Sam Elkin - Bent Street 5.1

Soft Borders, Hard Edges

Bent Street 5.1 : Australian LGBTIQA+ Art, Writing & Ideas

a special edition focusing on the trans and gender diverse community

Edited by:

Sam Elkin

Yves Rees

Series Editor-in-Chief: Tiffany Jones

Clouds of Magellan Press | Melbourne

2021. Copyright on the contents of Bent Street remains with individual contributors.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced without permission of the individual writers and artists.

Bent Street: Australian LGBTIQA+ Arts, Writing & Ideas is published twice yearly by Clouds of Magellan Press, Melbourne. www.cloudsofmagellanpress.net

bentstreet.net

ISSN 2652-659X (Print)
ISBN: (paperback) 978-0-6451935-1-0
ISBN: (ebook) 978-0-6451935-3-4

Series Editor-in-Chief: Tiffany Jones
Editorial Advisor: Dennis Altman
Contributing Editors and Bent Street ambassadors: Ashley Sievwright, Gordon Thompson, Guy James Whitworth, Margie Fischer, Henry von Doussa.

Bent Street logo: Andrew Liu

Design: Gordon Thompson

Publication and distribution, Lightning Source, through eBook Alchemy. ebookalchemy.com

Cover image: Vessel by Samuel Beatty https://www.samuellukeart.com/

Back cover image: Kalypso by Jamie James http://jamesphoto.com.au/

Acknowledgement

Bent Street acknowledges the Traditional Custodians of country throughout Australia and their connections to land, sea and community. We pay our respect to their Elders past, present and emerging, and extend that respect to all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples.

Contents

Tiffany Jones

Sam Elkin & Yves Rees

Bron Richardson

Jordie Slonim

Jamie James

Kait Fenwick

Sav Zwickl

Damien W. Riggs, Carla A. Pfeffer, Ruth Pearce, Sally Hines, and Francis Ray White

+ Ruth Dahl

Samuel Luke Beatty

+ Tazz Hislop

+ Adele Aria

Raewyn Connell

Brooke Murray

Lucy Nicholas

Clair Brianz

Purity

Mel Romero

Bryson Charles

good judy

Stacey Stokes

Teague Leigh

Anastasia Le

Ruq

Ryan Gustafsson

Blair Archbold

Kathy Mansfield

G. Jae Curmi

Noah Silvereye

Cat Cotsell

Erin Riley

Kai Ash

Kin Francis

by Guy James Whitworth

Stevie Lane

Susan Lardner & Jessica Ward

Tiarn

Interview with CB Mako

Nat Hollis

Rowan Richardson

Jaxson Wearing

Nate McCarthy

Theo Dunne

Elwin Schok

Maddox Gifford

Welcome to Bent Street, which now bends around the soft borders and hard edges of gender, in guest editors Sam and Yves trans special issue. They ensure our street twirls around the tongue-twisters, spoonerisms, stitchings and paint daubs of talented mixed media artists who depict the art of living like good judy, Samuel Luke Beatty and Sav Zwickl. We wind through the writings of poets like Kait Fenwick, Adele Aria and Ruth Dahl; and spiral through the stories of trans refugees Claire and Purity as they travelled across various kinds of borders in and from Uganda to Kenya, or Kenya to Sweden.

Our road also whorls around significant contemporary thinking on trans issues fresh from the professoriate: Sociology Professor Emerita Raewyn Connell discusses the most important issues from a perspective that centres trans peoples interests. Gender and Sexuality Studies Associate Professor Lucy Nicholas explores tensions and potentials for greater common ground across feminism, LGBT rights, trans, and queer gender interests. A team led by Psychology Professor Damien Riggs considers how men, trans/masculine and non-binary people negotiate conception against a context of social norms.

Finally, we veer onto the main drag and byways of gender diverse representation; picturing Jamie James photography of thriving community members and collecting Reid Marginalias gender euphoric archive armour along the way Buckle up!

Tiffany JonesEditor-in-Chief

Yves: Sam, this special issue of Bent Street had its origins in the Spilling the T Collective. How would you describe that project?

Sam: The Spilling the T Collective is a trans and gender diverse writers group that we set up as part of Transgender Victorias SPARK peer support project in early 2020. We basically set it up to foster more trans and gender diverse people to get to know each other, share their stories, provide peer-to-peer feedback and get published. We had intended for it to be an in-person workshop series at the Wheeler Centre, but due to the pandemic, we had to re-jig it to be an online workshop and guest speaker series. It kicked off in May 2020 and we had over thirty trans and gender diverse people participate from across so-called Australia. We had some really amazing guest speakers address the group along the way like the award-winning poets Ellen van Neerven and Rae White, as well as the comedian and performance artist Krishna Istha. We ran a second workshop series in late 2020 too that Marcel Liemant facilitated, who was one of our round one participants and an accomplished YA fantasy writer.

Did you enjoy being a part of the writers group?

Yves: Yes perhaps especially due to the online aspect. Although going digital was a COVID-induced necessity, it turned out that operating as a virtual writers group actually enhanced the experience. It allowed us to include and connect with trans and gender diverse writers from all around the country, rather than just those living in physical proximity to the Wheeler Centre in Melbournes CBD. We ended up with writers from Perth, Adelaide, Sydney, regional Tasmania, Brisbane, Newcastle and elsewhere. Given that trans and queer communities tend to cluster around Sydney and Melbourne, it was very meaningful to connect with trans and gender diverse folk living outside these southeast metropolitan hubs. These writers taught me a great deal about the diversity of trans experience and provided a much-needed sense of community at a time of physical isolation from queer spaces. Our pivot to digital platforms also allowed us to hear from international guest speakers including Thomas Page McBee, a US trans memoirist, journalist and screenwriter who zoomed in from his home in California. Finally, the Spilling the T experience opened my eyes to the sheer size and enormous talent of the trans writing community. I had expected only a handful of participants and was blown away when we commenced the first round with over thirty writers.

What did Spilling the T teach you about trans writing in this country?

Sam: Almost everyone we met along the way, whether they came to every session or just a couple made a huge impression on me. Some of them were really hurting, struggling with poverty, alienating healthcare and the administrative burden of day-to-day living. Some of them had been through really hard times before, but were now living their best lives. So many of us have experienced chronic traumatization from familial and community rejection and many of those experiences really spilled out onto the page in one way or another. Despite that, no two stories were ever the same. I also think people got heaps out of reading each other's stories, as many hadnt really had access to a lot of trans and gender diverse writing before. Some participants had had a few essays or poems published in Australian literary journals before, but most had just been writing for themselves, and didnt really see a clear path to publication anywhere. It just made me feel quite motivated to do what I could to create that pathway for trans and gender diverse people. Its much less burdensome to share your own experiences when you dont have to worry that people will think that this is the only trans experience. So, yeah, more than anything, I think this project taught me about the power of taking the time to invite marginalised people to come together as a group and be creative. You can see the results of giving people a deadline in this anthology! Its inspiring.