C+NTO & Othered Poems

C+NTO & Othered Poems is the TS Eliot Award winning poetry collection from Joelle Taylor, that tells the story of subversive butch counterculture that has been missing from contemporary LGBT narrative.  It speaks of the female body as a political act and reveals the homophobia and misogyny exerted on that body. History, magic, rebellion, party and sermon vibrate through the cantos to uncover the underground communities forged by women through the 90’s. It celebrates the protests they led to reclaim their bodies as their own and examines the difficult dance between survival and self-expression. Taylor writes into the silence surrounding masculine women and shows how personal narrative can become a political act. Part-memoir, part-imagination Taylor explodes gay stereotypes in poetry that is lyrical, expansive, imagistic, epic and intimate.  C+NTO is a love poem, a riot, a late night, and an honouring.

Joelle Taylor is the author of 4 collections of poetry. Her most recent collection C+NTO & Othered Poems (Westbourne Press) won the 2021 T.S Eliot Prize and was the subject of a Radio 4 arts documentary Butch. C+NTO was nominated for the Rathbone Folio Prize, longlisted for the Ondaatje Prize, and has been shortlisted for the Polari Book Prize. It was named by The Telegraph, the New Statesman, The White Review & Times Literary Supplement as one of the best poetry books of the year, as well as DIVA magazine’s Book of the Month, and awarded 5 stars by the Morning Star. She has recently completed a book tour of Australia including Sydney Opera House (March 2022). C+NTO is currently being adapted for theatre with a view to touring. A former UK SLAM Champion she founded the national youth poetry slams SLAMbassadors through the Poetry Society in 2001, remaining its Artistic Director until 2018. She is a co-curator and host of Out-Spoken Live, resident at the Southbank Centre, and an editor at Out-Spoken Press. She has recently completed her novel of interconnecting stories The Night Alphabet. She is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, and the 2022 Saboteur Spoken Word Artist of the Year.

This webinar is part of an open seminar series, hosted by CISC and LiFTS. To discover more please visit the Centre for Intimate and Sexual Citizenship and follow the Centre on Twitter

• SC199 Career Development and Making a Difference

Essex students within the department can attend this event as part of eligibility criteria for module SC199. Once attended, you can complete a short reflection on what you learned by attending the event. This can be downloaded here (via Moodle) and then uploaded to FASER.