100 Queer Poems

<p><b>Mary Jean Chan and Andrew McMillan's luminous anthology <i>100 Queer Poems</i> is a celebration of thrilling contemporary voices and visionary poets of the past. </b><b>Featuring Elizabeth Bishop Langston Hughes Ocean Vuong Carol Ann Duffy Kae Tempest and many more.</b><br><br>Encompassing both the flowering of queer poetry over the past few decades and the poets who came before and broke new ground <i>100 Queer Poems</i> presents an electrifying range of writing from the twentieth century to the present day.<br><br>Questioning and redefining what we mean by a 'queer' poem you'll find inside classics by Elizabeth Bishop Langston Hughes Wilfred Owen Charlotte Mew and June Jordan central contemporary figures such as Mark Doty Jericho Brown Carol Ann Duffy Kei Miller Kae Tempest Natalie Diaz and Ocean Vuong alongside thrilling new voices including Chen Chen Richard Scott Harry Josephine Giles Verity Spott and Jay Bernard.<br><br>Curated by two widely acclaimed poets Mary Jean Chan and Andrew McMillan <i>100 Queer Poems</i> 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. It deserves a place on the shelf of every reader keen to discover and rediscover how queer poets speak to one another across the generations.</p> <b>The year's most notable anthology</b> is <i>100 Queer Poems</i> edited by Mary Jean Chan and Andrew McMillan. It has at its core a <b>generous and expansive</b> definition of queerness that finds room for poets such as WH Auden John Ashbery and Elizabeth Bishop while including modern innovative voices such as Verity Spott and Harry Josephine Giles. With a thematic arrangement ranging across relationships and families the urban and natural world and queer histories and futures <b>there is a great sense of kinship running through the poems</b> A diverse and gratifying new anthology of LGBTQ+ verse...<b> this is an abundantly rich and rewarding collection capturing how queer poets and their work speak to one another across generations</b> <i>100</i> <i>Queer Poems</i> is <b>more than a landmark volume; it offers a golden opportunity for readers and writers to check in refresh reconnect</b>. Old favourites sit alongside emerging stars and some surprises gifting us with <b>an anthology that marks the present moment and ushers in a new one</b> <b>Ocean Vuong (Contributor) </b><br> <b>Ocean Vuong </b>is the author of the critically acclaimed poetry collection <i>Night Sky with Exit Wounds</i> and the <i>New York Times</i> bestselling novel <i>On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous</i>. A recipient of the 2019 MacArthur Genius Grant he is also the winner of the Whiting Award and the T.S. Eliot Prize. His writings have been featured in <i>Atlantic</i> <i>Harper's Magazine</i> <i>Nation</i> <i>New Republic</i> <i>New Yorker</i> and the <i>New York Times</i>. Born in Saigon Vietnam he currently lives in Northampton Massachusetts.<br><br><b>Seán Hewitt (Contributor) </b><br> <b>Seán Hewitt</b> was born in 1990. He is the author of the poetry collection <i>Tongues of Fire</i> which received the Laurel Prize and was shortlisted for many awards including the<i> Sunday Times</i> Young Writer of the Year Award. His memoir <i>All Down Darkness Wide</i> was shortlisted for Biography of the Year at the An Post Irish Book Awards and for the Foyles Non-Fiction Book of the Year and longlisted for the RSL Ondaatje Prize and the Polari Book Prize. Hewitt lectures at Trinity College Dublin and is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. In 2022 he was awarded the Rooney Prize for Irish Literature.<br><br><b>Kaveh Akbar (Contributor) </b><br> <b>Kaveh Akbar</b> is the author of <i>Calling a Wolf a Wolf</i> and <i>Pilgrim Bell</i> and has received honours such as a Levis Reading Prize and multiple Pushcart Prizes. Born in Tehran Iran he teaches at Purdue University and in low-residency programs at Warren Wilson and Randolph Colleges.<br><br><b>Jay Bernard (Contributor) </b><br> Jay Bernard is the author of the pamphlets <i>Your Sign is Cuckoo Girl</i> (Tall Lighthouse 2008) <i>English Breakfast</i> (Math Paper Press 2013) and <i>The Red and Yellow Nothing</i> (Ink Sweat & Tears Press 2016) which was shortlisted for the Ted Hughes Award 2017. A film programmer at BFI Flare and an archivist at Statewatch they also participated in ‘The Complete Works II’ project in 2014 and in which they were mentored by Kei Miller. Jay was a Foyle Young Poet of the Year in 2005 and a winner of SLAMbassadors UK spoken word championship. In 2019 Jay was selected by Jackie Kay as one of Britain's ten best BAME writers for the British Council and National Centre for Writing's International Literature Showcase. Their poems have been collected in <i>Voice Recognition: 21 Poets for the 21st Century</i> (Bloodaxe 2009) <i>The Salt Book of Younger Poets</i> (Salt 2011) <i>Ten: The New Wave</i> (Bloodaxe 2014) and <i>Out of Bounds: British Black & Asian Poets</i> (Bloodaxe 2014).<br><br><b>Langston Hughes (Contributor) </b><br> <b>Langston Hughes</b> (1901-1967) was a central figure of the Harlem Renaissance and one of the most influential and acclaimed American writers of the twentieth century. A renowned poet from a young age Hughes' first collection of poetry <i>The Weary Blues</i> was published when he was just 24. He would go on to publish more than thirty-five books including his award-winning debut novel <i>Not Without Laughter</i> and the short story collection <i>The Ways of White Folks</i>. His widely-read journalism and nonfiction became important documents in the support and promotion of the civil rights movement.<br><br><b>Andrew McMillan (External Editor) </b><br> <b>Andrew McMillan</b>'s first collection <i>physical</i> was the first poetry collection to win the Guardian First Book Award; it also won a Somerset Maugham Award an Eric Gregory Award a Northern Writers' Award and the Aldeburgh First Collection Prize. His second collection <i>playtime</i> won the inaugural Polari Prize and his most recent collection is <i>pandemonium</i>. McMillan is a Senior Lecturer at the Manchester Writing School at Manchester Metropolitan University and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature.<br><br><b>Mary Jean Chan (External Editor) </b><br> <b>Mary Jean Chan</b> is the author of <i>Flèche</i> which won the 2019 Costa Poetry Award and was shortlisted in 2020 for the International Dylan Thomas Prize the John Pollard Foundation International Poetry Prize the Jhalak Prize and the Seamus Heaney First Collection Poetry Prize. In 2021 <i>Flèche</i> was a Lambda Literary Award Finalist. Chan is a Senior Lecturer in Creative Writing (Poetry) at Oxford Brookes University. Born and raised in Hong Kong they currently live in Oxford.<br><br>