This Tuesday, 15 July, I’ll be the featured poet at North Bay Poetics, reading from oh, man! — a collaborative collection co-written with the brilliant Paul Robert Mullen.
It’s hosted by Karen Pierce Gonzalez and broadcast live via Zoom from the San Francisco Bay Area. I’ll be zooming in from the UK. The open mic is stacked with voices from around the world: the UK, the US, Singapore — but oh, man! is the spine of the night.
This is a project Paul and I have built slowly, deliberately, and honestly. We’re writing about maleness — not masculinity as a glossy concept or hashtag identity, but the tangled, lived experience of what it means to be a man today. A father, a son, a lover. A man who doesn’t always measure up. A man who sometimes wants to reject the myth entirely.
These poems deal with shame. With softness. With pressure, performance, and all the ways men are trained to live at a distance from themselves. They are personal and political, tender and difficult. And I’ll be sharing them live.
I’ve approached this work from both creative and academic angles: editing BOLD, a collection on masculinity, and researching male representation in sitcoms for my MA Popular Culture. Ooh, man! is the real culmination of all that. It’s what happens when you stop theorising and start writing with your guts.
Here’s the deal:
Tuesday, July 15
3–4 PM PST / 11PM–12AM BST
Zoom | Hosted by North Bay Poetics
Open mic featuring: Julian Day, Keith Mar, Karen Fitzgerald + more
DM @karenpgonzalez.bsky.social or @alanparrywriter.co.uk for the audience link
The open mic is full, but there’s still space in the room. Pull up a chair, virtually speaking.
Come for the poems. Stay for the discomfort. This is oh, man! — not an answer, but an honest question.
