What is belonging? That’s the question we were invited to explore, through poetry and discussion, as part of a digital residency hosted by the Poetry Business and the Writing Squad.
For this project I was paired with Freya Cook, and we began by discussing our creative interests and looking for an angle of approach. We both wanted to draw on our experiences as queer poets, and examine what ‘belonging’ meant to us. If belonging can exist as an abstract thing, then how do we know that it is there? The farther we go from the ‘normal’ experience, the harder it seems to be sure. More on that in part one of the residency.
In part two and part three, we each went our separate ways in analysing different works to get to the bottom of ‘belonging’:
My segment was mostly focused on relationships – romantic, familial, platonic. I even learned a new word: ‘immanent’ (noun form ‘immanence’) meaning to be entirely within something, in contrast to something that is ‘transcendent’. It really took me back to my literary studies, except this time I got to apply that same analytical lens to some of my favourite queer poems.
Meanwhile, Freya chose to look at belonging in terms of place, with a closer look at Richard Scott’s poem ‘Oh My Soho!’. I’ll let you read her findings for yourself, but I’m happy we took such different approaches – I think the two parts are complementary.
In part four, I had my own stab at capturing some queer belonging through a few short queerplatonic love poems ‘Anticipation’, ‘Distance’ and ‘I saw a steak bake lying in the rain and thought of you (a love poem)’. Beginning to wish I’d come up with a shorter name for that last one.
Finally, in part five, Freya chose to respond to ‘Oh My Soho!’ with a single longer piece entitled ‘Town’.
Thank you to the Poetry Business for inviting us to take part in their Digital Poet in Residence scheme, and thank you to the Writing Squad for all your support!
You can check out their other recent projects here: https://www.writingsquad.com/projects/