Description

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WINNER OF THE T. S. ELIOT PRIZE 2021
WINNER OF THE POLARI BOOK PRIZE 2022

The female body is a political space.

C+nto enters the private lives of women from the butch counterculture, telling the inside story of the protests they led in the '90s to reclaim their bodies as their own - their difficult balance between survival and self-expression. History, magic, rebellion, party and sermon vibrate through Joelle Taylor's cantos to uncover these underground communities forged by women.

Part-memoir and part-conjecture, Taylor explores sexuality and gender in poetry that is lyrical, expansive, imagistic, epic and intimate. C+nto is a love poem, a riot, a late night, and an honouring.

About the Author

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Joelle Taylor is an award-winning poet, playwrightand author. A fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and a Saboteur SpokenWord Artist of the Year (2022), Taylor is the host and co-curator ofOut-Spoken, the UK's premier poetry and music club, currently resident at theSouthbank Centre. A former UK slam champion, she founded SLAMbassadors, theUK's youth slam championships, in 2001 and was its Artistic Director andNational Coach until 2018. Taylor is the author of three plays, a forthcomingnovel and four poetry collections, including C+nto & OtheredPoems, which won the 2021 T. S. Eliot Prize and was longlistedfor the 2021 Ondaatje Prize. Her documentary Butch was recently featured on BBC Radio 4.