Forge Zine Valentine's Day 2022

THE CRESCENT | 14 FEB 2022

FORGE ZINE PRESENTS

Valentine's Day: A NIGHT OF ARTS

PROGRAMME

Hello and Welcome!

We are very excited to welcome you to our second Night of Arts event. The experience of hosting on Yorkshire Day was so overwhelmingly daunting but we just had to do it again!

We have some great acts but I will let their bios do the talking. While we are setting the mood please feel free to peruse the delightful artwork and unique books found at the back.

If you are more of a reader have a flick though our wonderful programme to learn a splash about LGBTQ History. Hallmark have also requested your help with their act tonight. Go seek yourself a drink and you shall find...

Thank you for your attendance and support, it means a lot to us for performing to an empty room is a rather soul crushing activity. We hope you enjoy our Valentine's Day event. If you wish to stay in touch with Forge Zine, for there maybe another Yorkshire Day Event this August, leave your email address in our mailing book (located by the ticket desk) for the first scoop of intel on all of our events.

About us Forge Zine was established in May 2019 when we were nearing the end of our university career. We wished to continue to attend activities, festivals and events with the frequency that we did at university. This, paired with a need to publish work on a small scale, enabled Forge Zine to be born. We publish editions quarterly on the Solstices and Equinoxes. We are an inclusive zine and we love when creatives challenge our publishing skills by sending us weird and wonderful submissions. Yorkshire Day: Night of Arts was our debut event and we have thoroughly enjoyed the process of setting up and hosting them so far! So keep an eye out for future Forge Zine events in the future. All our editions can be read through issuu.com/forgezine, or find a social media account of ours and there’s a link in our bio which will take you there!

@ForgeZine @forgezine @forgezine Find our previous editions in print at forgezine.bigcartel.com Email us at theforgezinesubmissions@gmail.com

E. Hartley Smith Poet, Publisher & Event Creator Elle has played an integral part in creating the idea behind the previous Yorkshire Day and current Valentine's Day events.

Elle has always held a place in her heart for performing. between dance and musical recitals as a child being on a stage in front of people still scares the sh*t out of her! She is confident that adrenaline and the beer in her hand will cure this fear on the night.

York has always held a place in Elle's heart, due to this it was evident to her that she would study here. In 2016 she attended York St John University to study Creative Writing.

While she loves the process of writing creatively she is focusing on her newest adventure of bring you the best and most unique events in York. So stay in touch for more events like this one in the future.

theforgezinesubmissions @gmail.com

@forgezine

James Rance - Poet James Rance is a York-based poet, collage artist and performer, working as part of the Forge Zine team to help bring you a night of live performance and music.

He moved to York in 2016 to study at York St. John, and was so inspired by this wonderful, historical city that he never wanted to leave.

While he has not been able to perform much due to the ongoing pandemic, he has been focusing on creating work in preparation for the return of live poetry nights, and is very excited to be returning to the stage. James’ work is inspired by surrealism, weird dreams, Pagan rituals, psychedelia and the slightly absurd. His passion for performance comes from a background in theatre and live poetry, and his spoken-word poetry aims to push boundaries and freak the audience out.

He cannot wait to get up to weird antics in front of an audience once again!

@jrancewriter @james.rance48

Acid Bath Publishing Acid Bath Publishing is a small independent publishing house founded in Sheffield in May 2020. They are dedicated to publishing fiction and poetry that is clear, candid and corrosive. After one year based in London, the small press is back in its rightful place, with its third anthology, TRAVELS & TRIBULATIONS, soon to be published in February 2022. www.acidbathpublishing.com

@acidbath publishing

@Acid BathPub

Paul Whelan Poet and Publisher Paul Whelan is a poet and fiction writer from Sheffield. He is the Editor of Acid Bath Publishing and an Assistant Editor for Forge Zine.

Having studied in York and London, he is back in the People's Republic of South Yorkshire, where he sometimes writes. His poems have been published in the anthologies, Beyond the Walls 2019 (Valley Press) and Over Yonder (Greenteeth Press, 2021).

@PR_Whelan

@pr_Whelan

We Have Always Walked This Land Errol G. Harsley LGBT history is hidden and often purposefully destroyed to uphold the false belief that being queer is purely a side effect of modernity. That is a blatantly false claim. I present some queer historical figures; a few familiar faces and new ones too.

We have been in royal households as early as the 11th Century. Edward II, the fourth son of Edward I, being one such noble figure. In his teenage years he met a similar aged youth named Piers Gaveston, who first appeared in the household accounts in the year 1300.

Reportedly the two boys became inseparable until Edward II had a significant fall out with his father over Edward I wanting to give the County of Ponthieu to Piers. This led to King Edward I exiling Piers Gaveston to France.

Edward II rode with Gaveston to Dover as well as giving him fine outfits, horses, herons and swans after his exile was ordered. Edward only became heir apparent after his older brother Alphonso passed away; afterwards Edward II would accompany his father, King Edward I, on many campaigns to pacify Scotland. After six years he was knighted in a grand ceremony held at Westminster Abbey and shortly after King Edward I died to be succeeded by King Edward II. One of the first Kingly acts King Edward II performed after his coronation was to invite Gaveston back to England and make him Earl of Cornwall. After this many nobles grew uneasy at the closeness between the two men; chronicallers gave Gaveston the unofficial title of Second King.

Agave/Gabe Williamson Drag Prince Hailing from Yorkshire and having worked with Forge Zine already, Agave has returned to York for another Night of Arts.

A self-described "Drag Prince", they pay homage to the theatrical roots of drag, incorporating spoken word and poetry into their art (despite getting glitter everywhere in the process!).

Having spent a year honing their makeup skills, Agave decided to grab 2022 by the horns. Their style combines soft splashes of colour with elements of 90s-00s punk - eyeliner and pastels feature heavily in their aesthetic.

Already taking to the stage alongside York drag group The Family Shambles, they love nothing more than to be on a stage and to make people smile, although their love of sweet things comes a close second! @agav3_queen @gabby.wills.98

Heritage Afolabi - Artist Heritage Afolabi was born in Ibadan Nigeria in May 2003.

She moved to England at the age of two and she is currently living at the University of York. She studied Art at both GCSE and A level. Upon her application to University she decided to study biochemistry.

Heritage is mostly a portrait artist and works in pencil, acrylics and oil paint. When not working on a commission she draws and paints whatever inspiration appears to her. She is often inspired by emotions, science, and psychology. Her current themes are dominated by a lot of red tones; incorporating gore into her art to portray meaning and emotion. The gore helps her to show pain and selfdestruction in a way that is bold but still shows regret.

"When I was little, I would draw every day, and my parents would always tell me how great I was no matter how terrible the drawing was. I just kept making those terrible drawings and they just kept telling me the terrible drawings were good, until they weren’t lying anymore."

Max Palmer - Comedian Max Palmer is a stand-up comedian based in York.

He first got involved in comedy when he started performing Drama at York St. John University. He later took the laziness fuelled leap to stand–up because in stand-up not even Max knows what the script is.

His main influences include Bill Maher, Russell Howard, and Dave Chappelle.

A life-long fan of comedy, Max is passionate about it being taken seriously as an art form, and yes, he realises the irony in wanting comedy to be taken seriously. He believes that jokes can be made about any subject, that comedy should be without an ideology, and that the primary focus of a comedian is to make people laugh, an idea that he feels has been lost in recent years. Speaking of which, thanks Twitter for the death of nuance, no-one now can have a detailed conversation about anything because everyone's attention span has been restricted to 240 characters, your average McDonald’s order has more potential for complexity than that. I’ve forgotten what I was talking about. Something to do with how great Max is? Yeah, it was definitely that.

We Have Always Walked This Land Michael Dillon (1915 - 1962) was the first trans man to successfully undergo phalloplasty. He was born into aristocracy, attended a very well renowned college before acquiring some testosterone pills from a doctor and starting to transition. Word spread of his transition; he fled to Bristol and began work in a garage; testosterone pills allowed him to fully pass as male at this point, even the garage manager began insisting Dillon be gendered correctly.

During a brief spell in the hospital he came to the attention of one of the very few practising plastic surgeons, who would then perform a double mastectomy on Dillion, change his birth certificate and put him in touch with Harold Gillies; who would later perform the first successful phalloplasty on a trans man. Gillies had already performed many genital reconstruction surgeries on soldiers from the World War and was more than willing to perform phalloplasty on Dillon. However he was unable to do it immediately due to the influx of injured soldiers he had to attend to first.

Before and during the healing process Dillon went to medical school in Dublin with altered records showing he went to acclaimed boys schools rather than the women’s college he attended in Oxford. Gillies performed on Dillon 13 times between 1946 and 1949, their cover story being Dillon had an odd placed urethra on his penis that needed fixing.

Dillon however would blame war injuries for his newly acquired limp.

Throughout his life Dillon avoided close relationships with women as to not out himself, taking on a misogynistic character to make sure people stayed away. He was outed shortly after his father died, he fled to India and converted to Buddhism; he died there in 1962.

Errol G. Harsley

Hallmark Theatre Performers Hallmark Theatre are a new company formed in January 2020. Based in York, Jojo and Tom both studied Drama and Theatre at York St John, and the University of Lincoln respectively. They formed quickly after their graduations.

During lockdown, they frequently used their official instagram page to showcase work created. This included live online soirées for aspiring performers, storytelling and creative writing.

In the past year, Hallmark enjoyed co-hosting the Yorkshire Day: Night of Arts with Forge Zine, and also performed improvisation for the first time! Tonight, Hallmark are back performing improvisation again and are currently making plans for more improvisation and comedy shows in 2022.

Jojo Hall

Tom Allmark

Elsie Franklin and Myles Noble Musicians "Elsie Franklin is a rising talent in the country blues community, playing old time American folk music, incorporating everything from blues to jazz with a resonator guitar and vocals. She is a regular busker in York and plays various venues in and around the city. She is widely regarded as a unique and skilled guitarist as well as a powerful vocalist by many highly acclaimed musicians of the genre, and is described in an article in The Country Blues as "outright superb and exciting."

@mylesnoblemusic @elsiefranklinblues

Myles Noble is a highly acclaimed saxophonist, currently residing in York.

They run the notorious Vanbrugh Jazz Night at UoY, the most popular event on campus and locally regarded as one of the best live jazz nights in the city. They also run multiple function bands, in addition to their own band, Floral Pattern, who are cultivating a fast growing local fan base.

The two have come together as a duo to bring you jazz, swing, blues and originals that will warm your heart and get your feet moving!"

ELIZZA - Artist ELIZZA is an Experimental Artist using abstract approaches and multi-media techniques to explore the endless cycle of birth and death, and the liminal state between death and rebirth, drawing on Buddhism, Paganism and Eastern spirituality.

ELIZZA will be selling their Milky Spores 2021 collection which is inspired by Buddhist belief and Bardo which is the liminal state between death and new life.

ELIZZA expresses this state of existence between two lives on earth as a result of her experiences during Covid lockdown where she felt that her consciousness was not always connected with a physical body, and experienced a variety of phenomena such as being trapped within an egg-like structure.

The Milky Spores collection explores these themes via the natural world, insects and plants as they experience the repetition of life of death.

@k.eliza.art

k.eliza.art@ gmail.com

https:// keliza.art

ELIZZAART

We Have Always Walked This Land Errol G. Harsley We have also been performers for aeons; Sappho an Ancient Greek poet who ran a school for girls on the Island of Lesbos. Fondly nicknamed the Tenth Muse by all those who heard and read her work. The word Sapphic created from her name, inspired by her love of women as well as the term Lesbian inspired by the homeland of this extraordinary poetess.

A more modern sapphic performer is Gwen Lally (1882 - 1963); actress, male impersonator and all round lesbian. Throughout her acting career she only played a female character once, the rest of her performances she played male parts and was so convincing the audience would forget she was a woman altogether.

Lally organised large pageants reenacting historical events, often directing up 7000 volunteers to act out scenes from the past. She was one of the best theatre directors of her age.

She exaggerated her androgynous apperance with masculine clothes and short hairstyles as was the fashion for

‘bohemian’ ladies of the time. Her partner Mabel Gibson often joined her on stage where they acted as heterosexual couples mainly from Shakespeare plays such as Henry V and Princess Katherine. Lally and Mabel lived together from 1924 until Lally’s death in 1963, all her worldly belongings were willed to Mabel; who then referred to herself as a widow.

There are endless possibilities to can be done even when held back by society’s shortcomings.

Thank you!

FROM FORGE ZINE We hope you enjoyed the night as much as we did. Keep in touch by liking our Social Media accounts to know when all the fun stuff happens!

Our Spring Edition of Forge Zine is published on Sunday 20th March 2022. Stay tuned through our website to purchase our latest editions.

@ForgeZine @forgezine @ForgeZine

forgezine.bigcartel.com

theforgezinesubmissions@gmail.com