'Rallying was written alongside Quinn Eades’s first book, all the beginnings: a queer autobiography of the body, and before he began transitioning from female to male. A collection very much concerned with the body, and the ways in which we create and write under, around, without, and with children, this collection will resonate deeply with anyone who has tried to make creative work from underneath the weight of love. This is a collection of poems that are more than poems. They were written with children, under babies, around grief, amongst crumbs, on trains, with hope: with love. This is a book made of steel and honey, muscle and sun, with tongues. Open its pages and you will find more than poetry. You will find moments in time strung across by text, a poetics of the space between bodies, the way that language makes us separate and simultaneously whole.' (Publication summary)
For Jem and Soli
'St Ignatius of Loyola is supposed to have said: ‘Give me a boy until the age of seven, and I will own the man’. Well, the Baptists had me for a lot longer than my first seven years, and subsequently, I have lived a most conventional life. My politics might be progressive but my instincts are terribly conservative. These two books are indispensable because, in bearing witness to the scarring caused by homophobia, inequality and unsafe socialisation, they disrupt prejudice, including my own, and celebrate plurality. Eades and Everall are not just great poets. They are buoys of hope.' (Introduction)
'A crop of new titles came in to foam:e from UWA Publishing just before we went to press. The timing was difficult for a full review but Quinn Eades collection, Rallying, is exceptional. Such aware and embodied writing demands a response. As a reader I was entranced, the book is a page-turner in the best sense of that description. The strength of its narrative making me want to know what happens next.' (Introduction)
'In the opening poem of Rallying, Quinn Eades quotes the French feminist philosopher Luce Irigaray: ‘Call yourself. Give, yourself, names.’ then presents us with a fourteen-page poem in which the poet moves swiftly, however fragmentedly, from a little girl who cares for her sister, to a heroin addict and sex worker, to a male writer. There are other identities, too, that fall in between, each as crisply visualised as the one before. It’s called ‘How to disappear in your name’, and it’s an adapted form of haibun, where memories are a rush of prose, and reflections in short-stanza verse follows. And it’s stunning. It’s closely aligned with Eades’s fictocritical(ish) 2015 debut prose work, all the beginnings: a queer autobiography of the body, a book of non-fictive feminist poetics, a highlight of my reading last year. They were written side by side and they cover the same territory, but rather than see Rallying as a new way to write all the beginnings, I see it as a new way to write the body: the body as child, the used and addicted body, the mothering body which has its foundations in the female birthing and therefore the nourishing and giving body, the body in love, the trans body. In a single poem, which, unlike the rest of the poems in the book is not bracketed by a titled section but stands alone as its own body, so to speak, Eades paints the person who held each name, and each name comes together to culminate in ‘Quinn’, and in Quinn.' (Introduction)
'Identity is central to Rallying, a collection of poetry from a trans writer so candid about his journey from mother of two to identifying as a male. The introductory ‘How to disappear in your name’ is a fourteen-page stream of consciousness prose poem introducing nine of Eades’ former personas. ' (Introduction)
'A winter flush of poetry is at my door – all of it from publishers on this continent, all of it sharpening the edge of language, subject matter and form, and all of it good and fresh in its own way.' (Introduction)
'St Ignatius of Loyola is supposed to have said: ‘Give me a boy until the age of seven, and I will own the man’. Well, the Baptists had me for a lot longer than my first seven years, and subsequently, I have lived a most conventional life. My politics might be progressive but my instincts are terribly conservative. These two books are indispensable because, in bearing witness to the scarring caused by homophobia, inequality and unsafe socialisation, they disrupt prejudice, including my own, and celebrate plurality. Eades and Everall are not just great poets. They are buoys of hope.' (Introduction)
'Identity is central to Rallying, a collection of poetry from a trans writer so candid about his journey from mother of two to identifying as a male. The introductory ‘How to disappear in your name’ is a fourteen-page stream of consciousness prose poem introducing nine of Eades’ former personas. ' (Introduction)
'In the opening poem of Rallying, Quinn Eades quotes the French feminist philosopher Luce Irigaray: ‘Call yourself. Give, yourself, names.’ then presents us with a fourteen-page poem in which the poet moves swiftly, however fragmentedly, from a little girl who cares for her sister, to a heroin addict and sex worker, to a male writer. There are other identities, too, that fall in between, each as crisply visualised as the one before. It’s called ‘How to disappear in your name’, and it’s an adapted form of haibun, where memories are a rush of prose, and reflections in short-stanza verse follows. And it’s stunning. It’s closely aligned with Eades’s fictocritical(ish) 2015 debut prose work, all the beginnings: a queer autobiography of the body, a book of non-fictive feminist poetics, a highlight of my reading last year. They were written side by side and they cover the same territory, but rather than see Rallying as a new way to write all the beginnings, I see it as a new way to write the body: the body as child, the used and addicted body, the mothering body which has its foundations in the female birthing and therefore the nourishing and giving body, the body in love, the trans body. In a single poem, which, unlike the rest of the poems in the book is not bracketed by a titled section but stands alone as its own body, so to speak, Eades paints the person who held each name, and each name comes together to culminate in ‘Quinn’, and in Quinn.' (Introduction)
