Introducing our latest Featured Artist…Jeremy Mifsud!
Animal Heart Press is committed to womxn and their supporters. In the spirit of highlighting those who support womxn, we are pleased to introduce this month’s Featured Artist, Jeremy Mifsud!
Jeremy Mifsud (he/him) is a queer and autistic poet from Malta. Social ineptitude becomes a catalyst for his art as he weaves unsaid words into poems and stories. He is the author of “From the Backseat of a Bus” (2019) and “Welcome to the Sombre Days” (2018). More of his work appears or is forthcoming in Ghost City Press, Terse Journal, Door is a Jar Magazine, Burning House Press and others. You can find Jeremy on his website or on Twitter.
We’re introducing Jeremy with a guest blog post from him. Over to you, Jeremy!
Favourite Collections
As the first of my posts as a featured poet, I wanted to highlight a couple of my favourite poetry collections and share why they mean so much to me.
The first collection I chose is Blythe Baird’s “If My Body Could Speak.” In her poetry, she writes about her personal experiences with eating disorders, misogyny, queer identity and rape. As a male-presenting person, I have not been subjected to the misogyny that girls/women go through; yet through Blythe’s writing, I could understand what it is like. Moreover, I take this collection to heart because when she speaks about coming out and dealing with family relationships, I had so many ‘aha’ moments. Moreover, as an assault survivor myself, her strength in sharing rape poems was extremely cathartic, something that I truly needed to read.
I’ve also found Andrea Gibson’s “Lord of the Butterflies” to be touching. Their poetry explores queerness (both gender and sexuality) as well as contemporary, political issues. As a queer reader, I am drawn in to Gibson’s poems and have a connection that I can’t explain in words (which is contrary to what I’d like to do in a blog post, I know). The way they write gave me a space to feel at home and understood — it’s this sort of representation in literature that is important for minorities. I remember reading this collection and not being able to stop, and was well blown away by most of the poems.
I’d love to hear from you readers on which poetry books you cherish and why. Join the conversation on Twitter – I’ll share some of your recommendations in a later post!