Rocksong

'Rocksong is a shamelessly baroque ride through the all nadirs and summits of the contemporary queer. It's a decadent book, where decadence isn't a cipher for self-indulgence, but a fierce and fugitive resistance. As Audre Lorde writes 'We survived and survival breeds desire for more self'. Or, in the glowing neon precincts of Rocksong, more selves, plural. These poems flirt and confront in turns, they seduce and attack, they are tender and grotesque. They create a strangely exultant burlesque on identity, sexuality, desire and language. I love them for that.' Fran Lock

Auteur

Golnoosh Nour is a published poet, prose writer, and lecturer. Born in Tehran in 1988, she studied for a BA in English Literature at Shahid Beheshti University after which she moved to London to do an MA in Creative Writing at Birkbeck. In 2017, her debut poetry collection Sorrows of the Sun was published under her then pseudonym, Sogol Sur. Her short story collection The Ministry of Guidance and Other Stories was published on the 2nd of April 2020 by Muswell Press. Her writing has been anthologised in internationally recognised publications such as Granta. She has performed in numerous literary events across the UK and internationally, including The Shuffle at the Poetry Café, Stoke Newington Literature Festival, The Fringe! Festival, SOAS, RVT, Birkbeck Poetry Live for Arts Week, In Yer Ear, Literary Kitchen Festival, Tate South Lambeth Library, and the UCL Art Society. She has appeared in the BBC Cultural Frontline and Woman's Hour to discuss her work. Since May 2020, Golnoosh has been hosting and designing a radio programme called Queer Lit for Soho Radio Culture/ Alphabet Radio. Golnoosh is the co-editor of Magma 80 and one of the judges of the Queer Writing Competition of Muswell Press. In 2019, she gained her practice-based Ph.D. in Literature and Creative Writing at Birkbeck College, University of London. Golnoosh teaches Creative Writing at Reading University. Her full collection, ROCKSONG, was published by VERVE Poetry Press in 2021 and was shortlisted for the Polaris Prize.

Texte du rabat

'ROCKSONG moves like a love song, and it is boundary-less, irreverent and complex. Golnoosh articulates all the ambivalences arising from family relationships, a longing for home, and the fierce passion of a lover. Underneath this runs the frustration of language itself, 'swim[ming] in a sewer of English', and the honest, mournful expression of loss. There is surprise and sarcasm, wit and fury, and so much to love in this collection'. -- Keith Jarrett