Open Eye Gallery: Open Voices with Liverpool Poetry Space: A celebration of A [Cupboard] Full of Tomboys, the debut collection of Jay Farley

Sunday 22 June / 1 – 3 pm / Open Eye Gallery / free

Through the poetic and raw lens of a neurodiverse filmmaker, A [Cupboard] Full of Tomboys by Jay Farley navigates the intricate intersections of identity, gender, and class. This collection explores what it means to be older, working-class and non-binary. With a cinematic and surreal texture, the poet unlocks the transformative power of language in an exploration of identity and unique life experience. From the confines of the metaphorical cupboard to the expansive, defiant explorations of a new, queer world, Farley’s poetry challenges binaries, embraces fluidity, and crafts an unflinching celebration of lived authenticity.

Praise for A [Cupboard] Full of Tomboys:

This book is a bursting open of closet doors, a superb non-binary encyclopaedia, more vital ammunition for the queer canon.

— Joelle Taylor

Dazzling, sprawling, gasping — these changeling poems fly at us, each a carnival rooted in poetry’s sense of creation and revolution. At their heart is an astonishing polyvocal experiment; a swirling crown that dares us to listen to “the sea inside” and the hidden geometries of worlds that land as softly as dandelion seeds, as powerfully as hurricanes.

— Andre Bagoo

A fast-moving stream of brilliance singing with the rhythms of Liverpool’s streets and the heartstrings of explosively lived experience.

— Chris McCabe

About Jay Farley:

Jay Farley is a non-binary, neurodivergent award-winning filmmaker and digital artist.

In 2022 at the age of 48 they discovered their non-binary identity, and it was a profound experience.

Farley’s ‘I Wish I’d Won the Miners’ Strike’, was published in How it Started, Creative Futures Writers’ Award anthology, 2022 and other work is published in the Queer Icons anthology, Sparks, Hot Poets anthology and illustrated in Woop Woop magazine. Their debut book of poetry A [Cupboard] Full of Tomboys is published by Broken Sleep Books and was created under the mentorship of Joelle Taylor, winner of the T.S.Eliot Prize.

To book a place for this event contact Pauline Rowe: pauline@openeye.org.uk.

This event is part of Open Voices programme with Liverpool Poetry Space.

Image by Luke Bryant