June is Pride Month, an annual celebration commemorating the 1969 Stonewall Riots, which took place in New York City and launched the lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer rights movement in the United States. Pride Month is also a time to honor the many contributions of LGBTQ individuals. Explore the rich tradition of LGBTQ poets and poetry through a showcase of audio, video, poetry, and prose.



Poems of Queer Liberation

 


Featured Essays

browse more LGBTQ essays and texts.

Allen Ginsberg

Repeating Allen

In this essay, Eileen Myles looks at the long lines, repetition, and context of Allen Ginsberg’s...
Carl Phillips, Photo Credit Rachel Eliza Griffiths

Another and Another Before That: Some Thoughts on Reading

In this essay, Carl Phillips discusses the private act of reading, how reading may inform...
Marilyn Hacker, photo credit: Brian Palmer

Eros and the Lyric Imagination: Poems of Love

Marilyn Hacker discusses eros as the “fuel of the lyric imagination” and discusses a selection of...
Reginald Shepherd

Notes Toward Beauty

Reginald Shepard writes, "Without a notion of beauty, an embodiment of the possible beyond the...

The Letter Q

The Letter Q (Scholastic, 2012) is a collection of letters written by queer writers to their...

Robert Gluck

Long Note on New Narrative

To talk about the beginnings of New Narrative, I have to talk about my friendship with Bruce Boone.
LGBTQ Pride Month Graphic

Poems to Celebrate LGBTQ Pride

Dear J.” by Kazim Ali
It should be a letter …

"Cento Between the Ending and the End" by Cameron Awkward-Rich
Sometimes you don't die…

Love Poem” by Sophie Cabot Black
Which cannot be written tries anyway— …

Virus” by Jericho Brown
Dubbed undetectable, I can't kill...

A Queerification” by Regie Cabico
queer me …

"Unruly" by Jari Bradley
Hushed whispers in an undisclosed room...


"The School of Night & Hyphens" by Chen Chen
The sky tonight, so without aliens. The woods, very lacking …

These Hands, If Not Gods” by Natalie Diaz
Haven’t they moved like rivers …

"Great Art" by Tim Dlugos
Underneath your skin, your heart …

Where Is She ::: Koté Li Yé” by R. Erica Doyle
Long ago I met / a beautiful boy...

The Hug” by Thom Gunn
It was your birthday, we had drunk and dined …

"Aria” by Jenny Johnson
Tonight at a party we will say farewell …

"Gay Marriage Poem" by Jenny Johnson
We could promise to elope …

The moon rose over the bay. I had a lot of feelings.” by Donika Kelly
I am taken with the hot animal …

Vows (for a gay wedding)” by Joseph O. Legaspi
What was unforeseen is now a bird orbiting this field …

"[To find a kiss of yours]" by Federico García Lorca
To find a kiss of yours / what would I give

Exclusively on Venus” by Trace Peterson
Roses are red / violets are transsexual …

Twenty-One Love Poems [The Floating Poem, Unnumbered]” by Adrienne Rich
Whatever happens with us, your body …

 

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Browse more poems & audio from LGBTQ poets past and present.

Troubling the Line

LGBTQ Books & Anthologies

Gay and Lesbian Poetry in Our Time
This anthology collects nearly one hundred varied and distinct gay and lesbian voices representing various cultural backgrounds including Asian American, Native American, Jewish, Hispanic, and African Americans.

Troubling the Line: Trans and Genderqueer Poetry and Poetics
Edited by TC Tolbert and Trace Peterson
This anthology gathers together a diverse range of fifty-five trans and genderqueer poets with varying aesthetics and backgrounds.

Half-Light: Collected Poems 1965-2016
by Frank Bidart

This volume compiles Bidart’s 1990 collected, In the Western Night: 1965–1990 (Farrar, Straus and Giroux), the four books he has published since, and sixty-odd pages of startling new verse.


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