REVIEWS
Two bold new collections find different ways to explore queer identity
Would it be wrong to proclaim poetry to be the queerest form of literature? If one were to line up every facet of writing that makes up ‘literature’ along the Kinsey scale, surely ‘poetry’ would score quite high, given that so many of its pioneers – Sappho, Whitman, Dickinson, Cavafy, Lorca, Ginsberg, O’Hara – were queer. (As an aside, I wonder what the most heterosexual form of literature would be, perhaps it’s the kind of books Bill Bryson writes.)
Poetry, then, being an exclusively homosexual endeavour, is often the form through which many of our best queer voices find a home. Think of Andrew McMillan or Seán Hewitt or Joelle Taylor; another name that would fit quite snugly…
