Tucked up in a corner on the fourth floor, stands an absolute gem of the University Libraries, The Special Collections: Poetry Collections. Through two double doors down a wooden paneled foyer adorned with oil paintings opens into the special collections. Part art exhibit, research facility and study space, The Special Collections Library boasts one of the largest poetry libraries of 20th and 21st century Anglophone literature in the world.
This past Thursday, The Poetry Collection hosted a pride event to celebrate Pride Week here at UB. The event featured The Poetry Collection’s exhibit, The Language of Magic: Queer Occult Poetics, highlighting important poets, writers and activists from the San Franciscan Renaissance of the 1950s and 60s and their avant garde writings on and about the Occult and how it influenced queer culture. The main section of the room held an exhibit with trading cards, poems and other writings featuring important influential writers, such as Robert Duncan, Jack Spicer and Helen Adam, while the back half was dedicated to arts and crafts activities. There was a button making station which featured slogans supporting queer identities and pop culture references, a tote decorating station, stickers, a station for taking polaroids with friends and the crowd favorite, a typewriter station featuring two different type writers from different eras that patrons were free to test out and even write their own poetry with.
The event was packed with students and quite a few faculty members coming out to partake in the activities, there was also a snack and refreshments table, where the macaron plate had to be refilled several times over the course of the hour and for good reason. The music played at the event featured popular queer artists like Chappell Roan, George Michael and more. Bright decorations, good music, tasty snacks, truly what more could be asked for?
Dr. Alison Fraser, the assistant curator for The Poetry Collection, as well as one of the organizers of the event explained more of why this event is important to UB students stating,
“At a University as big as UB, it’s hard sometimes to find community and it's hard to know the events that are going on, but the libraries are a place where all students connect, and so it seems to me that this is a great thing that we can do to help forge that community.”
Dr. Fraser went on to explain the deeper intentions behind the exhibit itself, saying how,
“There are these really interesting unwritten stories, or you know stories that are known but not circulated and so I hope that the exhibit brings those out to the floor a little bit more.”
She also discussed some of the biases surrounding the conversation of queer writers and how she was, “Really interested in bringing up lesbian poet voices because so much of the conversation in scholarship around this community is just on gay men, so the exhibit starts with two lesbian poets who are basically just not talked about anymore, Elsa Gidlow and Madeline Gleason… so the exhibit is really about re-narrating a certain story.”
Dr. Fraser elaborated about the connection of queer culture to the occult and why it holds such an important symbolic place to the community.
“I was thinking about the word occult, in particular, because of its supernatural connotation, but also in the way something that’s occulted is cut off from view, that made me think of the closet,” Fraser said. “Thinking about something being queer coded and you’re not initiated into that, then you know I can say something to you and you won’t understand it, but if you are another queer person, you’ll instantly understand what I’m saying…which seems to be very much a piece of magical tradition.”
The event draws together community and connection within while also educating the community on aspects of queer history, culture and understanding. Truly a wonderfully curated and dedicated event.
For anyone interested in learning more about the artists or about the exhibit itself, they should drop by The Special Collections Library for a little research or use this link to the Collection Spotlight.
Marina Noack is an assistant arts editor and can be reached at marina.noack@ubspectrum.com
