Description

With a vividly sketched cast of
characters, award-winning poet Joelle Taylor uses the Maryville butch bar as a
lens through which to consider the underground histories of queer London. The
violence and pain of oppression and the beauty and intimacy of community are
rendered in awe-inspiring high definition in a collection as filmic as it is
familiar. A hybrid chronicle, magic trick, television series, prayer and
insurrection, Maryville conjures ghosts back
to their bodies, a community to their feet. The four butches
introduced in Cunto & Othered Poems return transplanted into the
Maryville bar in 1957 as teenagers. They bring with them stories of
incarceration, escape, and resilience - a quality that will mark their
friendship for the next 50 years. Through the Maryville's darkened windows, we
watch the Gay Liberation Front stagger to its feet, a nascent women's
liberation movement bite off its bindings, squat culture's wild spread across
the city, the fight against Clause 28, the Brixton Riots, the Sex Wars and much
more. Inside, the Maryville has its own rituals, its own revolutions to
consider. More than anything the Maryville is a safe space to be dangerous.
Women find themselves in each other's faces while outside Boy-Boy's howl their
infinite carols.