Like a harbour at full tide, the Coast is Queer Festival wealth of talent was a maritime procession of queer brilliance, each artist a different craft navigating the same glorious, tumultuous waters of LGBTQ+ experience.
Like a harbour at full tide, Friday's first full day's salvo of the Coast is Queer Festival pulled in such a wealth of talent that you could barely glimpse the shoreline for the richness of vessels anchored there. This isn't just a festival programme—its a procession of queer brilliance, each artist a different craft navigating the same glorious, tumultuous waters of LGBTQ+ experience.
The programming itself deserves an ovation—a carefully charted course that mixed free-to-attend events with ticketed experiences, creating an accessibility that felt less like festival logistics and more like an invitation to dive into queer literary waters, whatever your depth of pocket. The breadth of talent on display is impressive: from academic inquiry to raw performance poetry, from craft workshops to panel discussions, the curators have assembled a fleet that would make any queer cultural admiral weep with pride.
Threading through the afternoon like a strong current, K Angel and Dr Lloyd Meadhbh Houston's workshop "Relatively Queer: Writing Toward Concealed Queerness in the Family Archive" offered a lighthouse for those navigating the fog-shrouded waters of family history. For those who wonder if they're the first queer person in their family tree, or who fear the rocks they might strike when writing sensitive histories, this session provided both compass and anchor—a chance to chart a course toward those concealed queerness hidden in the depths of genealogy.
The third publishing focused event of the day and super popular "Queer Publishing Day: Getting Your Work Out There" panel proved equally vital—a navigational guide through the treacherous strait of algorithms and publicity, showing writers how to spread word of queer books like messages in bottles that actually reach their intended shores, rather than sinking into the algorithmic abyss.
The "Page to Stage" discussion, expertly helmed by Dorothy Max Prior with Coral Wylie, Vinnie Heaven, and Emma Frankland, revealed true sophistication. Three different captains describe their unique methods of sailing, each writer illuminated how they bring their words from the safe harbour of the page into the open seas of performance. Wylie unpacked the journey of their smash hit Lavender, while Heaven offered insights into Faun, his modern mythological tale of homeless youth. Frankland gave us a glimpse into Trap, a work still evolving like a ship in dry dock—a claustrophobic relationship drama that is, she assures us with a wink, most definitely not autobiographical. The themes of collaboration and trust emerged like dolphins surfacing alongside the conversation, beautiful and essential.
And then—oh, and then—came the evening's main event: An Evening with Joelle Taylor and Friends.
Those "friends" turned out to be the utterly superb UK slam champion Keith Jarrett and the devastating Ollie O'Neill, and what unfolded was less a poetry reading and more a full-scale engagement with our hearts, minds, and every queer nerve ending.
O'Neill brought us sensuous dark lesbian joy, their words clambering over grief with the tenderness of hands tracing scars, before plunging into passion with the verve of a cliff diver who knows exactly how deep the water runs. Each poem was a vessel carrying us deeper into feeling.
Then Jarrett took us over—and I mean possessed us—with his charm and audacious word skills, leaving the audience gasping like sailors who've just surfaced from too long underwater. His parasitical poetry (in the best, most symbiotic sense) latched onto our consciousness and wouldn't let go, firing us up with the raw queer energy of his metaphors. He commanded the room like a captain in a storm, and we were all willing crew.
But Taylor—well, what can one say about Joelle Taylor that they wouldn't say about themselves? Superb. Stylish. Subtle (well, not subtle at all, actually)—but fucking amazing. They finished the night with two story extracts that swept us up like a rogue wave: first, a northern mining fable that anchored us in working-class grit and solidarity; then, a breathtaking extract of butch dyke heaven, full of triumph and the kind of queer community that feels like finding land after months at sea. Legendary feels like a small word for their charisma, but it's the one we have, and the audience adored them with the fervour of devotees who know they're in the presence of something rare and necessary.
Bobbing through the entire weekend like phosphorescence in the wake of a ship, artist-in-residence Robin Whitmore has anchored himself in the café bar with his extraordinary project The Queer Chorus – lovers who resist. Whitmore is manifesting a dream guestlist of LGBTQ+ literary icons, past and present, to grace The Coast is Queer's metaphorical red carpet—bringing them to life as life-sized cardboard cut-out figurines. Throughout the weekend taking suggestions and quotes, crafting beloved queer writers into tangible presences that stand among us like literary ancestors and contemporary heroes gathered for a grand celebration. It's installation as invitation, art as community-building, a visual chorus line of queer literary resistance that accumulates like barnacles on a beloved hull, each one a story, each one essential.
The Coast is Queer is super—it's a stately galleon carrying the weight of queer literary history, a nippy canoe darting through contemporary concerns, a whirling coracle spinning with joy, and a ferry getting us queer folk up from the sometimes difficult reality to the sunlit uplands of fierce queer imaginations. And that's just Friday.
All of this brilliance unfolded in the brick-lined vaulting and curvaceous comfort of the Attenborough Centre at Sussex University—a space that held us like a ship's hull, intimate and expansive at once.
Saturday awaits like an unexplored coastline. Full programme here and don't miss the range of free events throughout the festival.
The tide is high, friends. Come swim.
The Coast is Queer Festival continues through the weekend at the Attenborough Centre for Creative Arts, University of Sussex, Brighton. Full details and tickets here.
