He, She, They, Us: Queer Poems

by Charlie Castelletti

One must-have reversible cover. Worn four different ways. You decide.

A poetry book like no other, with beautiful endpapers and a reversible cover jacket that allows you to choose your preferred pronoun from HE, SHE, THEY and US and four different yellow, blue, green and pink. The perfect gift book or statement piece for any shelf.

He, She, They, Us pulls together poems from queer poets both old and new – from Oscar Wilde, Emily Dickinson and Langston Hughes to the likes of Jay Hulme, Dean Atta, Josie Giles, Nikita Gill, Theo Parish and Travis Alabanza. This anthology celebrates queerness in all its forms and takes us through the experiences that make us who we are today.

Collected and introduced by editor, writer and anthologist Charlie Castelletti, He, She, They, Queer Poems contains an inclusive array of voices, from modern and contemporary poets to those who came before.

Genres: Poetry, Queer, LGBT

255 pages, Kindle Edition

Published August 13, 2024

About the author

Also writes as C. A. Castle

Reviews

[Georgia T-S · Rating 5 out of 5]

Thank you to NetGalley for the arc! This comes out soon, tomorrow? Today maybe?! I will be purchasing!

This is a beautiful collection of older and newer poetry, a mix of those we recognise from history and those we don't yet. I loved the meshing of poems throughout time, that they weren't separated by time period, that sometimes you could tell and sometimes you couldn't, what was a historical piece and what wasn't. It felt nice to have them mixed, paying homage not by separation and saying here's a selection of the ones that made us, but rather, here's the ones that made us and the ones we made too.

Obviously through this I was introduced to a lot of new modern poets I hadn't heard of, but also some historical ones I hadn't too, such as Charlotte Mew and Amy Levy, and now I have so many writers to look up and learn about and I'm excited to do so.

Here's a big list of ones that I particularly loved and what started off as a plan to be a short look/quote from some of them...

A Room of Firsts by Karl Knights

Invisible Boy by Matthew Haigh

The Trick by David Ly

Natural Habitat by Kelsey Day -

"It arrives in the kitchen
one palm braced over the metal lid
of a French press, the smell of coffee blank & demanding:
my high school love, nudging me
aside, and insisting we set the timer for three minutes exactly.
no milk. no sugar. only the black soil between our teeth."

"uncurling ribbons" of black coffee, death and resurrection in a condensation filled kitchen, sense memory in the making of eggs...

Jesus at the Gay Bar by Jay Hulme - I've followed Jay Hulme for a long time online and just love how he writes and speaks on religion from his perspective. It's so interesting and so different from a lot of other LGBTQ+ relationships to religion.

Girl Guides by Jo Morris Dixon - there's a couple of Jo Morris Dixon poems on this list because wow the very specific feeling of my own childhood their work invokes is something else...

To the Girl at the Bus Stop by Nikita Gill

All the Dead Boys Look Like Me by Christopher Soto

Eating Slurs for Breakfast by Elspeth Wilson -

"You crack joke after joke, sunny side up, orange eggs in a black pan. I see lives cut short for a breakfast, you see nourishment, calories, something that will help us grow. It can’t all be doom and gloom you say when we can’t afford anything but our love for each other, and as you lay a grubby handprint on my white shirt, finally I laugh."

Today I Love Being Alive by Alex Dimitrov

Elegy by Harry Josephine Giles - A incredibly heartbreakingly beautiful poem in memoriam of Brianna Ghey. I want to copy and paste, no I want to re-type every word myself, of this here, but instead I'll just share this section I scribbled in my notebook which is already probably longer than I should share here. Please, please go read it all. The first of these poems to make me cry:

"Sister, I meant to meet you in the pit
of punks, girls to the front. I meant to brace
my marching voice on yours, our shivered longing
hoarse as rafters. I meant a moonstruck dress
my bones outgrew to settle on your shoulders.
I meant to sleep. I meant only to stay
safe in distant sisterhood. Now
it’s already morning and the dogs of news
are rattling the gate before your blood
has sunk into the earth. The fife and drum.
The column’s inch. The typing has begun.
My sister, when I call to pass the dead
weight from my heart to hers, says, “The worst
is hoping to hear that it wasn’t . . .” But when my sisters
walk with ghosts on either side, what odds
does it make: chance or choice, the edge of hatred

finds its mark. Sister, you were born
after I first ringed my eyes with black,
after I first skinned the street and tasted
desperation, after womanhood
began to ring her furious alarms
beyond my reach. I wrote a bloody book
before you took a breath. The space you left
cannot be filled, though we, your hungered sisters,
will drown the world-tree with grief."

If I Could Pray the Gay Away by Andrés N. Ordorica

playtime by Jo Morris Dixon - again, Jo Morris Dixon with my childhood in ten lines.

Except instead of Leo I got to be Romeo in our remake of Taylor Swift's Love Story and had to convince your parents to let us watch Alien when we weren't old enough yet and I think I didn't understand why at the time but I enjoyed you getting scared, you calling me brave, and you letting me be the one who got to comfort you.

Ringing in Sick to go Mermaid Hunting by Sarah Clancy

Having a Coke With You by Frank O'Hara - I loved getting to revisit a few poets that I fell in love with on my way out of teenagehood, and Frank O'Hara and his Lunch Poems is one of those. I remember beginning to study American Literature and these worlds of poets and writers opening up to me and Frank O'Hara being there.

Spout by John McCullough

1D3N+1+Y by Winter Chen

Queer Magic by Theo Parish

The Law Concerning Mermaids by Kei Miller

Practice by Mary Jean Chan - bruises and beauty and wanting to be a Knight (I kind of still want that)...

"I left a bruise: the blade’s tip ricocheting off chestguards
on to flesh. Just as often, I would feel yellow
blooms of ache where the girl I thought was
beautiful
had pierced my heart."

What I Always Wanted Poetry to Tell Me by Elizabeth Gilson

Tired by Langston Hughes - I will copy the whole of this here because it was true even before Hughes wrote it in 1931, it's still true now, and I dream of a day when it isn't.

"I am so tired of waiting,
Aren’t you,
For the world to become good
And beautiful and kind?
Let us take a knife
And cut the world in two
And see what worms are eating
At the rind."

We are Librarian by So Mayer (the second poem to make me cry in here.)

The Road from Hebden Bridge by Elizabeth Gibson (the third poem to make me cry in here.) ...solo trips to Hebden Bridge to write, walking past questionable Anne Lister pumpkin displays, video calls in covid planning future train trips and tours of Shibden Hall, writing notes in birthday cards in her code, meeting someone older, looking at those past, something/someone telling/showing you it's going to be ok. This poem just grabs a beautiful, visceral (in like a great teary way) moment and though it isn't your moment specifically, you've had it in your history too.

Not Even by Ocean Vuong

Here be by Harry Josephine Giles

What Kinds of Times Are These by Adrienne Rich - "I've walked there picking mushrooms at the edge of dread" is a line that is going to stick with me forever.

And I say to you someone will remember us
In time to come . . .

- Sappho

[Nici · Rating 5 out of 5]

Amazing collection. 🫶

[Müller · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.5

[Grace · Rating 3 out of 5]

My favourites were To the Girl at the Bus Stop by Nikita Gill, Lapras by Winter Chen, A ode to trans bodies by Cal Brantley, On the Run by Nicoletta Poungias, Queer Magic by Theo Parish, The Law Concerning Mermaids by Kei Miller, The Unknown by Alex Thornber, and The Road from Hebden Bridge by Elizabeth Gibson.

“For We exist
And shall continue
As we have always existed”

3.5 stars

[Becky Swales-Blanchard · Rating 5 out of 5]

This collection is a beautiful exploration of the different aspects of queer life, both positive and negative. The choice to put modern and classic poetry side by side showed the differences between queer poetry now and then. I felt particularly moved when reading the tender, almost secret writings about hidden feelings from past poets to the more stark, furious poetry exploring the aggression that queer people are experiencing now. Harry Josephine Giles' Elegy which referenced Brianna Ghey feels like a good example of this - it felt so raw and full of grief and anger.

You can also see the similarities between the love and joy that is explored in the older and newer poetry too. I liked that the book was split into sections for different topics so I could choose a theme when reading.

Thanks to NetGalley for the ARC!

[Jess · Rating 4 out of 5]

I'd been looking for a LGBTQ+ poetry book and enjoyed this. Loved the pronoun cover concept and it was interesting to have a mix of different authors with their own personal style/focus. My favourite poem was Funeral Blues by W.H.Auden.

[Angel · Rating 2 out of 5]

This was not my favourite poetry collection. And if it means anything, I am queer.

Let's start with the positives. There was a nice variety of ages of poems, and they led me to looking up some people that I didn't know were queer, like Siegfried Sassoon and Wilfred Owen (I studied them in school 10 years ago and don't remember any mentions of queerness in their Wikipedia entries back then!) This is also the first time I've encountered the majority of the modern poems, and they really go out of their way to touch on contemporary topics and use current slang. I think that could end up really dating the collection, but I can also appreciate that this is a collection for the here and now, the current generation.

I also liked the themes of each section. I think that they were great choices for a modern collection of poems about queerness, and created a good journey for those reading chronologically. I think that for people looking for guidance or inspiration, the themes also work really well for browsing/rifling through the selection.

Finally, I liked that some of the poetry was just love or nature poetry. They weren't explicitly queer, but they were by queer authors. It made me pause for a moment and consider what makes a poem queer, or what criteria made it worth putting in the collection (which could be a positive or negative experience, depending on the reader. For me, it was positive or negative depending on how much I liked the poem.)

Now for the downsides. The main issue is that there were very few poems I truly connected with. The ones that I disliked mostly ended up being the ones by the editor/collector. That did not endear the book to me, especially because the editor has more poems in the book than anyone else.

I've already made the point about references dating the book, but I bring it up again because they gave me mixed feelings. For example, I liked the poem '#131 Lapras' because I grew up on Pokémon, and I think it was creatively written. The guessing, the way it makes you want to instantly reread it, the physicality of the poem, and the reference, I loved all of that. But if the poem used any reference other than Lapras, it wouldn't have connected. Anyone who didn't have that connection to Gen 1 might not appreciate the poem. I just don't think it stands on its own. But I also don't feel that all poems should have to. That complicated feeling would be fun in one poem, but it's across several. I also feel this conflict with 'In Sims, I Woohoo with a Girl' and 'Rainbow Road.' I think I appreciate the novelty of seeing familiar references in poetry rather than the actual poem.

And then the poem where the reference made me overtly dislike the poem - 'Iced Coffee.' A poem written in all caps that uses the common (and mostly American) joke that iced coffee is queer. And I think it's a stupid stereotype, alongside gay men walking really fast, and lesbians liking carabiners. I know that the poem explicitly uses it as a metaphor for a feeling of home, but a foreign stereotype about me that I don't relate to left me feeling alienated. The all caps format lent an obnoxiousness to it as well. It's one of many poems that rely on a modern reference to make the poem worth reading. Some of them surpass their reference, but I think the majority of them don't.

I think what really bothered me about this collection is that I've read so much better queer poetry. I know that not all poetry is going to appeal to me, and that the editor is picking from poetry circuits I have no experience with. But some of these were just nature poems, or generic love poems that were by queer people. There is great queer poetry available that is obviously gay without saying something as blatant (and boring) as "trans people are magical" (from 'Queer Magic.') As I read the collection, I repeatedly thought of poems that would work better than what was there. I was just disappointed.

[Suzi · Rating 3 out of 5]

Thanks Netgalley for my copy.

Nice little collection of work.

I enjoyed some more than others but that's the way it goes.

[Siobhan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Enjoyed seeing some favourites and discovering some new poets, especially trans poets I wasn't aware of.

[Emma Durand · Rating 5 out of 5]

A quintessential collection ❤️

[Hannah Shoard · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.5 stars