RJ Selby
RJ Selby they, them, theirs College of Arts & Sciences Class of 2021, Area Program in Poetry Writing (APPW)
RJ, a queer student, wrote “How Queer You Are” around the 50th anniversary of Stonewall, head full of ruminations on queer history. There’s a desire in this poem, & in the LGBTQ+ headspace as a whole, of immortalisation: to try & reclaim some permanent space, sense of identity, in the face of oppression & institutions of force, herein addressed in the latter section of the poem as death. This poem wants to reject those forces, through ignoring it in the first half, while overpowering it in the latter. The first section is explicitly directed towards the archetype of queer youth, as during the AIDS crisis, with the second towards those repressing forces. RJ also wears their inspirations openly here, in the epigraphs preceding each of the sections, which further reference the existence & empowerment of a queer canon. RJ performs their poems with U.Va.’s Flux Slam Poetry & Spoken Word CIO, & that sonic element is an integral part of their poetry given this background. You can find them at Flux’s weekly open mics.
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