To taste the sweetness will be enough

My latest column for more! mag is out now. This week: Losing yr lez v-card! Debunking the penetration-is-king myth! Queer-made porn vs woeful heternormative sex ed! Awkward first times! Sexxxual liberation, lez style!

"When I was at church, they taught me something else/If you preach hate at the service, those words aren’t anointed"

My latest column for more! magazine is out now, on the shelves of yr nearest reputable newsagents and featuring K-Stew's smug mug on the front cover. This week: finding your tribe, rites of passage (goodbye tresses, hello generic lesbian haircut) and the joys of gay clubbing.

Writing this column has been an interesting exercise so far. I've been out for 8/9 years, and the experiences of those years has allowed me to write (relatively) freely about the pleasures and trials of being queer with (relatively) little qualms about who will be reading them. As I celebrate my queer coming-of-age in this column, writing gaily about strap-ons and losing my lez v-card, I'm very aware, on a personal level, that others do not enjoy the same freedoms. I guess the coming-out story might sometimes feel like a hackneyed narrative for seasoned queers. Some of us would rather be busy getting on with the important stuff then picking over a process that should, in a decent world, be as incidental as puberty. If, like me, you came out years ago, facing only mild, curious surprise and fond acknowledgement from yr loved ones, its easy to forget how terrifying this ordeal this can be for those of us who don't have the acceptance of our families, those of us who labour under an impossibly conditional kind of love. I'm thinking a lot about chosen families this week, and the beautiful, brave strength of queers who have had to adapt and transform our collective idea of 'family' in order to ensure loving, supportive structures are there to embrace us when the old, traditional ones fail. How inventive and wonderful we are.

And here's that Macklemore track again, because its pertinant to the above and all I can listen to at the moment. 

"We press play, don't press pause"

Bringing scents of lined-up orchard trees/dripping heavy with pears and dancing leaves

I reviewed x4 albums for the Decemember edition of Q - James Iha's Look To The Sky, Matthew Friedberger's Matricidal Sons of Bitches, Chelsea Wolfe's Unknown Rooms and Rolo Tomassi's Astraea. I wrote these reviews up in early September, around the time I'd been spring(winter) cleaning my casette collection and, coindentally, came across Iha's solo debut, a 20p Oxfam find I'd picked up moons ago. 

More more more

Peep this week's issue of More! magazine to catch the first instalment of my big, gay column on coming out. Feels sweet to be writing for a magazine I  perused during my pre-babydyke years; I'd leaf through a bunch of 'zines each week in the local newsagents while munching on penny sweets, but More! was one of my preferred reads during those mid/late teen years, mostly because they could be relied upon for the kind of kinky problem-page letters that didn't make it into the more prudish teengirl publications. Also, they boasted the much-loved Position of the Week feature, which I'm very glad to say is STILL RUNNING! Seasoned queers, this is lighter fare than my DIVA stuff, and aimed at the young bi-curious/not-yet-out types (yay that I can be a part of helping heterocentric teen media cater for this demographic!) but worth a peep for some racy moments and ritesofpassage giggles. Go check it!

SMUG zine

SMUG, one of 3 zines I'm ambitiously hoping to debut at Queer Zine Fest London. Cover art by Louise Z  Pomeroy.

Queer Zine Fest London 2012

In between guillotine sessions with the stacks of pink QZFL flyers I've been printing on our creaking HP Photosmart,  I chatted to The Indy about why zine culture rules. Less than a month to go before we take over Space Station Sixty-Five! If yr attending the festivities, let it be known here.

We sing of what we know/in our own accent

I wrote a piece about Bristol's politically-conscious folk hoppers for The Guardian. Trying to write through fluey brain fog is never the one. Still, yay for regional hippyhop types who're questioning what Britishness means in an age of riots, Coalition-led cuts and deepening class divides. Grau axed the '77  Joan Baez rap video I linked-up in the piece, so I've produced it here, for yr pleasure.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/musicblog/2012/nov/06/hip-hop-folk-protest-music


New Strings On An Old Guitar / Clayton Blizzard from Hans Lucas on Vimeo.