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Vanessa Kisuule is a big Michael Jackson fan. This fixation once gave her great joy, but now it keeps her up at night. In her bracingly honest, energetic and lively book she explores the fall-out from that fandom and how, or if, we can hold people to account whilst loving them at the same time. Why do famous musicians mean so much to us? How does the pop culture machine both mirror and magnify the worst aspects of human nature? Why is it so hard to accept that the people we love, famous or not, are capable of doing terrible things? As debates rage on about abusive public figures, Kisuule asks not just if we should separate the art from the artist, but how this moral conundrum informs the way we shape our relationships, families and notions of social justice. Witty, poetic and with references to R. Kelly, Britney Spears and a host of other famous faces, Neverland is both an ardent love letter to the music we love and an unflinching look at the costs of hero worship.
Vanessa Kisuule's second release is a poetry collection with a difference. It is a recipe book for personhood that changes with the whim of the seasons and the political climate. It is a cathartic explosion, an unspooling of long-harboured resentment and a delving into ugly truths. It is a feverish fistful of musings, a comedy of errors, an instruction manual, a broken compass and an overheard conversation in the ladies' loo. It is at once a celebration of things to come and a mourning of things lost. It is a redefinition of what it is to be magical and otherworldly.
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"Arts Council England"--Page facing title page.
The poems in this book pay tribute to the women who've changed our lives, globally or personally. The fighters, survivors, rebels, queens, bosses, mentors, mothers, lovers and friends. Poetry by Gale Acuff, Polly Atkin, Erdem Avsar, Honey Baxter, Chloe Bettles, K. Blair, Laurie Bolger, Helen Bowie, Helen Bowell, Troy Cabida, Jemima Foxtrot, Jasmine Gray, Fee Griffin, Marguerite Harrold, Julie Irigaray, Safiya Kamaria Kinshasa, Cecilia Knapp, Jill Michelle, Jenny Mitchell, Charlotte Newbury, Madeleine Pulman-Jones, Ellora Sutton, Ojo Taiye, Claudine Toutoungi and Christian Yeo.
A collection of 13 pieces of courage and resistance, this is work inspired by protests and rallies. Poems written for the women's march, for women's empowerment and amplification, poems that salute people fighting for justice, poems on sexism and racism, class discrimination, period poverty and homelessness, immigration and identity. This work reminds us that Courage is a Muscle, it also contains a letter from the spirit of Hope herself, because as the title suggests, Pessimism is for Lightweights.
This collection asks questions about society. How have the ill gotten gains of colonialism shaped our society today? What does it mean to appreciate and enjoy spaces that were never meant for you?
Jam is for Girls is Shagufta K Iqbal's fiercely honest debut collection. Her work lays witness to the immigrant experience and gives voice to the women who made journeys into unknown lands through the eyes of their daughters. This is not a collection that struggles between two conflicting cultures, but is an unashamed and unapologetic confirmation of the third generation identity carving itself a space in an increasingly Islamaphobic world. She deftly balances passion and tenderness in her poems, exploring the personal and the political through themes that address gender inequality, racism and the injustice that is present in our world. Leaving audiences with thought provoking poems that are rich and vivid in imagery.
'Cecilia Knapp is a great writer. I love her' KAE TEMPEST In her devastatingly powerful debut collection, Cecilia Knapp examines the experience of motherlessness and its lasting impact, as well as the lessons passed between generations of women. These poems explore women's complicated relationship with their bodies, with sex, and with shame as she traverses the violence of romantic love, but also employs humour and mischief, a wry reclaiming of power. We hear stories of a challenging childhood in a seaside town, a girl growing up, getting out and reckoning with the guilt of being 'one of these people now.' The collection also offers a look at Knapp's close relationship with her older brother, his struggles with addiction and, eventually, his death. With tenderness, she remembers him and unpacks the unique grief that comes after a suicide. Peach Pig is a candid and unflinching look at loss, an attempt to find a language for it. It grapples with feelings of anxiety, insecurity and displaced anger; but it is also a collection full of dreams, hope and vibrant persistence, a willingness to question and to carry on.
Black joy is . . . The babble and buzz of the barber shop. Chicken and chips after school with your girls. Stepping foot in your mother country for the very first time. Feeling at one with nature. Learning to cook souse with your mum. Connecting with the only other Black colleague in your workplace. Loving and finding complete happiness in your fatness. Joy surrounds us. It can be found it in the day to day. It's what we live for. So why do we so rarely allow ourselves to revel in it? This must-read anthology is your invitation to do so - and is a true celebration of Black British culture in all its glory. Edited by award-winning journalist, and former gal-dem editor-in-chief, Charlie Brinkh...