The smell of lavender and leather triggers disturbance and desire. Prose poems and praise poems for the hi-vis women, the undercut women, the besuited women.
We’ve always been here.
Ollie O’Neill is a poet, writer, and feminist from London. She has been published in journals including Magma, Bath Magg, and Fourteen Poems and has read at venues such as Soho Theatre, The Royal Festival Hall, on BBC Radio, and at The Institute of Contemporary Art. In 2019 her pamphlet Ways of Coping was published by Out-Spoken Press, a poetic research project on the pathologisation of women within the realm of psychiatry. Her debut full-length collection What We Are Given was published by Write Bloody UK in 2020, exploring horizontal inheritance and lineage through interpersonal relationships.
Steph Harn is a butch dyke artist from Manchester working within indie zine illustration and print making. Her work focuses on lesbian and DIY punk aesthetics and subcultures.
‘what if it’s not found in other species what if it’s just us doing it like this what if they can’t place us anywhere else what if we’re not supposed to be this way at all wretched wrong wanting what if it goes against the laws of nature what if we are reprehensible what if it should have remained criminal to do this together to move towards the touch to always be open to receiving more to be satisfied like this what if they got it all wrong when they let us ring the church bells sign our lives off to each other go and work in offices cheaply imitate a family what if we don’t look just like everybody else what if we are the antithesis of all that is good and proper what if we are bending each other over in your brunch-serving cafes yes what if we are your neighbours but our houses are quite different from your own what if the worst you said about us is the best we’ll ever be what if we cannot be saved or salvaged what if we are not your mothers or your daughters what if we don’t want to be what if to call this a sin is to put it gently what if everything they told you was undesirable makes me ache what if it is a choice what if it’s not but if it were we’d make it every time what if that’s the joy of it the goodness in it what if that’s the point’
Each Handbook is published in an edition limited to 25 copies, and priced at £12.50. We’ll be selling them at the books’ launch and at The Free Verse Book and Magazine Fair on 26th April 2025. If you’d like to order copies, please email us and we can sort out PayPal and postage.