Still Blue: Writing by (for or about) Working Class Queers
Wendell Ricketts, the editor of this online publication, calls for more fiction, essays, poems, memoirs by (for and about) working class queers. Read the villanelle by Colm Toibin and Maura Dooley. Submit, submit.
Comments
Writers may not be working class, but they could write about working class queer experiences, surely? Now as to whether what they write is good poetry is quite another question.
I would rather working class queers were empowered to write about their own experiences, I think. What if working class queers wrote about upper-class gay experiences at Oxford? Would it have much value? I know, Jee, I am just being provocative, but I think this working class queer lark is just another silly division of identity poetics invented by certain poets who are trying to find a niche for themselves. I have a volume of working class queer poetry--the UK has already done this!--it's awful stuff! Sadly, the poetry dosen't work. In my opinion, from across the pond, it isn't class that divides so much as the stale academic nature of a lot of gay poetry in the USA. This class issue is just a cloud to cover their own guilt at sitting in academia, fearing that the real gay world is somewhere else.