Issue 09
Description
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Responding to the topic of Climate, the pieces in this issue speak of weeds and wandering, bugs and birds, power cuts and public sex. OK, that last one isn’t entirely climate related! There are also conversations about rivers, transitions, walking, cities, woods and oceans and various perspectives on queer ecology. Take your ears adventuring…
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And keep on listening!
Information about Issue 09
Length: 1:31:40
Transcript: Google Docs / PDF
High quality audio version: Google Drive (.wav file, 1.46 GB)
Running order:
every beach - Helen (originally shared in Issue 07)
How do you find yourself if you're never by yourself? - Liz Sutherland
Wireless (a poem written during a power outage) - rYAn
A Queer Revisit of the Franklin River - Oliver Cassidy
A Lonely Firefly - M. A. Dubbs
Last Butterfly - Fish
Peaceful queer out here - Sally Goldner
Cruising the Woods (for Beginners) - Patrick Marano
Take Me Back to the Ocean - The Mollusc Dimension
The Seagull’s Swan Song - M. A. Dubbs
A Field Guide to Edible Birds - Kate Hall
Queer Botany at Walthamstow Marshes - Sixto-Juan Zavala
Honeysuckle Cognizance - M. A. Dubbs
Queer Gardening at Hummingbird Farm - Xochitl (with Ella von der Haide)
Place Like Now - The Mollusc Dimension
Cover art: Our cover painting this issue is by Stephanie Lai and features flora and fauna of so-called Australia. Stephanie is a Queer Chinese-Australian painter, writer, and professional bin chicken. Stephanie uses traditional Chinese water-colour painting techniques to represent images of so called Australia, and started doing so as a way to reconcile loving a space as a settler-colonial immigrant from a refugee background. The cover is about getting down on the ground and sitting with one’s situation.
Content notes: The pieces in Queer Out Here talk about many things related to being queer and the outdoors. This issue contains:
Discussions of the climate crisis and its impact on humans, animals, plants, landscapes, weather and natural disasters
Mentions of mental illness, mental health, suicide ideation
References to queerphobia, racism, ableism
Non-graphic mentions of death, child death
References to living with disability, physical illness, Covid
A piece about about public sex
A piece about animal harm (killing and eating animals)
Allusions to drug use
Some swearing
Some wind distortion and other harsh sounds
If you have specific anxieties or triggers, check the transcript or ask a trusted friend to listen and give you feedback. Please let us know if there is something we’ve missed and we will add it to the show notes on our website.
Acknowledgement of Country: This issue and its documentation were edited in part on Brayakaulung (Gunaikurnai) Country. This always was and always will be Aboriginal land. We pay our respects to Gunaikurnai elders and we extend this to all Indigenous elders and Indigenous and First Nations listeners around the world.
Show notes for Issue 09
Opener - various contributors
Short description: A mixture of sounds and voices from the pieces in this issue.
Introduction - Jonathan (he/they) and Allysse (she/they)
Short description: Welcome and housekeeping with Allysse and Jonathan.
every beach - Helen (she)
Short description: Music. A piece from Helen’s album songs of time & distance.
Creator bio: Helen grew up in the foothills of the Welsh Misty Mountains before packing her spotted hanky on a stick, eventually washing up on the unforgiving concrete shores of a big city on this rainy plague island. Helen died in early 2024. May her memory be a blessing.
Creator statement: When we featured this piece in Issue 07, Helen wrote: “The original demotape was inspired by a visit to Barclodiad y Gawres, a Neolithic burial chamber on the coast at Ynys Môn (Anglesey). I had good memories of the day, which were brought back to mind after reading a tweet by the climate scientist Dr Genevieve Guenther, in response to the 2019 IPCC report, pointing out that climate change will have such a profound effect that "by 2100, every beach you've ever walked on will be below the waves.”
How do you find yourself if you're never by yourself? - Liz Sutherland (they)
Short description: Poetic non-fiction with field recordings. Native Australian animals and a short spoken word poem on a hike on Whadjuk Noongar country.
Creator bio: Liz Sutherland lives on the unceded lands of the Wurundjeri people of the Kulin nation. They are studying a Master of Arts (Writing and Literature) at Deakin University and recently joined the Board of Overland. Liz brings lived-experience narratives of neurodivergent, queer, polyam, and trans joy into their writing, and was a finalist in the Pearl Prize 2024 and the 2023 OutStanding LGBTQIA+ Short Story Awards. Their writing has appeared in the Hunter Writers Centre Grieve Anthology, the Wheeler Centre’s Spring Fling event ‘Stripped Queer’, ScratchThat Magazine, Into the Wetlands Poetry Anthology, at Q-Lit festival events, and more.
Creator link: Instagram
Creator statement: Follow me on a hike in the southern hills of Boorloo (Perth, Western Australia) on Whadjuk Noongar country as I ruminate on the incredible privilege of city-living at the same time as being urgently drawn out bush. Slowing down and appreciating the beauty of the natural world as we know it now, before even more of these lands change in response to the climate crisis we’re fuelling. Out here I’m in solitude from other humans but surrounded by life, none more important than any other.
Content notes: Swearing.
Wireless (a poem written during a power outage) - rYAn (he/they/any)
United States
