C+nto

& Othered Poems

Joelle Taylor

• Publisher: The Westbourne Press
• Year: 2021
• ISBN:
  9781908906496
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Poetry
• Index: Literature

WINNER OF THE T S ELIOT PRIZE 2021

WINNER OF THE POLARI PRIZE 2022

'Visionary and powerful. I loved it.' Hollie McNish

The female body is a political space.

C+nto enters the private lives of women from the butch counterculture, telling the inside story of the protests they led in the '90s to reclaim their bodies as their own – their difficult balance between survival and self-expression. History, magic, rebellion, party and sermon vibrate through Joelle Taylor's cantos to uncover these underground communities forged by women.

Part-memoir and part-conjecture, Taylor explores sexuality and gender in poetry that is lyrical, expansive, imagistic, epic and intimate. C+nto is a love poem, a riot, a late night, and an honouring.

minds. Here is poetry that defends our right to walk without fear, wear what we choose, be who we uniquely are." - - Diana Souhami

O, Maryville

SCENE ONE

EXTERIOR night. A main road in London.

LX1: Streetlamps watch a woman pass & text each other.

FX1: The sound of a door opening into a chest cavity. A lone woman walks briskly, head down & holding invisible bouquets. Ahead of her is a hunched building with its hands in it pockets, bracketed by gossiping fairy lights.

LX2: A neon sign flashes its pink dilate. Maryville, the sign says. The woman pushes open the door & enters her own body. At the bar she orders a drink and when it arrives it is her breath. Music is playing. It is the sound of someone being listened to. She notices that she is sitting at every table. When the woman asks her to dance the whole of her past stands up to dance with her; her classmates, her teachers, the manager of the shop she worked in over Christmas, the newspaper proprietor, the street she grew up on, an adjacent town, her parents and grandparents, the kid who waited for her after school. The song ends. The world opens. Venus rises.

Psalm

o Maryville / song of loose shirt / you button down boi / you thick rod of irony / o, Maryville / you sawn-off mini skirt / you tights torn into choir / o Maryville/ o swagger / o keychain & denim / i am plural / o Maryville / we dress as our greatest fears / we dress as ourselves / o Maryville / the etymology of dyke / so many holes to fill / i knew your mother / saw them / lower her body / into her body / saw how she became cenotaph / the neighbourhood children left flowers at / o Maryville / i remember your sister / how antelope she was / how she froze when she heard the first roar / how she fell into the o of the roar / o Maryville / the antelopes are eating the antelopes / o my Maryville / forgive us / their trespasses.

o, Maryville / let us walk alone at night / & let the night not follow us / let us drink too much / & awaken in each other’s mouths / o Maryville / let us be ugly / let us unwash / let us language / our mouths are filled with men / line dancing / let us pass the half smoked cigarette / o Maryville / let us fatten / let us leave our faces / on the back seat of night buses / let someone take a photograph not of us / but because of us / let our limbs grow wild / our hair retreat / our hormonal seas / let our breasts // let them // let us inherit each other’s teeth / o Maryville / keep us alive this death / keep us from prayer / deliver us from ego / for thine are the body / the birthing & the burning / forever & ever // are you a man?

A Lesbian Walks into a Bar

o holy church of

Maryville on our knees

by Sunday looking up

our own skirts the tables

are a strange atoll

each with its own

customs but we share

a root language a lesbian

walks into a bar or

a bar walks into a

lesbian how it is to

arrive what it is to

become o holy i stand

at the bar side knowing

when i look up i will be

serving myself & when i

am done that i will take

the drinks to a table

where i am waiting

& later on, i’ll

give glad eye

to a girl & she

will be me.

SCENE TWO

INTERIOR, Maryville. Night.

LX1: the orange of belief.

FX1: the sound belonging makes. Three elder butches & a younger boi share a table. Maryville knows them all by name, pulls them to her breast: Dudizile, Angel, Jack Catch & Valentine. They conference the night. The evening swirls around them as though they are stones in a river. Sometimes, other bois rest with them. Mostly, they are architecture. The four friends know this room. The four friends are this room.

LX2: light narrows to a cartoon spotlight.

Valentine

Born right body

wrong day, Valentine

flicks her lighter

in the corner of the club

& white women flutter.

Tonight, she has dressed

as the inside of a mouth

a handsewn suit excised

from a cured night sky

black leather has its own skin

care routine it listens

to its mother I have heard

it said some girls give birth

to themselves on the back

of motorbikes invent the wind

let the road uncurl from between

their legs, the infinite motorway

something British & unbidden

i know why we are drawn

to the corners it’s where the road

cannot reach us. Every part

of a woman is a weapon

if you know how to hold it

Valentine says. The corner

flicks a Morse & in the dark

white hearts beat like moths

against a headlight.

Angel

When Angel ...