Maryville

With a vividly sketched cast ofcharacters, award-winning poet Joelle Taylor uses the Maryville butch bar as alens through which to consider the underground histories of queer London. Theviolence and pain of oppression and the beauty and intimacy of community arerendered in awe-inspiring high definition in a collection as filmic as it isfamiliar. A hybrid chronicle, magic trick, television series, prayer andinsurrection, Maryville conjures ghosts backto their bodies, a community to their feet. The four butchesintroduced in Cunto & Othered Poems return transplanted into theMaryville bar in 1957 as teenagers. They bring with them stories ofincarceration, escape, and resilience - a quality that will mark theirfriendship for the next 50 years. Through the Maryville's darkened windows, wewatch the Gay Liberation Front stagger to its feet, a nascent women'sliberation movement bite off its bindings, squat culture's wild spread acrossthe city, the fight against Clause 28, the Brixton Riots, the Sex Wars and muchmore. Inside, the Maryville has its own rituals, its own revolutions toconsider. More than anything the Maryville is a safe space to be dangerous.Women find themselves in each other's faces while outside Boy-Boy's howl theirinfinite carols.