In Portobello, writers, poets and artists launch the latest Lesbian Art Circle

The queue, of mostly women, went down the stairs and into Bello Bar on Portobello Plaza.

Lively chatter filled the dim underground room.

At the far end, against a red backdrop and lit by a pair of old lamps, Meredith Davis and Ava Chapman stood behind a microphone propped on a stand.

“Someone at the bar was saying, ‘Who knew there were so many lesbians in Dublin?’” Davis told the room. “We did. We just needed to lure them out with sad poetry.”

Davis and Chapman are co-editors of the collection Lesbian Art Circle, vol. III which holds poetry, essays, stories, collages, photos and a crossword. Last Thursday, 19 September, was the launch.

This would be a discussion, Chapman told those gathered. “Speakers will come up and read, and then you guys can ask questions. It’s collaborative.”

Everyone should be able to talk to the contributors and explore their creative processes, Davis said. “Or if you just want to know more about things.”

And so, over two hours, readings were followed by moments for questions and answers, and hands shot up, and voices teased out ideas and influences and how this or that writer had evolved.

Lesbian Art Circle – its first issue launched in December 2023 – is both a publication and a culture club for queer and questioning women and non-binary people, born of the editors’ love of debate and discussions around writing and art.

“We wanted to create a publication that is then engaged with more thoroughly,” says Davis.

A social circle

The poet Leire Sarto Zubiaurre read her piece, “Poem II, in a heatwave”. It paid homage to “Poem II” by the poet Adrienne Rich, she said.

Zubiaurree read Rich’s poem too. She felt an affinity to how Rich depicted her relationship with her own partner, she said.

Poet and songwriter Roísín Nic Ghearailt raised her hand. “What did your girlfriend think when you read it to her?”

Said a voice from the back of the room: “I loved it.”

During the intermission on Thursday, Nic Ghearailt, Zubiaurre and her partner crossed the room to each other, to continue their conversation.

It’s a really great social event, says Hana Flamm, one of the poets who read on the night. “The Dublin lesbian communities are still pretty small. I came with some people I knew, and saw one person sitting alone. It was super easy to be able to ask them to come and sit with us.”

They were all there for the same reason, she says. “To meet other queer people and talk about art and writing.”

The editors want the Lesbian Art Circle to get people talking, they said the next day over coffee at the Morning Bakery on Pleasants Street.

Davis and Chapman themselves struck up a friendship through art.

Chapman had been editor of Icarus, Trinity College’s literary journal. Davis co-founded ReFunk, an upcycling business.

They met at an exhibition in the Block T studios, Chapman said. “We just really enjoyed talking about queerness in art.”

That had been the focus of that exhibition, said Davis. “And it was kind of one of the reasons we thought of the Lesbian Art Circle. That low-tempo, sociable environment was a really nice way to meet people.”

They thought they would try to create that, she says.

A nuanced discussion

Now, a “surprise speaker”, said Chapman, stepping up to the microphone.

Davis would read her essay, “The Implications of Bad Design: Against the Progress Pride Flag”.

It was a 10-minute critique of the most recent iteration of the Pride flag, designed by the artist Daniel Quasar.

It was popularised as more inclusive than the original flag, made by Gilbert Baker in 1978.

Because it added five new colours to Baker’s six – explicitly representing trans people and people of colour, she says.

“This intention, I believe to be illogical, condescending, and in the case of the latter, white normative,” said Davis.

The visual implication is that trans people and people of colour were not already included in that rainbow, she said.

She tore into this separation. And, how Quasar placed the flag under a Creative Commons Licence that isn’t totally copyright-free, as well as the artist’s decision to partner with food delivery service, Deliveroo in 2021, on an alphabet soup.

“Lastly, and most simply put, the flag is ugly,” she said.

It spawned an in-depth conversation with the role of a flag, and alternatives designs.

“I don’t have massively warm feelings to the original flag, but in comparison, way warmer feelings,” she told one audience member, who had asked about Baker’s 1978 flag.

Events like Lesbian Art Circle mean people can delve into items like this with more nuance, she says.

Davis had been keen to talk to other queer people about the Progress Pride Flag, she said later.

“I wanted to ask, Is this what we want to represent ourselves?” she said, “As opposed to maybe, if you were speaking as a queer person to a more straight audience.”

It’s a freeing environment to tease out those ideas without the risk of being co-opted, she says. “We get to make these decisions, let’s have a conversation among ourselves.”

Creating an archive

For Chapman, part of it all is about making a stronger archive of queer female writing.

Her dissertation, which was specifically about this, made her realise how so many of these groups and their writings were ephemeral, she says. “They weren’t really included in that many magazines.”

Histories of Irish queer women are often kept alive through storytelling more often than they are recorded, she says. “There are very few good histories.”

She could only find a handful of decent sources, she says. Publications like Queer Times and the Gay Community News (GCN) magazine, she says.

Davis says it’s not just a past scarcity of publications like this. “But as well, the current gap. There’s a lack of existing contemporary ones.”

“So we’re trying to fill the historical and current gap,” says Chapman.

“Writing history,” says Davis, laughing.