Homocore Anthology - Preorder
HOMOCORE was a queer punk zine, published in San Francisco from September 1988 through Spring 1991.
Review in Razorcake #152:
Let me just start off by saying that I feel that the Homocore Anthology is already a landmark event in this year’s independent publishing sphere, and will remain a landmark event for queers, punks, and zine people of all stripes. Seven issues may not seem like a lot, but those seven issues make up almost 300 full-size pages, and like any zine worth its weight in newsprint, those pages are crammed with often tiny text (cut out by hand, line by line, with a razor blade) and not-so-tiny images.
Homocore originally ran from 1988-1991, and has been more or less out of print since. It reacted and reacts to the normalizing tendencies in both the queer and punk worlds (“…too weird, not butch enough, not femme enough, not S&M enough, too S&M, not “straight” enough. We wore the wrong clothes and we hated disco.” (from the introduction)) that we are still faced with today, in much the same language, in much the same places. It rejects the notion of a homogeneous gay or queer community just as it rejects the notion of a homogeneous punk community.
It bites the hands that feed (because it needs to, or because the hand likes it) and in return feeds out a shocking amount of information: bands, zines, news, events, struggles, and a letters section that grows with each issue. The treasure trove of zines and bands alone is enough for a lifetime of now-archival searching, and that trove is a testament to the necessity of preserving out work despite the seeming immediacy and completeness of the digital realm. It’s also a testament to the primacy of one’s relationship to the material world, something I find myself more and more alone in my “queer” “community” by the month.
Radical joy and radical rage exist alongside of and inside each other. Nothing is censored. Everything is here. I found this collection endlessly inspiring, reading it in-between hours standing at the copy machine producing a new edition of Willow Wilderness Hour’s excellent lord, the boy is naturally queer, one of the most unflinching and radical works of queer poetry I’ve read, let alone had the privilege of producing, in recent years, and pondering my own work and place in the world of gay letters. Homocore Anthology reminded me exactly what I’m about, why I spend those hours swearing at the copy machine, and for what?: for those modes of being together we have yet to invent, and are indeed inventing, one razor blade-and-pasted line at a time. Essential reading no matter how you swing. -jimmy cooper
288 pages, full-size, perfect bound book.
***This is a preorder and due at the end of May ***
