Joelle Taylor - Poet, Author and Performer

REVIEWS

‘....meaty, inventive, powerfully moving work – and C+nto is proof.’
The Telegraph, The 10 best poetry books of 2021 full review here

‘Absolutely incredible ... A tribute to the dyke bars and the butches who left their mark, this book reminds the reader that to exist as we do is a form of protest.’
DIVA Magazine, Book of the Month

‘A real treat ... in the vivid bar-set poems, Taylor brings a close-knit community to life ... inventive, powerfully moving work.’
The Telegraph

‘A work of fearsome imaginative and creative reach.’
Fran Lock, Culture Matters

‘C+nto & Othered Poems is unlike anything I’ve ever read before. Partly autobiographical, it excavates, foregrounds and celebrates the lives of butch lesbians through the most memorable and often astonishing poetry that is at once epic and intimate.’
Bernardine Evaristo’s Book of the Year, Times Literary Supplement

‘Joelle Taylor has produced one of the most astonishing and original poetry collections of recent years. [C+nto] challenges imprisoning notions of womanhood by celebrating and foregrounding those who face a hostile society when they are only being true to themselves.’
Bernardine Evaristo’s Book of the Year, New Statesman

‘C+nto, a work that does so much to render the difficult and occluded bodies of butch lesbian women vividly and riotously visible. Throughout the collection Taylor plays a deep concern with the origins, valences and precise meanings of words against the cinematic staging of the poems, producing a conjuration of voice and place that is frankly astonishing.’
Fran Lock’s Book of the Year, The White Review

‘This collection is nothing short of a triumph, weaving emotive and expressive personal histories with a sense of invention in poetic form and structure that should not be overlooked.’
The Idler

‘This work is expressively lyrical in style and experimental in its punctuation. It traverses poetry and drama – shaping light and sound in what Taylor calls “scene poems”. In its riveting and intensely embodied pieces, C+nto explores stories of survival and community, of coming into one’s own queer identity.’
The Big Issue

‘The collection seeks to create the very spaces that it mourns, however hedged, however temporary and its gold cover glows like a beacon of hope.’
Morning Star

‘[Taylor’s poetic form] lends a rushing and headrushing energy ...This is solid work. These poems should be read and appreciated.’
Times Literary Supplement

‘One of the most nerve-jangling, painfully autobiographical and troublingly brave books of poetry I have read in years.’
The Tablet

‘Joelle Taylor’s poetry roars and soars and conjures up the most extraordinary images to express the unsayable, the shocking and ultimately the great compassion she feels for the plight of women around the world.'
Bernardine Evaristo

‘Songs my Enemy Taught Me is an absolutely necessary poetry collection. It is essential for the poet to sing our women selves into the world. Taylor articulates the music of a collective silence perpetuated against women’s oppression. She enacts poetry as song, music, melody. The poems are testimony, odes, praise, acknowledgements, libation, laments, records, reportage, vulnerable and unapologetically personal. This collections asserts that poetry is here to do work. These poems of witness are a reckoning, where the poet says - woman I am you, I see you, I feel you. Says women - our skin, breasts, vulva, wombs are targets in a war heavy with silence, Taylor’s poems seek to find the melodies in the many silences and sing them into creation. The poems in this book punch the reader’s imagination with powerful fists.’
Malika Booker

‘A book of songs that must be heard; here is a triumphant call to arms and an epic and glorious read. This book is a riot, a protest for justice and peace.’
Salena Godden