C+NTO and Other Poems

Rejected by our fathers, feared by our mothers, C+NTO tells the story of subversive butch counterculture that has been missing from contemporary LGBT narrative. Focusing on the private lives of characters from the gay scene, C+NTO speaks of the female body as a political act and reveals the homophobia and misogyny exerted on that body. History, magic, rebellion, party and sermon vibrate through the cantos to uncover the underground communities forged by women through the 90s. It celebrates the protests they led to reclaim their bodies as their own and examines the difficult dance between survival and self-expression. Taylor writes into the silence surrounding masculine women and shows how personal narrative can become a political act. Part-memoir, part-conjecture, she investigates 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.