries to deny it to us. Sedgwick calls that practice ‘reparative’. Unfortunately, reparative practice is becoming increasingly important as the UK becomes ever more hostile to queer people and to trans people in particular. It’s sobering to think that ILGA-Europe (the European Region of the International Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Trans and Intersex Association) now ranks the UK seventeenth for LGBTQ+ rights, whereas in 2015 it ranked first.[2]

In the workshops, we singled out several reparative practices to explore: 

Excess: This is the practice of asserting abundance within a culture that would prefer to deny that to us. (Think of Ballroom culture, where queer people of colour parade the catwalk in opulent outfits.)

Relating: This is the practice of drawing strength and inspiration from people and organisms that we feel a connection with, when society at large seems hostile. 

Recuperating: This is the practice of finding value in the products that society deems marginal and obsolete – as we are often made to feel. (Think of Leilah Babirye’s sculptures made from rubbish.)

Over the course of three workshops at Manchester Poetry Library, we investigated how those reparative strategies might inform the way we write poetry. It’s a pleasure to share some of the resulting poems, all of which were written by workshop participants. It’s a pleasure because the ability to find sustenance within a culture which is often antithetical to our needs and desires is something to celebrate. It’s the ability to make something out of nothing. It demonstrates resilience and ingenuity. Those are all characteristics which the poets in this collection demonstrate in abundance.

[1] Eve Sedgwick (1993) Touching Feeling. Durham: Duke University Press.
[2] ILGA-Europe (2023) Rainbow Europe Map & Index. Available at: https://www.rainbow-europe.org/#8666/0/0