Not Your Orlando
NOT YOUR ORLANDO is a raw and tender, gender- and genre-fluid collaborative poetry collection that glistens with sex and sweat.
JP Seabright, George Parker and Jaime Lock explore life at the margins, the politics of sex and identity, the protest songs of late night dive bars, and the reality of being different in an increasingly (straight)jacketed world. Strap on and strap in, it’s going to be a bumpy ride.
Available now from Amazon and direct from the publisher: https://punkdust.com/not-your-orlando/
The recording of our fabulous online launch can be watched on YouTube:
Photos and videos from our LIVE LONDON BOOK LAUNCH at The Glitch Bar will be posted on the site shortly.
Advance Praise for Not Your Orlando
Huge thanks to the wonderful and talented writers and creatives lisa luxx, Gayathiri Kamalakanthan, Dorian Rose and Bridget Hart for their words of endorsement.
Praise for Not Your Orlando
“The musicality of the political poems here is reminiscent of freedom songs and the chants of revolutions, making for a timeless contribution to the poetics of uprising. These are poems that should be on billboards. Their collaborative writing, which boldly dissolves the cult of individualism, cements this queer poetry in queer practice. Here is a book that deserves a place in the archives of liberation literature.”— lisa minerva luxx, poet, playwright, political activist, author of Fetch Your Mothers Heart
“Not Your Orlando stems from the life force that is trans family. These poems sweat & feel & fuck their way into being. What a honour to be seen by these words.”
— Gayathiri Kamalakanthan, poet, playwright, and sex education facilitator
“Not Your Orlando address us with proud discourse on ‘what it means to Be’. As ‘queerness’ – like poetry – is at once separate and bound to the non-normative soul, this collection is a manifestation of queer life in all its glory. Three revolutionary poets remind us of ourselves.”— Dorian Rose, Founder/Director of Transmuted
“Wow. What a definitive and triumphant march through the complicated, messy, beautiful ways one can be as a queer person. A powerhouse collaboration that speaks to the multitudes of raw experience and aching desire.”— Bridget Hart, writer, performer, producer, co-director of For Books’ Sake
Reviews
Mab Jones reviews Not Your Orlando in Buzz Magazine, calling it “one of the best books I’ve read this year.” Read full review below, or on the Buzz website.
Not Your Orlando is so great! Celebrating queerdom, queerness, and being queer, it’s the latest publication from Punk Dust Poetry, run by the inimitable poet Jamie Woods. Composed by three poets, it wasn’t clear to me whether the poems were co-authored (each writer collaborating to create one poem), each by individual poets, or some mix of these. I suppose not knowing presents within the book a sense of there being a ‘united front’, and an overall voice which is all/none – fitting, since the book explores the experience of being gay in a culture which still harbours bigotry, as the title of the final poem – You Fucking Dyke! – makes plain.
This is a book full of feist and fury, wit and wonderment, tales of terror and tales of triumph. Structured into three sections – agitate, transmutate, celebrate – it takes us on a journey which encompasses its own ‘Choose Life’ rhetoric (this poem alone is worth the price of the book) on through club cloakrooms, “transmasculine kisses”, and encouragement to Cwtch Butch – the trials and the terribleness, the joy and the jubilation, are all here. It is utterly human and humane, heartbreaking and heart lifting. The language veers and soars, and is clever and captivating throughout, without even one iota of pretension or ‘poor me’ in any of it. It’s one of the best books I’ve read this year. Read Not Your Orlando now, yourself, and let it fill you with wonder; two words from me, really – “yay gay”!
The Mollusc Dimension reviews Not Your Orlando on their blog, entitled Looking for fabulous creatures in “Not Your Orlando”
Not Your Orlando Playlist!
All text copyright JP Seabright © 2021-24
JP Seabright 