Éadaoín Lynch and Alycia Pirmohamed
Re·creation, inspired by the Audre Lorde poem of the same name, has its roots in play, refreshment, recovery, restoration, invigoration, and creating, all of which are long overdue in a Covid-affected world, particularly for those in the LGBTQIA+ community.
This is a new venture, in partnership with Stewed Rhubarb Press, to collate an anthology of poems by queer poets. It is open to queer poets across Scotland and the UK, with a strong emphasis on intersectionality and diversity across our editorial team and contributors.
Our call for submissions will be open over the summer of 2021 — keep an eye out for it on our project website.
To our knowledge, this will be the first anthology of its kind out of Scotland. It is happening alongside other similar ventures, e.g. Queering the Green with Lifeboat Press in Belfast, and as such it indicates the growing public need for these collections, not to mention the significance for diversity within the publishing sector. Our project aims to recognise that landmark achievement, create an object of literary significance, and foster a network of emerging and established queer writers within and beyond Scotland.
This is not only a publishing venture: the editors will be commissioning & selecting poets from a call for submissions, and all contributors will also be offered free 1-to-1 mentorship, workshops, roundtable feedback discussion with the editors, other selected poets, and external facilitators.
In the recently-published Publish Literary Sector Survey produced by Scottish BAME Writers Network and EDI Scotland, 79.0% disagreed or strongly disagreed that people of colour and white Scottish people have equal opportunities to succeed in Scotland’s literary sector. As part of the survey recommendations, Re·creation aims to challenge views that suggest diversity and quality are incompatible, and to increase the representation and visibility of people of colour in Scotland’s literary sector.
Éadaoín Lynch (they/them) is an early career researcher with a PhD in poetry from the University of St Andrews. Their poetry has previously been published in The Kindling Journal and shortlisted for the Jane Martin Poetry Prize and the London Magazine Poetry Prize. They are a devotee of Sophie Robinson’s Devotion course. Éadaoín is also a peer reviewer on the Journal of Gender Studies. Since 2020, they are co-host and producer of the podcast series Free Vers(e).
Alycia Pirmohamed (she/her) is a postdoctoral Creative Writing Fellow at the University of Liverpool, where she is working with Ledbury Poetry Critics, and the co-founder of the Scottish BAME Writers Network. She is the author of the pamphlets Hinge and Faces that Fled the Wind, and co-author of Second Memory. In 2020 Alycia was the winner of the Edwin Morgan Poetry Award. Her debut poetry collection, Another Way to Split Water, is forthcoming with YesYes Books (US) and Polygon Books (UK) in 2022.
