{"id":11076,"date":"2022-12-09T16:00:58","date_gmt":"2022-12-09T11:00:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/arcpoetry.ca\/kirby-poetry-queer\/"},"modified":"2023-02-14T15:33:18","modified_gmt":"2023-02-14T10:33:18","slug":"keith-garebian-on-poetry-is-queer-by-kirby","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/arcpoetry.ca\/editorials\/keith-garebian-on-poetry-is-queer-by-kirby\/","title":{"rendered":"KIRBY FULL-ON: Kirby\u2019s Poetry is Queer<\/em>"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Born in Toledo, Ohio to Lutheran parents who only gradually came to accept their queer identity after fearing they would be lost to them if they didn\u2019t, Kirby is an amiable, proudly self-identifying queer writer who founded Knife Fork Book (KFB), an all-poetry bookstore, in Toronto in 2016 to overcome the commercial disregard of poets and poetry. Described by Gerald Hannon as \u201ca cross between Jean Genet and a buddha on uppers\u201d, Kirby has compiled a book of mini-essays as an impassioned manifesto that combines diaristic anecdote, vignette, epigram, list, and literary reflection. The book\u2019s cover showing buttons arranged like a penis in outline presages its bold content. Facing the title page is a shot of Kirby photographing what seems to be Keith Haring\u2019s washroom graffiti.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"the<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

\u201cQUEER POETRY shapes, reshapes my life, my body, my world, my pen, every living day,\u201d Kirby proclaims, claiming the title of \u201cprofessional homosexual\u201d who has made a living \u201cas a homosexual.\u201d But a reader could wonder when and how poetry is queer. Is it queer because of content or the sexual identity of poets? Is it queer when pointing to an intersectionality and being attentive to identities and assumptions about what those entail? Kirby asserts that queer literature is constituted socially, geographically, spatially. They admire writers who stir or stroke the queer imagination (Sappho, Shakespeare, Whitman, Lorde, Rilke, Ginsberg, Rich, Lorca, Stein, Genet, Cavafy, Schuyler, Strand, Jarman, Moure, et al). There is an autobiographical underpinning for this admiration. Kirby\u2019s birthplace was rotten for a queer kid in the mid-70s, their adolescent period, but what saved their pre-teen years were a Toledo library, the Toledo Museum of Art, and the local AMC multiplex. Kirby scrapped adolescence, \u201cleaping from childhood to adult,\u201d and has spent adult life (as they boast) \u201cin pursuit of the phallic god.\u201d They relish the polymorphous perverse, defining a terrorist, for instance, as \u201cSomeone who\u2019s never felt a willing tongue up their ass.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Poetry is Queer<\/em> may be successful as a memoir-manifesto, but as a work of literary criticism, it is a small collection of hors d\u2019oeuvres rather than a full meal. Many of the book\u2019s thumbnail views are breezy over-generalizations (\u201cthe homosexual mind referred angles over curves\u201d; \u201cA queer eye finds beauty in that which enchants, bemuses, captivates, endears\u201d) and their lists are simply that, for the most part: \u201cWhitman contains multitudes. Rimbaud, a heavenly jam-pot. Verlaine, shit, cheese, and cum.\u201d On occasion, sentences read like Dr. Joyce Brothers or Dr. Ruth, as in this bromide: \u201cFrom the head down (or neck up), you may think you don\u2019t matter, that \u2018it\u2019 shouldn\u2019t matter, that you don\u2019t want to be here. From the ground up, you entirely matter.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Taken full-on, the book has nuggets of real value on contemporary queer poets (some of whom were unknown to me), and poetry as \u201ca bodily thing.\u201d It is a vehement defence of queer identity that stimulates the appetite, though perhaps without sating it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n

Bios<\/h2>\n\n\n

Keith Garebian<\/a><\/h3>\r\n

Keith Garebian<\/strong> has published 27 books to date, including eight poetry collections, such as Frida: Paint Me as a Volcano<\/em> (2004), Blue: The Derek Jarman Poems<\/em> (2008), Children of Ararat<\/em> (2010), Poetry is Blood<\/em> (2018), and Against Forgetting<\/em> (2019). His chapbook of cancer poems, Scan<\/em>, edited by Shane Neilson, has just been published by Frog Hollow Press in a limited edition of 100 copies, and next year he will have two new poetry collections forthcoming from Mawenzi House and Frontenac House. One of his Derek Jarman poems was set to music for choir and instruments by Gregory Spears, in the company of a poem each by Thomas Merton and Denise Levertov, and can be heard on the CD \u201cThe Tower and the Garden\u201d (Navona Records). Some of his poems have been translated into French, Armenian, Hebrew, Bulgarian, and Romanian. [updated in 2021]<\/p>\r\n <\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Born in Toledo, Ohio to Lutheran parents who only gradually came to accept their queer identity after fearing they would be lost to them if they didn\u2019t, Kirby is an amiable, proudly self-identifying queer writer who founded Knife Fork Book (KFB), an all-poetry bookstore, in Toronto in 2016 to overcome the commercial disregard of poets […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"1690","_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_relevanssi_hide_post":"","_relevanssi_hide_content":"","_relevanssi_pin_for_all":"","_relevanssi_pin_keywords":"","_relevanssi_unpin_keywords":"","_relevanssi_related_keywords":"","_relevanssi_related_include_ids":"","_relevanssi_related_exclude_ids":"","_relevanssi_related_no_append":"","_relevanssi_related_not_related":"","_relevanssi_related_posts":"10829,10779,10587,10768","_relevanssi_noindex_reason":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1690,1701],"tags":[],"genre":[21],"publisher":[205],"issue":[],"poet-in-residence":[],"series":[3133],"topic":[3184],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/arcpoetry.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11076"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/arcpoetry.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/arcpoetry.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arcpoetry.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arcpoetry.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11076"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/arcpoetry.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11076\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/arcpoetry.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11076"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arcpoetry.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11076"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arcpoetry.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11076"},{"taxonomy":"genre","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arcpoetry.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/genre?post=11076"},{"taxonomy":"publisher","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arcpoetry.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/publisher?post=11076"},{"taxonomy":"issue","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arcpoetry.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/issue?post=11076"},{"taxonomy":"poet-in-residence","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arcpoetry.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/poet-in-residence?post=11076"},{"taxonomy":"series","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arcpoetry.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/series?post=11076"},{"taxonomy":"topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arcpoetry.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/topic?post=11076"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}