By Alex Boersma, Literature Columnist 25/26
Joelle Taylor is an award-winning poet, author, playwright and editor. In honour of pride month and fresh off her recent international book tour for Maryville, we discussed her journey from university to building a successful career in the arts and celebrating her queerness.
If not for her thought provoking writing, many of you may recognise Joelle's name from her regular contribution to the Bristol poetry scene through her worldwide tours and regular slot at the Bristol Lyra poetry festival. For Joelle, it's ‘the glamour’ of Bristol which keeps pulling her back.
‘University honed my politics and my politics honed my poetry’
Prior to university Joelle had discovered her passion for poetry and was a regular performance poet supporting local punk bands in her hometown of Lancashire. This continued while she attended the University of Kent to study a four year course in Drama and Theatre studies. However, she became part of a slightly different crowd- one filled with more academic, middle class and ‘less enraged’ people. Joelle explains ‘university honed my politics and my politics honed my poetry’.
The course ‘fused academia with practical study’ and applied research to her first live performances. Joelle knew she didn't want to be an actor or performer but she ‘felt compelled to write plays' even though she ‘wasn't quite sure what they could be’. Despite loving the ‘space to think, conjure and imagine a future’ where she might grow, and ‘even eat occasionally!’, that university provided, she struggled financially. Joelle explains that coming from a low income background meant that she ‘survived university only through a combination of thefts and friendships’. She recalls having to ensure the play she directed had a bed specified in the set design to ensure she had somewhere to sleep.
Despite her present success, her beginnings supporting punk bands were filled with audiences turning their backs as she reached for the microphone. The worst case of this was in a Catholic club in Oswaldtwistle (Lancashire) where an audience of middle aged mothers chased her out and offered to give her a spanking. Joelle explains the irony as she would have been up for it, which seemed to anger them even more!
Joelle explains that winning the TS Eliot prize for ‘a book about butch dykes’ is without a doubt the best moment of her career thus far. This is predominantly because of the widespread community it opened up for her. She describes it led to ‘an entire world of dykes being open to my work, and they started filling out venues whatever country I was in’. She adds that, ‘in a sense, dykes are our own country’.
Joelle never had a backup career in mind; she explains ‘I never had any other intention than to be a writer’. For Joelle, writing is who she is and thus ‘cannot be given up’ without her giving up her body too. She believes that ‘if you are genuinely an artist, writer, musician etcetera you will not have a backup plan’.
Her advice for budding writers is simple: ‘the only way to write is to write, there is no hack of special code’. She exclaims ‘you just have to work at the page like you would a coal mine’. She suggests that as you develop your writing, ‘take it to open mics, find your people and listen to feedback and reflect on the meaning of applause’. She expands that it is through this, ‘being part of a collective poem’, that you find your distinct voice. However, she highlights the importance of ‘keeping your eyes on the poem, not the applause’.
A central theme in her poetry and naturally her life is queerness as she identifies as a butch lesbian. Poetry has served as a tool to embrace her sexuality and sense of identity. Joelle views poems as ‘containers’ which bring ‘tight focus’ to different themes such as her queerness, grief, empathy and history. Simultaneously, she describes poems as ‘frames’ she sits within. She continues this and describes a poem as ‘both a microscope and a telescope’ in which ‘we can investigate the unravelling of our cells in one poem, and zoom out from them to consider our insignificance in the wide maw of the universe in another’.
In honour of Pride month, I got some LGBTQ+ writer recommendations from her. The perfect way to begin her recommendations is by starting with the author of her all time favourite poem: Summer, Somewhere by Danez Smith who she describes as ‘an extraordinary embodied writer’. Other international writers she enjoys include Sam Saxx and Fatimah Ashgar. In terms of LGBTQ+ writers in the UK she highlights Mary Jean Chan, Richard Scott, Andrew MacMillan and Keith Jarett.
Alex Boersma
For those who are lucky enough to experience Joelle's work for the first time, she suggests beginning with her novel, The Night Alphabet or her poetry collection titled Songs my Enemy Taught Me if you are interested in ‘feminist uprisings and strange rebellions'. Her more recent work focuses on the idea of female queerness, describing ‘our bodies as archives’ and ‘the meaning of space’. If you're interested in the latter, begin with her collections C+NTO & Othered Poems and her most recent collection, Maryville.
Featured Image: Joelle Taylor/ Robin Christian
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