Join us in celebrating the release of John-Francis Quiñonez new collection of poetry KEEP YOUR LITTLE LIGHTS ALIVE (POEMS AFTER KATE BUSH’S HOUNDS OF LOVE & OTHERS) with a reading at cocktail bar Glou! Quiñonez will be joined by fellow poets Levi Cain and Muggs Fogarty, each reading a selection of their poems.
ABOUT KEEP YOUR LITTLE LIGHTS ALIVE (POEMS AFTER KATE BUSH’S HOUNDS OF LOVE & OTHERS)
KEEP YOUR LITTLE LIGHTS ALIVE explores the Folkloric Nature of how Music intertwines and Opens Windows into our Memory. Sometimes confessional, sometimes playful and fae-like in its elusively - these poems grapple with the pains and gifts of Queer discovery, Gender, Mental Health, and Family. Anchored in a series of Poems Responding Track-by-Track to Kate Bush's Hounds of Love (sometimes directly, sometimes based on what the song unlocks) the book, like the album, is split into two parts. The First - Narrative and free-flowing, The Second - imagines the speaker lost out at sea & astrally visiting and being visited by loved ones.
ABOUT THE POETS
JOHN-FRANCES QUIÑONEZ (they/them) is a Desert Flower & Current Resident of Providence, RI/ a Queer Writer & Multimedia Artist/ Maker of ice creams & tamales/ House Manager of the Columbus Theatre/ Current Resident of the Queer.Archive.Work. project/ has a Forthcoming collection of Poems with Write Bloody Publishing (‘22) entitled Keep Your Little Lights Alive (Poems After Kate Bush’s "Hounds of Love" & Others). You can find their work in Pigeon Pages, Ours Poetica, Voicemail Poems, Slamfind, Counterclock, Maps for Teeth, Drunk in a Midnight Choir, and as part of a playing card deck with Game Over Books.
Check out a recent interview with the author here as well as this review:
"Keep Your Little Lights Alive is a marvelous balance of moxie and tenderness, where poems take on the profound interiority of queerness, self-love and the pursuit of memory. Set against the iconic Kate Bush album, Hounds of Love, John-Francis Quiñonez writes of hunger, restoration and survival beneath a nostalgic haze, posing pointed questions that demand the speaker be seen for who they truly are: Do you not feel a Daughter’s fur in my hands? / Do you not know / how long / I can stay Quiet? Quiñonez’ poems exude a shameless curiosity, something rare and vital in the genre right now. Writers of intention aid us in our personal liberation, and Keep Your Little Lights Alive is indeed the lighthouse we can sprint towards."- Rachel McKibbens
You can find links to more of their work here and a recent video of the poem "Re: Watching You Without Me" with the Ours Poetica (in collaboration with the Poetry Foundation) project here!
LEVI CAIN is a gay Black poet from New England, an Aquarius rising, and a 2022 Mass Cultural Council fellow. Their first chapbook, 'dogteeth.', was published by Ursus Americanus Press in 2020.
MUGGS FOGARTY is a writer, performance artist, and vocalist from Providence, RI. Muggs is author of poetry chapbook SEX CAMEL (Game Over Books 2018), the inaugural artist on the Self Luv Records roster with the release of EP Eventual Party, and also a resident of the non-profit community arts space, AS220. Muggs can currently be found performing as a member of Bittersweet, a musical collaboration with Little Lambda.