And I would direct you there because, first of all, you will find they've named me Poet of the Month. But that's not all! They've also used the film I and Laura Degnan made of my poem 'Letter to a Minnesota Prison' to represent the many excellent films made as part of the Architects of Our Republic project I was involved in last year. Which feels brilliant. It's great to think that something I worked on a year ago still has a life in the world, and it's even better knowing that the piece chosen to represent the project is a poem about CeCe McDonald, a genuine trans heroine. For obvious reasons, I've been performing 'Fallon' a lot over the past few months, and I usually introduce that poem by pointing out that Fallon Fox takes a lot more risks for trans rights than I do - well, that goes double for CeCe, who not only had to defend herself against a brutal, transphobic attack, but was put in prison for doing it. Please familiarise yourself with CeCe's story, and, should you happen to have some spare pounds jangling around in your bank account, you could do a heck of a lot worse than send some of it towards the Free CeCe Documentary, a film created by Jac Gares and Laverne Cox which uses CeCe's story as a prism through which to examine the culture of violence experienced by trans women of colour.
And if you've came here from the Apples and Snakes site, here's a bit of an easter egg, as it were: the video of me performing the 'unplugged' version of 'Letter to a Minnesota Prison' that I was moved to record after hearing the excellent news that CeCe was to be released earlier this year:
No comments:
Post a Comment