Poetry in Motion: Renaissance Normcore

“Physical & cerebral,  sexual & independent, witty & vulnerable—in Adèle Barclay’s poems these pairs are paramours, not paradox. This work is unafraid to adore, to pour honey all over the world or a lover—not afraid to criticize either. I love Barclay’s wildness that tames her reader—I love her direct flirtation and unflinching analysis. Her shade, her care, her longing. Nobody else has this precise combination of revelry, wish, and command. I think Adèle Barclay should become very famous for her poetry—she’s so real and so true to her words that fame itself wouldn’t dare torque or twist anything without this poet’s permission.” – Brenda Shaughnessy, author of The Octopus MuseumRenaissance Normcore belts like a classically-trained Riot Grrrl, composing catchy tunes in the key of fear and desire. Building on the dreamy emotional landscapes she plumbed in the award-winning If I Were in a Cage I’d Reach Out for You, Barclay navigates even sharper peaks and valleys in her second collection to examine the links between intimacy and power. Tracking the paradoxical impulses of anguish and joy that underpin daily life in our hostile neoliberal climate, these poems are both abject and sweet as they repurpose loss into life and test the bounds of how much a poem can hold. Renaissance Normcore is a tender, fierce collection about how queer resilience dwells in the everyday. Adéle reads “You Don’t Have to Choose But You Do” from Renaissance NormcoreYOU DON’T HAVE TO CHOOSE BUT YOU DO  Adéle reads “burn it all down with water” from Renaissance Normcore BURN IT ALL DOWN WITH WATER * * *  

Adèle Barclay is a writer, critic, editor and the author of If I Were in a Cage I’d Reach Out for You, which won the 2017 Dorothy Livesay Poetry Prize. She is the recipient of the 2016 Lit POP Award for Poetry and The Walrus’ 2016 Readers’ Choice Award for Poetry and has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize. Her poems have appeared in Vallum, Cosmonauts Avenue, Room Magazine, The Puritan, Heavy Feather Review, glitterMOB, The Fiddlehead and elsewhere. She is Arc Magazine’s 2018-19 Poet in Residence and an editor at Rahila’s Ghost Press. Her second collection, Renaissance Normcore, is out from Nightwood Editions.* * *Thanks to Adéle for sharing her poetry with us! You can read more of Adéle’s poems in Renaissance Normcore, available October 7th on All Lit Up. For more Poetry in Motion, click here.