“Poetry isn’t the answer, but the question” – Joelle Taylor.

Poet, novelist and playwright Joelle Taylor visited Dragon Hall to discuss Maryville, her latest poetry collection. Situating queer, specifically butch*, culture within the safety of a bar, the book reads like a screenplay, lending the poems a nostalgic quality. Taylor appeared alongside poet, screenwriter and lecturer James McDermott, who introduced his new poetry collection, Father Myself. Written after his father’s passing from COVID-19 complications, McDermott explores tensions between grief and identity in a relationship strained by his father’s struggle to accept his sexuality. Together, the two collections offer a layered, painful, but ultimately affirming, portrait of queerness.

McDermott opened the event by reading selected poems from Father Myself. A standout, ‘Superspreader’, repurposed the language of COVID-19 to articulate his grief in the context of collective crisis. Using familiar phrases like “work from home”, “social distancing” and “you’re on mute”, he situates his loss as the “new normal”, echoing the experiences of those who suffered bereavements during the pandemic.

He closed his set with ‘Last Words’, a poem that records his final face-to-face interaction with his father. McDermott recounts that before being taken to hospital, his father said, “see you, Jim”. Though initially appearing as a farewell, McDermott’s reading suggests this was a gesture of recognition: his father finally saw him and accepted his identity.

From the snippets shared, Father Myself proved to be a stunningly thoughtful collection, expertly blending the struggles of bereavement with the complications of identity. Set against the backdrop of COVID-19, the poems use the vocabulary of physical isolation to map the mental disconnection of grief, ironically creating a community among readers who relate to this.

The discussion then moved to Taylor, who started by reading some poems from her collection C+nto. A “prequel” to her most recent work, Maryville, C+nto is a part memoir exploring grief and love in the context of butch culture during the onslaught of 1980s and ‘90s homophobia. Winning the T.S. Eliot Poetry Prize in 2021, the poems resemble a screenplay, building a richly textured world populated by fleshed-out characters. These characters represent different parts of butch culture, including “Valentine” and “Angel”. The former is a motorcycle-riding stud, while the latter is a younger butch, known as a boi, offering a multifaceted and enticing view of queer experiences.

‘Scene 1’, the collection’s opener, establishes the space of a gay bar as a sanctuary, somewhere where queer people can find safety. This idea is central to the collection and Maryville too—in Taylor’s remarkable written words, it is a “safe space to be dangerous”.

Turning to Maryville, Taylor expanded on the idea of the bar as a source of refuge and community. Spanning from the period of 1957 to 2007, the poems mirror C+nto’s cinematic style. Though the poems place an emphasis on their storytelling, Taylor notes it would be incorrect to describe them as narrative poetry. Instead, she suggests that they are a page-turning poetry book.

Central to the book is a crown of sonnets that Taylor reveals is a dedication to the 180 butch lesbians that were murdered in 2024. They flow seamlessly from one to the other, but each has a different tone. Some are introspective, some are brimming with anger, some explode with hope. They underscore Taylor’s larger message: being queer, despite its complications, means one is free.

For Taylor, Maryville interrogates visibility and erasure. “Who is holding the camera?”, she asks. This idea, in part, shapes the collection’s screenplay-like form, highlighting her focus on queer identity and the politics of being seen. The language of film is also something Taylor inherited from her childhood. She contentedly recalled memories of running around barefoot in the cinema where her mother worked, a nostalgia that she weaves throughout her poems.

The evening concluded with a discussion of poetry’s inherent queerness. “It is camp, it is prissy, it has innuendo,” McDermott observed. By being poets themselves, both Taylor and McDermott are writing for a new generation, fostering acceptance and keeping queer culture alive.

Taylor and McDermott’s talk is part of the UEA Live programme. The next session on Monday, 1st December involves a conversation with Naomi Booth and Katy Massey, where they’ll explore the themes of motherhood, violence and, naturally, Yorkshire!

Student tickets cost £6, offering an accessible way to hear from writers and poets right on your doorstep.

To book, head to https://www.uealive.com

*This term was used by Taylor herself during the talk and has been kept in this article for authenticity.

Image credit: Abigail Sexton