MotherFlux Book launch - hosted by the Soho Poly

Join us at the Soho Poly for the very exciting launch of Motherflux (JP Seabright, Erica Gillingham and Jem Henderson)! Additional readings from Rona Luo, Jennifer Wong and Soho Poly poet-in-residence Deborah Finding.

Motherflux is the collaborative work of three queer parent-poets from the margins of (m)otherhood. From embryonic dreamers and pregnancy-performers to sleep-deprived newbies and seasoned second-timers, their poems are raw, messy, and unflinching reflections on what it means to be a parent, and to make a family. The pamphlet considers gender, sexuality, politics, and the body as it moves between heightened individual experiences to outright rejections of societal expectations. These are voices recording in real time, mothering in flux. Moterflux are:

Jem Henderson (they/them) is a genderqueer poet from Leeds, winner of a Creative Future award for underrepresented writers. GenderFux, their first collaboration came out February 2022. an othered mother, their first pamphlet, is out now from Nine Pens and a collaborative collection with Chris Cambell, small plates, is available from Broken Sleep.

Erica Gillingham (she/her) is a queer poet, writer, and bookseller living in London via Siskiyou County, California. She works as a bookseller at Gay’s The Word bookshop and serves as the Poetry Editor for The Signal House Edition. Her debut poetry pamphlet The Human Body is a Hive was published by Verve Poetry Press, and her poetry and essays have been published in various journals, anthologies, and radio, including in 100 Queer Poems; 365 Poems for Life; Queer Life, Queer Love; and on BBC Radio 4’s Short Cuts. She exists online at www.ericagillingham.com and @ericareadsqueer.

JP Seabright (she/they) is a queer disabled writer living in London. They have four solo pamphlets published and two collaborations, encompassing poetry, prose and experimental work. They explore themes of gender, sexuality, trauma and the climate crisis in their work, and have been nominated for a Pushcart Prize, Best of the Net, and Forward Prize (twice) as well as shortlisted (twice) for a Saboteur Award for Best Collaborative Work. More info at https://jpseabright.com via Twitter @errormessage and @jpseabright everywhere else.

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Rona Luo is a queer, neurodivergent poet and acupuncturist working at the intersection of decolonial healing and writing as somatic practice. She is a Kundiman fellow, Tin House scholar and member of Southbank Centre's New Poets Collective. Her work appears or is forthcoming in The Massachusetts Review, ANMLY, Honey Literary, Mom Egg Review, fourteen poems, Suspect Journal, and Bi+ Lines anthology. Her speculative visual poetry has been exhibited at London’s Royal Festival Hall.

Originally from Hong Kong, Jennifer Wong is the author of 回家 Letters Home (Nine Arches Press, 2020). Her poems and stories have been published in Sinetheta, Under the Radar, Poetry London, Tupelo Quarterly, Signal House Edition, Wasafiri and Bi+ Lines anthology edited by Helen Bowell. She is the author of Identity, Home and Writing Elsewhere in Contemporary Chinese Diaspora Poetry (Bloomsbury, 2023) and a co-editor of State of Play: Poets of East and Southeast Asian Heritage in Conversation (Outspoken Press, 2023) and Where Else: An International Hong Kong Poetry Anthology (Verve, 2023). Her pamphlet, time difference, is forthcoming from Verve Poetry Press later in 2024. She is working on her next collection.

Deborah Finding (she/her) is a queer feminist writer with a background in academia and activism. Her poems have been published in Propel, fourteen poems, The Friday Poem, berlin lit, the Alchemy Spoon and many anthologies. Her debut pamphlet, ‘vigils for dead and dying girls’ is published with Nine Pens, and her second 'amortisation' won the Live Canon pamphlet competition and will be out later this year. She won the Write By The Sea single poem prize, and has been shortlisted or commended for the Troubadour, Live Canon, Hexham, Hammond House and Ver Poets Prizes . She is poet in residence at London’s Soho Poly Theatre.