Joelle Taylor: Maryville

Joelle Taylor brings a staged reading of her new poetry collection to Norwich Arts Centre; a searing, poetic excavation of 50 years of lesbian counterculture.

Following-on from her TS Eliot Prize-winning poetry collection C+nto & Othered Poems, Joelle Taylor’s Maryville charts the lives of four butch lesbians through five decades of underground queer history; tracing the culture, clubs and resistance that shaped their world.

With a vividly sketched cast of characters, the Maryville butch bar becomes a lens through which to consider the underground histories of queer London. The violence and pain of oppression and the beauty and intimacy of community are rendered in awe-inspiring high definition.

The performance is directed by acclaimed writer and director Neil Bartlett, with visuals from artist and filmmaker Sweatmother. It will be followed by an on-stage Q&A and book signings.

Maryville explores the scars, hopes and potentialities of dyke identity and the queer underground.

Joelle Taylor is a queer, working class author of six plays, a novel, and four collections of poetry. Her most recent, C+NTO & Othered Poems won the 2021 TS Eliot Prize, the 2022 Polari Book Prize for LGBT authors, and is currently being adapted for the theatre. She is a fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and the host and co- curator of Out-Spoken, the UK’s premier poetry and music club, currently resident at the Southbank Centre.

Neil Bartlett’s recent stage work includes Orlando in the West End with Emma Corrin and a live version of Derek Jarman’s film Blue at the Tate Gallery, with Russell Tovey, Travis Alabanza and Joelle Taylor. His most recent novel was the Polari Prize-nominated Address Book.

Sweatmother is an artist and filmmaker based in London, whose moving image work blends performance, self-recorded documentation, internet and archival materials to explore and make visible queer lived experiences.