Description
Poetry chapbook. FERVOR: POEMS FROM THE EAST VILLAGE is a celebratory exploration of the rituals of love, loss, and desire. The collection sifts through the inner emotional landscape of the development of romance through chivalry and gender dynamics, following the destruction, mourning, and healing as relationships grow, change, and end. The urban textures of New York both amplify and distance human connection and relation as the city itself becomes a lover. LGBT
Zaedryn Meade was born in Juneau, Alaska, and lived in Colorado and Seattle before settling in New York City. This is her third book of poems. She is very active in writing circles, including performance poetry, in the New York City area. Meade is an award-winning writer and speaker focusing on individual, interpersonal, and institutional power through genders, sexualities, and relationships.
Zaedryn’s writing has been widely published online and in anthologies such as The Remedy: Trans and Queer Writers on Health and Healthcare; Queering Sexual Violence; Queer: A Reader for Writers; and Persistence: All Ways Butch and Femme. Meade has edited two erotica anthologies, Say Please: Lesbian BDSM Erotica and Best Lesbian Erotica 2012, both from Cleis Press. Sweet & Rough: Queer Kink Erotica, a collection of short stories, was a finalist for the Lambda Literary Lesbian Erotica Award in 2017. Meade is the recipient of the NLA-International Cynthia Slater Nonfiction Article award in 2015 and the NLA-International John Preston Short Fiction award in 2016. Zed has been a guest speaker on gender and sexuality at colleges since 2008, and has degrees in gender studies, social change and creative writing from the University of Washington.
Two chapbooks, Covet (2001) and Valence: Fool’s Gold in the Shape of Poems (2004), and one spoken word CD, For the Record (2004). The third in her chapbook trilogy, Fervor: Poems from the East Village, was published in 2008 by Pleasure Boat Studio: A Literary Press. Her smut stories can be found in Secret Slaves: Erotic Stories of Bondage (Alyson), Love at First Sting (Cleis), Best Lesbian Erotica 2006 and 2007 (Cleis), and Super Short, Super Sexy Stories. Her poetry has been included in various collections including The Seattle Review and NPR’s “This I Believe” project. She studied and taught performance poetry at the Bent Writing Institute for queers. She received an Honorable Mention in the Emerging Lesbian Writers Fund from the Astraea Foundation in 2008.
Also by Meade Erotix: Literary Journal of Somatics, Maverick Press
Cerise –
I must say I love this book. My favorite line: ‘everyone nests, then everyone leaves. there is truth in migration.’ I have all of Meade’s books, but this one is my favorite.
Some of these poems are sort of brutally true, like ‘how to survive your first year in New York City.’ It’s wickedly funny, at least if you’ve lived there. But all of these poems, many centered on heartbreak and love and sex, (much like life I suppose), taken together evoke one of those albums by your favorite folk/rock/punk/indie band that starts at the beginning and tells a little story with the music as it wraps around to the end.
Buy this book! Read the poems! And support not just Meade but all of the beloved queer poets who make this world a better place.
R. Destello –
I’ve seen Zaedryn perform in Seattle, and I am always blown away by the way she writes. Her words reach deep into my heart and yank at my aorta. I LOVE her!!