A review by worm_food
C+nto & Othered Poems by Joelle Taylor

4.5

Here's a copy of the notes I wrote while reading this in the back of the book:

Vitrine, snow globe, museum display, all of them are ways to worship, yes, but they are missing the point. The only way to worship is by knowing, feeling, touching, sweating , smudging, making dirty to touchlessly admire from afar is to take the body out of it, and without a body, how are you gonna attend butch church? Butch church being of course the dyke smoking area.

Relistening to the magnus archives seasons 2/3 while reading this was interesting. The spiral, fear of madness, gaslighting, your mind is lying to you. Doors that weren't there, doors that lead to nowhere, deliberately obscuring and confusing. A girl who isn't a girl who is a boy who is a girl who isn't, at all. Who is it, in the end? 

I think the two above little paragraphs for me capture the themes I found most compelling quite well. What about a Venn diagram of TMA enjoyers and Joelle Taylor fans? Hello? HELLOOOO is this thing on 🎤 

Anyway I enjoyed this greatly, I found some of the themes to be... Repetitive isn't the right word, it's more to do w their lack of I guess evolution throughout the collection. But I'm nitpicking, it's not like I could do this better or more evocatively. I wish the audience was trusted more! But it might just be me. Anyway. It's only a tiny thing about a collection that was otherwise incredibly evocative n beautiful because of how it was written.

mirrors looking for the face 
within the face looking

for the exit. maybe 
you think. maybe. a door

will open in my cheek &
inside will be a room 

filled with everyone
I love. we will drink
water. there will be 
food.

we will all know
what hands are for