Patterflash

by Adam Lowe

Within a collection that displays an engaging variety of language registers, both ‘ high’ and ‘ low’ in tone, the masking sometimes makes use of Polari, the gay street language that simultaneously reveals and conceals, excludes and invites, estranges and makes familiar. The collection connects the poet as a wry, humane observer of the scene, particularly as conducted in Manchester, and the persona of “ Adam Lowe” as both actor in and narrator of his own dramas, who performs, exults and sometimes suffers in a wide range of guises and disguises. What unites them is the urge to embrace the possibilities of being exactly who you want to be whatever the complications or consequences of your choice.

80 pages, Paperback

Published July 7, 2023

About the author

Adam Lowe (he/his, mostly) is a writer, performer and publisher from Leeds, UK, though he currently lives in Manchester. He is the UK's LGBT+ History Month Poet Laureate and was Yorkshire's Poet for 2012 . He writes poetry, plays and fiction, and he occasionally performs in drag as Beyonce Holes. He is of Kittitian, British and Irish descent. He graduated with both a BA and MA from the University of Leeds, and is currently researching for a PhD in creative writing at the University of Manchester.
Adam Lowe writes about disability, LGBT+ experiences, and the lives of mixed-race Black British communities. Carol Rumens of The Guardian describes him as a 'versatile and widely published young writer'.

With afshan d'souza lodhi, Adam founded and runs Young Enigma, a writer development project for young writers; is Editor-in-Chief of Vada Magazine and Dog Horn Publishing; and is Publicity Officer for Peepal Tree Press. He has performed around the world, at festivals and conferences, including the Black and Asian Writers Conference. He is an advocate for LGBT+ rights and sits on the management committee for Schools OUT UK, the charity that founded LGBT History Month in the UK. He is chair of Black Gold Arts, which supports artists who are queer, trans and intersex people of colour (QTIPOC) in Greater Manchester.

In 2013, he was announced as one of 10 Black and Asian 'advanced poets' for The Complete Works II (founded by Bernardine Evaristo) with Mona Arshi, Jay Bernard, Kayo Chingoni, Rishi Dastidar, Edward Doegar, Inua Ellams, Sarah Howe, Eileen Pun and Warsan Shire, which resulted in the anthology Ten: The New Wave, edited by Karen McCarthy-Woolf (Bloodaxe). He was mentored on the programme by Patience Agbabi. He also made the list of '20 under 40' writers in Leeds for the LS13 Awards, where Lowe was given as an example of 'the non-conformist and boundary-breaking approach to writing in Leeds'.

In 2022, Adam edited the anthology The World Reimagined, featuring 30 poets writing on the subject of the transatlantic trade in enslaved Africans. Poets in the anthology included Benjamin Zephaniah, Keisha Thompson, Malika Booker, Dorothea Smartt, Nick Makoha, Tanya Shirley, Khadijah Ibrahiim, Shivanee Ramlochan and Shara McCallum.

Adam is also an alumnus of the Obsidian Foundation, and has taught for The Poetry School, PEN, the University of Leeds and the University of Central Lancashire.

Reviews

[Shivanee Ramlochan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Can a poem be a confidant, an ally, a glittering, platform-stilettoed saviour? The poems in Patterflash, by Adam Beyonce Lowe (Peepal Tree Press), can. They're here for you and queer for you, but queer for themselves, too: this isn't LGBTQI+ narrative as external spectacle: the gaze being satisfied is internal. The fire being stoked resides right in your soul. Adam's poems are playful, revolutionary, gaudy when he wants them to be. They're defiant lipstick-smeared emblems of a state of living, and loving, in which we can have some goddamned pride.

"Tell me who to petition, who to burn out,
who to placard -- you promised me this, sister.
Come now. Keep your vow. This world could soon be ours.
Be my damn lover."

[3/31]
#TheSealeyChallenge