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“omg so i actually made some poems and found some other text stuff

When Jonas asked me to contribute to P.E series I was a bit sad because I didn’t feel like I was enough of a poet to be included, but he pointed out some things and I was like duh I use text all the time in my work. I write down words and phrases all the time, to use as prompts and dialogue when writing comics, or for artwork or exhibition titles.
I started looking through my stash and found many drawings that I could decide are actually poems.
I wanted to do more than that though. A few things have happened:

I did an exhibition last year where I spent time figuring out titles for my works that truly felt like I know what I’m doing with that. My friend even said it made she wanted to write an essay all about the titles. So that really boosted me. I was like “the things I’ve learnt from comics are now properly crossing over into this gallery type of stuff”.

For the first time in my life I’m using the dating apps. It’s an extremely liberating moment for me, I finally feel like I’m sexy, I have given myself permission to have desire, and now I need to learn how to express it. Grindr in particular has brought me face to face with some extremely inspiring text. The horniest text I have ever read, the most blunt and direct profiles, very horny chats… I’m suddenly processing this super intense world of words and it would be so weird if I tried to prevent that from leaking into my work. I don’t how much it is visible in this zine, but there’s little bits of evidence. I’m still prudish and private though. I’m not interested at all in exposing myself to an art audience, who don’t deserve access to my private world. But I can use certain new things to my vocabulary now.

Other things that have gone into these poems:
– Listening to music and noting down particularly appealing phrases, usually sad and melodramatic. One of the poems is notes I made during a meeting, the words were arranged all over the paper with lots of gaps. Looking back, (just FYI I have very basic k-pop taste) there’s lyrics from; How you like that and Lovesick Girls by Blackpink, Step Back by Girls On Top. I’m also always very very inspired listening to Current 93, it’s the music I listen to most, and brings me to a place of open-ness.
– I’ve been super inspired super inspired for ages by Odwalla1221, their proximity to cringe, (AND how can u not accept the presence of the cringe factor when writing poetry?? that would be delusional) — I actually made a video for my friend of me reading out one of the poems and he said it was “woahhhh! perfect cringe level balancement”
– Also TOO influenced by Women’s History Museum and not sure how to deal with it.

The other day I listened to the White Pube podcast where they reflected on their text “Are white girls capable of making art that’s not about themselves” and I wondered, considering these poems… would it be really affirming for me to have a white-girl-art-about-myself phase? Maybe these poems is me dipping my toe…?”

Leomi Sadler