Please join Out-Spoken Press to celebrate the launch of Simon Maddrell's debut collection, Lamping Wild Rabbits.About this Event
Please join us at The Betsey Trotwood on Thursday 12th February at 7pm to celebrate the launch of Simon Maddrell's debut collection, Lamping Wild Rabbits. With poetry from Simon and guest poet, Kostya Tsolakis, hosted by Anthony Anaxagorou of Out-Spoken Press.
About Lamping Wild Rabbits
In Simon Maddrell’s wide and bracing world, childhood orbits the voice of a distant and sometimes dangerous parent. Memories of sex parties, dead friends and estranged lovers straddle the spaces between feeling and thought, loss and fatalism. lamping wild rabbits is a brave and expansive multiverse, exploring sexuality, queer desire, memory recall and testimony. With poems that pay homage to the late Derek Jarman, to verses which situate themselves in and around the Isle of Man, exploring Britain’s colonial presence through the subverted interplay of English and the Manx language.
A poly-vocal and multifaceted debut which is unafraid to confront the shame and stigma of HIV, while never allowing the poems to lose shape or pace, altering the lens to bring the reader’s attention to birdsong and the queer body in nature.
Maddrell has achieved a distinct and totally convincing sound through the literary geography of lamping wild rabbits, one that gives the impression it’s been everywhere and returned because it survived.
Praise for Lamping Wild Rabbits:
‘Refusing repression or denial, Simon Maddrell’s brilliant debut travels compellingly from the constrictions and wildnesses of a queer Manx boyhood, through the early death of a sibling, into enacting an unashamedly sensuous and politicised selfhood in the face of HIV. Generous, questing, irresistible, these miraculous poems root deep to grow towards the sun, transforming their underworlds of loss into an enduring radiance of life.’ – Alice Hiller
‘A queer odyssey, an exquisite and arresting chronicle of the journey from shame to belonging. The skin of these poems are stretched thin and beneath them we glimpse a crystalline world of courage wrought from fear. Bold, surreal, surprising and elegant; this is a breathtaking debut.’ – Joelle Taylor
Pre-order Lamping Wild Rabbits:
PRE-ORDER: lamping wild rabbits by Simon Maddrell — Out-Spoken
Simon Maddrell’s poems have appeared in Gutter, Magma, Poetry Wales, The Gay & Lesbian Review, The Moth, The Rialto, and Under the Radar. He has had seven pamphlets published since 2020 including Throatbone, Queerfella and a finger in derek jarman’s mouth. lamping wild rabbits is his debut collection.
Event Venue
The Betsey Trotwood, 56 Farringdon Road, London, United Kingdom
GBP 0.00
