Saturday 23 January 2021

the Lundy rabbit's complaint


Who’s this odd bloke puffed up there outside my hole?
I only nipped out for some dandelion, and when I got back
There he was, bold as you like in his black dinner jacket,
Saying “Come in here dressed like that? That won’t do at all!”

The cheek of it! We came over with the Normans, I’ll have you know.
In fact, my people have often dined with royalty.
And now here’s this blow-in, shirt still wet from the sea.
Maybe he’s drunk? He’s got a nose on him like a rainbow.

Ouch.
Nasty nip to it too.
Says they’re only here for the summer season
And then they’ll be off cruising down to Spain, when the puffling’s
Gone away to college. Empty nesters eh, he said, feathers ruffling
Not empty enough if you ask me thought I, with reason,
Thinking of the kit’s old nest down there, my belly fur and hay,
The pong of fishbones and old guano that’ll never go away



...I started off writing an entirely different puffin poem, but there you go, you never know what'll happen when you start writing. Here's more

You often read nice things and stuff in
Books for kids regarding puffins
But sadly there is not a jot
On gannets, or the guillemot

Thursday 14 January 2021

new map of Genderia


Three years ago Yvonne Aburrow mentioned their survey of the continent of Genderia, demonstrating that it is rather more of a complex landscape than often represented by a binary, a line or spectrum. And I did a hasty map to accompany that work. But we thought it was time to update and improve it, so here's the new version. Yvonne's blog is here.

You won't find the Secret Volcano Base of the Trans Cabal, of course, because it's secret. But there is Transgender-am-Berg, in the Transalpine region across the hills from the happy village of Little Cisgender on the Wold. Upriver are the mountains where the Fierce Femmes hang out, while down in the Queer Archipelago there's all sorts of nonbinary stuff going on. 

You can get a copy of the map in my Etsy shop; it comes in A4 or A3 sizes. Here's the A4. And here's the A3.