The Last Lesbian Bar in the Midlands by Cleo Henry

An arresting cinema of a book. Vivid, playful and adventurous, The Last Lesbian Bar in the Midlands is a moment, an idea, a sense of future that binds us to the best of each other. Brilliant. - Joelle Taylor, author of C+nto & Othered Poems
 
fourteen poems launches their 2022 pamphlet season with the thrilling debut pamphlet from Cleo Henry. The Last Lesbian Bar in the Midlands fuses the classics with lesbian culture, fizzing with excitement and wordplay. With references to Achilles, Lea De Laria, Carson McCullers, Helen of Troy and Cynthia Nixon, the poems in this pamphlet mesh pop cultural references with mythology while delving into love, sex and modern queer communities.
 
-----
 
Cleo Henry’s The Last Lesbian Bar in the Midlands opens the door between the body and the landscape of myth: they locate the worlds of ancestry in pissing on Hampstead Health, in Helen of Troy and Cynthia Nixon, in “your hard dyke hands blurring inside a ribcage”, and in the “pit with all of New York”. Cleo has written a remarkable pamphlet. - Tom Bland, author of The Death of a Clown
 
Intelligent and academic without showing off, discover Cleo Henry and watch them burn a litany of visual-invocations of being sexy without falling on lazy tropes. Bite into this collection immediately - and taste it burst. - Kirsty Allison, Editor of Ambit