Don’t ignore butch lesbians, says T.S. Eliot prize winner Joelle Taylor
Taylor, 54, said she hoped her prize-winning “C+nto & Othered Poems” could act as a catalyst for other under-represented LGBTQ+ people to offer “an alternative narrative”, urging TV production companies to embrace them as writers. “It’s about the media accepting a far more diverse set of narratives, and the way we look and owning the fact that they own the narrative to begin with,” Taylor told the Thomson Reuters Foundation in a video call from her London home.
Taylor, who was named earlier this month as winner of the 25,000-pound ($33,692) 2021 prize, joins the likes of Ted Hughes and Seamus Heaney in winning the high-profile award. “The more we put out alternative ideas of what it is to be a woman, or what it is to be lesbian, the better,” said Taylor, who praised LGBTQ+ filmmakers such as Campbell X and Roman Manfredi, alongside the recent documentary Rebel Dykes.
In recent years, some butch and gender non-conforming lesbians have come to the fore, such as Lea DeLaria and Hannah Gadsby, who initially found success in the United States and Australia respectively.
But when asked about the representation of butch lesbians in the mainstream media, Taylor was scathing. “What representation?
