Lighting the Candle Down the Dark Hallway...
Introducing Novel Niche's Substack, full of poetic confessions, frogs, and hiraeth
This is Novel Niche, a soon-to-be weekly newsletter about Queer & Transgressive Close Readings from the Ungovernable & Dangerous Margins.
If you don’t know me, welcome and well-met! I’m Shivanee Ramlochan, a Trinidadian poet, essayist and writer with a dirty mouth. I was raised in rural Trinidad, in a village called Las Lomas, and some of my best friends there are still cows (and goats).
My first book of poems, Everyone Knows I Am a Haunting, was published by Peepal Tree Press in 2017, and my second book, a hybrid essay/memoir about Indo-Caribbean women’s disobedience, Unkillable, is forthcoming from Noemi Press in 2022.
Starting November 1st, this newsletter will:
give you behind-the-curtain glimpses into the writing and editing of Unkillable
share thoughts, mini-reviews and sprawling rambles on my inner reading life
offer advice, spells and conjures towards creating your own wild poetic practice
invariably song the merits of frogs, snakes, and the aforementioned cows/goats
perform close readings (line-by-line, heartbeat-by-pulse) of single poems online
Thank you for considering a free subscription to Novel Niche. I’m delighted you’ve landed here. If you think this space is too pagan, wild, unfuckwithable, queer, ribald, NC-17, pornographic, unrestrained and hirsute for you… you ain’t seen nothin’ yet.
As a preview of that promised mane, here’s a family photograph that’ll feature in my first post. My journey with my hair is important to Unkillable, every wayward strand.
If you’re ready, hit the blood-red button below to join me. I promise you something unkillable, in return. See you on November 1st, wild beauties, holy terrors, all.