Maryville

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What to expect

Bloomsbury presents Maryville, written and read by Joelle Taylor.

A POETRY BOOK SOCIETY RECOMMENDATION

'Taylor's poetry is as dangerous as it is dexterous . . . A wildfire blazing free' BERNARDINE EVARISTO
'Kaleidoscopic in its breath, structure and humanity . . . Both selfless and intimate' ANTHONY JOSEPH
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From the T. S. Eliot and Polari Prize-winning author of C+NTO & Othered Poems comes an innovative collection exploring the scars, hopes and potentialities of dyke counterculture and the queer underground.

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, prayer and insurrection, Maryville conjures ghosts back to their bodies, a community to their feet.

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'Sexy, fearless – and ravishingly beautiful' NEIL BARTLETT
'One of the most powerful voices of our time . . . Joelle Taylor is a genius' CACONRAD

Critics Review

Delivers layers of brilliance and linguistic ingenuity. Taylor’s poetry is as dangerous as it is dexterous, as sophisticated and tensely coiled as it is a wildfire blazing free, as unclichéd as it is unpredictable, as emotionally engrossing as it is imaginatively mind-blowing. From the very first lines that ignite the imagination to the last . . . this is a consistently dazzling work of art
BERNARDINE EVARISTO, Booker Prize-winning author of Girl, Woman, Other
Taylor’s latest takes the four butch lesbian characters we met in the T. S. Eliot-winning C+NTO & Othered Poems, and expands into a sweeping, 50-year history of lesbian culture and LGBTQ+ rights . . . What lingers is the tenderness Taylor has for her protagonists; she knows that liberation never comes without a cost
Guardian
Kaleidoscopic in its breath, structure and humanity, Maryville is that rare thing: a collection that is both selfless and intimate, integrally formal yet full of risk and surprise
ANTHONY JOSEPH, T. S. Eliot Prize-winning author of Sonnets for Albert
Diving deep into our collective queer history, Joelle Taylor brings back treasure, spinning traces of the bad old days into a wrong-walking love letter to all the women who went before us. Sexy, fearless – and ravishingly beautiful
NEIL BARTLETT, author of Ready to Catch Him Should He Fall
With inimitable flair, Joelle Taylor honours a woefully underrepresented identity, rendering unfairly maligned butch dykes magnificent. Maryville is a bold and exhilarating depiction of the nuances, ecstasies and agonies of lesbian life. It is also fantastically entertaining, deeply moving and very sexy. Joelle's writing is so thrilling. I loved this book
ROXY BOURDILLON, author of What A Girl Wants
One of the most powerful voices of our time is what it takes to reveal the silenced generations of lesbians . . . Unlike anything we have ever encountered. Joelle Taylor is a genius, writing poetry onto a stage it has not lived on before, making this an addictive page-turner about the queer family of the past we need to be versed in, so we can stand with triumph and gratitude when we stand on their intrepid shoulders. This book is so much bigger than a book
CACONRAD, author of Listen to the Golden Boomerang Return
Language bristling with meaning, pages alive with originality and surprise – Joelle Taylor's layered, witty and profound writing demands to be read and re-read many times
SARAH JANE MORRIS
Maryville is lesbian life made lyrical, wrapped in jagged emotion. A captivating image of how we change each other, how we shape ourselves, and how we persevere
ELEANOR MEDHURST, author of Unsuitable
Visionary and powerful. I loved it
HOLLIE McNISH, author of Lobster, on C+nto & Othered Poems

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