WINNER of the Bateau 2019/2020 BOOM Chapbook Contest
Derek Berry’s Buggery
BUGGERY investigates queer desire, loneliness, & joy in the rural south. Buggery is a coming out, a celebration, and a reckoning, with poems about the messiness of pleasure, mothman, St. Sebastian, queer ANGER, cruising, sloppy want, sadness, and the sugar crash of heartbreak. Inventive & exuberant, Derek’s work strikes a tightrope balance between exploring desire & death, a political & fierce & filthy shudder of poems.
Praise for Derek Berry’s Buggery:
“Derek Berry’s Buggery haunts— and is haunted by— the rural south. These are poems graceful and violent, aching and unbowed… hard to peg as light shifting through cypress groves.” —Adam Houle, author of Stray
“The evolution of Derek Berry’s poetry has been a revelation in recent years. The poet writes here about sexuality and queerness with a fresh, unmitigated voice, proven to be one of Carolina’s best and most enduring. All of us become more enlightened as Derek follows this fearless poetic path” — Len Lawson, author of Chime
Derek Berry is a writer, teaching artist, and literary organizer. They are the author of the novel Heathens & Liars of Lickskillet County, as well as two previous poetry chapbooks Skinny Dipping with Strangers and Glitter Husk. Derek is the co-founder of the literary non-profit The Unspoken, which provides accessible and innovative literary programming throughout Charleston County. They also work with Contribute Your Verse, a creative consulting agency, and host the Contribute Your Verse podcast. They live in Aiken, South Carolina, where they work during the day in a historic curation facility. They eat too much pasta & like to catch ghost Pokémon.
((Buggery will be published on March 5th, 2020. All preorders will ship out after that date))