Joelle Taylor brings a staged reading of her new poetry collection to Chapter; a searing, poetic excavation of 50 years of lesbian counterculture.

Following-on from her TS Eliot Prize-winning poetry collection C+nto & Othered Poems, Joelle Taylor’s Maryville charts the lives of four butch lesbians through five decades of underground queer history; tracing the culture, clubs and resistance that shaped their world.

With a vividly sketched cast of characters, the Maryville butch bar becomes a lens through which to consider the underground histories of queer London. The violence and pain of oppression and the beauty and intimacy of community are rendered in awe-inspiring high definition.

The performance is directed by acclaimed writer and director Neil Bartlett, with visuals from artist and filmmaker Sweatmother.

Maryville explores the scars, hopes and potentialities of dyke identity and the queer underground.

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About the artists

Joelle Taylor is a queer, working class author of six plays, a novel and four collections of poetry. Her most recent, C+NTO & Othered Poems won the 2021 TS Eliot Prize and the 2022 Polari Prize for LGBTQ+ authors, and is currently being adapted for the theatre.

Neil Bartlett’s recent stage work includes Orlando in the West End with Emma Corrin and a live version of Derek Jarman’s film Blue at the Tate Gallery, with Russell Tovey, Travis Alabanza and Joelle Taylor. His most recent novel was the Polari Prize-nominated Address Book.

Sweatmother is an artist and filmmaker based in London, whose moving image work blends performance, self-recorded documentation, internet and archival materials to explore and make visible queer lived experiences.