phati’tude: The Lavender Issue, ed. by Timothy Liu

Author: Edit Team

February 15, 2012

Today we’re excited to bring you The Lavender Issue of phati’tude, guest edited by Timothy Liu. This incredible collection features work by almost thirty LGBT contributors, including twenty-two poets (Eileen Myles and our own David Groff among them). Originally slated for release in summer 2010, we’re now excited to offer a complete PDF of the magazine on our site and share this issue with even more queer readers. Check out Timothy Liu’s introduction below, and then click here to enjoy The Lavender Issue in full.

When I was asked to guest edit THE LAVENDER ISSUE of phati’tude, I was admonished (more than once) to avoid choosing work that had “dicks and clits” in it. What a sad state of affairs, I thought to myself, that the word “lavender” for some immediately summoned phallic visions as if that were the primary source of linguistic pleasure for queer writers, as if the hetero literary world were somehow “above” such lewd tastes.

Yet let me be the first to admit that when sending my out my own orphan poems to find respective homes, I have on more than one occasion gone on “dick patrol,” making sure that the “clit quotient” in each of my submissions didn’t rock (too hard) whatever editorial boat. I remember a fellow peer in my undergraduate days at Brigham Young University who said to me after a particularly sexed-up text had been up for workshop, “Dude, you’ve got to get laid more often!” So I’m pleased to report that in this particular gathering of glitterati, plenty of these writers must be getting laid as their libidos have been channeled into lush terrains and rich conversations beyond the merely anatomical and into historical and cultural awareness.

Do Ask and Definitely Tell rules the day. Spunky. Wanton. Irreverent. Keep in mind those depraved/deprived souls trapped in Provo, Utah, looking for a way out of received conventions and tired tropes. So I offer this up as an antidote.