Annotated bibliography is my middle name right now. Grad school!
So when, post speaking gig las month, students from a macro social work class asked me to blog a list of my 25 favorite books about pleasure activism, sexuality, reproductive justice, and relationships I agreed. Here you go fabulously curious co-learners.
Queer ethnopoetics, a decentered/centering poem, an attempt to hear and read the rhythms of distant others & self, Relationality to words, bodies, sexuality produced not in some kind of isolation from different language or cultures. Creativity queering the effort to reach distances and place as we bring our own spaciousness (entangled identities) into fuller consciousness.
‘Spring’ in Minnesota is most definitely the best time to have one’s mind blown. And to write write write as an act of conjuring in this state of expansion
It must be Texas. All this splendiferous BBQ. Yes that’s it! The reason i’m hyper-aware of just how much I I LOVE to floss. At least once a day. Perfect flat minty-ness. Oral health prioritized.
A Love Letter to Words, Warmth, Writer (bell!!), and the right Winter Wear
The words, poems, poets, rhythms I read over and over again in 2021, carving Mariana Trenches in my being.
The Night Dances by Sylvia Plath
A smile fell in the grass.
Irretrievable!
And how will your night dances
Lose themselves. In mathematics? …
Maybe it’s the change in seasons. As northern Minnesota cold starts to strut its cocky self around, I find myself using fire metaphors to understand who I am as a sexual being.
When one receives (via USPS!) a beautiful-as-fuck, bright-like-blue-glowing-full-moon ceramic dildo made at a queer arts camp in d’Midwest wilds, you know your queer sex guides are watching over you.
September offered many gifts. On the full moon I opened up a belated birthday present. Wrapped in a repurposed chain saw box. Hand crafted at a queer arts camp in rural Wisconsin. I’ll say more next month after I get to know this risky creative call to pleasure and love.
Recipe for Queering End of Summer 2021
1 Water is Life festival
1 Weekend Leo bday flavor visit w/ Dad in chiTown suburbs
1 Week turned 2 at beLoved western NY cottage w/ maternal family.
3 Days = start of grad school saucy remote learning style
5 Days back in Chicago for 77 yo Dad’s wedding/Irish Polish loveFest
Dash of Frida Kahlo, Ani, Willa, Joy
Heaping spoonFull of fab sister and cousin time
Sprinkle with wildness, adventure, anti-abortion wack, and generosity
Put in oven and bake to a queer crisp climate change is everywhere 450 degrees.
“I’ve been thinking a lot about feminist art of the femme body, especially the body of a self-identified woman of color. I wanted to write a poem that was like slowing down a sentence. I want the present tense to listen to its possible futures, and to ask, ‘What kind of power of undoing is wielded by being undone?’” - Kimberly Alidio
Lights! costumes! award winning score! Transcendent expressions of gender! Finally, the musical of the century committed to subversive, inclusive comedy, calling out boring, repressive, expired ideas that water down the fine art of fucking. Challenging heteronormative scripts about how to have sex, SLoaUA queers desire, pulls together like elements, finds attraction in affinity.
Queering time is a transgressive practice dedicated to subverting the dominant paradigm, asking what justice means in 2021, and living life on the queer margins of linear reality. Queer Intimacy with Time connects us to our ancestors who used pleasure to create movements committed to freedom.
Yes, I am trashE. In and with my trashEness, I’ve started a practice of dedicating my experiences of pleasure to those beings around me. With my practice, I recognize my erotic ethic and see how my pleasure alongside the pleasure of others has created and will continue to create socioSexual Lubrication i.e. individual and collective freedom movements/moments.
There’s something world making/queer in re-imagining our cities and homes. As we reshape the ideas about what private and public support systems look like. I’m curious about how to re-create and re-purpose spaces, especially our family and urban spaces, in ways that open up a wide range of possibilities for sustaining and practicing relationships with our anger, fear, pain, pleasure and an even more resilient love.
Oh! the transition from Queer Intimacy with southern Place to Queer Intimacy with northern Place. This post+poem is an ode to my Texas landscape, escape, adventure.
After an arduous 2020, I’m taking stock early this year of what still works in my life (inspired by deLicious Kate McKinnon led cold open on Saturday Night Live last weekend). Here I’ve shared the SNL video and my working list.
Yikes! I stumbled upon otter sex off the gulf coast of Florida last month totally high after watching a pod of dolphins swim by as I did yoga on the beach. Makes me muse on what a strange year it’s been to be a sexual being. Identify as Poly. Practice queering the world with pleasure, writing, and love.
During turkeyFest month, I devour books. This year I’ve noticed how especially delicious queer-ed bodies and pleasures taste on the page. Here are a few titles with BIPOC + gender expansive folx + queer stories front and center. May more of us queers write- taking up space and talking loudly with our pens about what feels good.
Blog review
“She’s not just using this buzzword (fragility). Erin examines how complicated and far reaching systemic inequity is. We must make it common knowledge that working for sexual freedom & body autonomy for all, while queering pleasure and relationships, is about dismantling systems of power. We can’t just waltz towards a more pleasurable human experience without tearing some shit down.” -fellow pleasure activist and diva loving, sex educator Lauren Fryer