Introduction to Eastern Christian Liturgies by S. Alexopoulos and M. E. Johnson

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As an Alcuin Club Collection this really needs no introduction – it is, as you expect, an excellent study that opens up the topic to general and scholarly readers alike.

That we increasingly understand that the diversity of the Eastern Liturgies is a token of their long authenticity and not a sign of later corruption or imperfection means they are of deep interest as we seek to understand our own worshipping practice.

The comparative approach here is also really valuable, as the differences between the liturgies throw light on the evolution and motivations. That the liturgies have been dynamic over time was a new insight for me – as was the level of potential liturgical reform that might come to the Eastern Churches in the near future.

Your Silence Will Not Protect You by Audre Lorde

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I think there is a great sadness when you read how insightfully Lorde, writing 40 years ago, speaks to some many contemporary issues – the struggles seem the same, have we really made so little progress?

She writes a lot about the impact of intersectionality, before the term was coined, particularly from the experience of being Black, queer, and female. And about the ways that for example within the feminist movement non-White experience was being rendered invisible, often under the false belief that strength and unity of a movement would be put at risk if diversity was acknowledged.

It is an inspirational collection – you are left with a renewed sense of passion to be active in breaking down the barriers and the structures that hold so many lives back.

Heaven by Paula Gooder

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I read this on flight between Toronto and Calgary while I was really not feeling very well, so maybe I was not receptive to it and therefore judge it a little harshly.

But it feels like a reasonable introduction to the ideas of Heaven for those that have never thought about them at all before – but the fact that the main messages are that “popular” beliefs about Heaven and the afterlife are loosely, at best, related to the Biblical accounts, and those Biblical accounts themselves are complex, multifaceted, and evolve significantly, really didn’t feel like news. As a result it is hard to imagine who the intended reader really is.

Only on the Weekends by Dean Atta

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Following the masterpiece that is The Black Flamingo was always going to be a tough gig – Only on the Weekends is presented in a much more conventional narrative form, and reading it directly after Jay’s Gay Agenda it sits much more closely as a companion to that novel than it does to The Black Flamingo.

We need these stories of queer teen loves, and we should rejoice that they seem to be being published thick and fast at the moment – it is a great blessing to the generation that are living their first loves that these stories reassure them that they are not alone.

Jay’s Gay Agenda by Jason June

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This is an unexceptional coming of age teen romance – and it is brilliant for that very reason – it makes being a gay teenager unexceptional – and for that we should be very grateful to Jason June.

The 6ress – Issue Two – Crooked Jukebox

 I put tabs in

Saturday Night, Central London by Karan Chambers

ode to the women in the bar bathrooms by Amy Kay – which explores the power of single-sex spaces, something that is contested and complex within current discourse

disappointed puffin by Serpico Snelling written from the view point of the puffin

This Brutal House by Niven Govinden

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This is a lyrical book, dense, at times holding you at arms length. The Mothers exist only as collective never as individuals. The conflict between the world they create and the world beyond is never settled – a darker vision that the similar home making of Mrs Madrigal.

It is a hypnotic world – which delights as much as it fills you with sorrow – a refusal to accept that the conventional wisdom of how to be is all that is possible.

Within Teddy’s side of the story there is this interesting reflection on going into Church

“He goes not to pray but to acknowledge his good fortune, knowing it is the sancity of space he wishes to commune with, rather than a higher being. Where else can he give thanks but there? Where else will he find the space; this peace? The noise from the Mothers’ apartments dill him, even when they are at their most argumentative, he is happy there, flooded with life and sound, but the peace he finds there is in snatches…

The attraction of church is that its silence is a constant. He doesn’t care about God, but understands how it’s possible for people to make their weekly appointments here… What he gets from a hard church seat is pared down even further, down to his elements.

He does not come to church to pray, more searching for ways to escape...” (p68)

Young Mungo by Douglas Stuart

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As well as queerness in the early part of the book there is a strong sense of Mungo being neurodiverse, but it is a bit patchy and it is latter identified as Tourette's, which seemed an incomplete explanation. But those characteristics actually seems to fade from sight as the drama of the plot takes hold which is one of the reasons that I perhaps didn’t enjoy this as much as I had hoped. It is tricky when a book comes with such high expectations it is very easy to ended feeling a little disappointed.

I also had a sense of there being too many stories going on, the plot is very crowded, and peopled with one too many easy archetypes, it might have been better for Stuart to strip it back a bit, allow more room for the richness of Mungo’s story. There is a tension between creating a vivid world and throwing the kitchen sink at a novel and for me, on this occasion, my sense is less would have been more.

At the end of the story Mungo and James escape from the city into rural Scotland, and this was an interesting move – for queer people the dominant narrative is one of liberation coming from moves in the opposite direction – such that queer identities are almost unimaginable beyond the city backdrop. This myth is increasingly being challenged – a lot of the queer poetry that is currently being written is exploring queerness in various rural contexts for example.

This Is Not A Rescue by Emily Blewitt

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I put tab in Not Lost

Mum tells me she’ll walk into the woods.

When the come comes, she’ll unhook her mac,

leave the door on the latch and not come back

just like old Tom, who disappeared one day

and the next we found him stretched out in the sun

of next door’s greenhouse, fur still warm and fading

from glossy black to Saharan dirt.

I tell Mum of where the big cats stalk, eyes full

of fire for bison, buffalo, the antelope leaping skywards…

how the Maasi lay their dead out in the open bush

with a single pair of sandals and a stick, to ascend to the heavens,

become great herders of the burning stars.

The Forward Book of Poetry 2002

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I put tabs on the following poems

The List by Greta Stoddart which begins:

Take it as read then

that I lived and had a list

of men the length of my arm

if you wrote each name

small and neat (very)…