Luke | Celticist | Wales | He/Him | Nhw/Fe (They/He) in Welsh!)| Official Tumblr of the Llyfr Enfys project / also my personal blog. https://prosiectllyfrenfys.gumroad.com/
To clarify a little, my poem "To that Drag Queen in Corfu on the Night of the Eclipse" is one of many in the debut anthology "I Zig and I Zag", published by Margin 2 Margin (M2M) Books (a local indie press set up in an Aberystwyth bar I frequented before it closed last year). The anthology is explicitly made up of contributions from marginalised poets as the publisher is strongly by and for marginalised writers and stories.
I may be slightly biased but it's a fantastic anthology imo! There were contributions from around the world, including from Kenyan poet Masaka Madeda , who wrote the eponymous epic poem "I Zig and I Zag" (found on pages 32 - 147. It's absolutely massive and I'm fortunate enough to have heard Madeda perform an excerpt of his poem via videolink (in the aforementioned bar Iries). The rest of the anthology has works by other incredible marginalised poets and I'm still in awe that my work gets to sit alongside them.
Some personal favourites are Mohammed Abdoel and Ciel Saludes' memoir poem "My Mother's Rose-Tinted Glasses" (page 10) , Rakyah Assam's postcolonial grief poem "You Will Witness This from Wherever You Stand" (page 20) and BrĆ¢n Denning's poem about the nature of want and maternal figures, "Neglect is a Needle ā" (page 18) themed on the cloth mother/wire mother experiment.
My own poem, "To that Drag Queen in Corfu on the Night of the Eclipse" (page 15) is about a real experience of mine while holidaying with my (now-estranged) parents in Corfu. It's about finding other queer people and longing for connection with them while still in the closet. It's also about parents, queerphobia and queer belonging in the natural world.
I so rarely advertise really on here but it would mean a lot if you'd consider picking up a copy of the I Zig and I Zag anthology or the debut novel of G.I. James, Love and Happiness, which features the story of Harriet, an adopted black woman - which is also published by M2M Books.
Get the A4 Book Kindle Edition I Zig and I Zag is a beautifully produced A4 multi-community poetry anthology that revels in the shared human
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at some point in your life you will be boiling fruit, water, sugar, and lemon juice in a pot to make a syrup or jam. the instructions will tell you to simmer for a certain amt of time. your timer will go off and you will look at the pot and go, "hm, this doesn't look thick enough. maybe i'll let it go for another 10 minutes." this is the devil speaking. it's only so liquid right now because it is at boiling point. it will thicken when it cools down. learn from the follies of my youth and do not let this happen to you
at some point in your life you will be making a sauce or a stew in which you need to add cornstarch to thicken it. and you will prepare a slurry of starch in cold water and think "this looks like way too little starch to thicken this amount of liquid." this is the devil speaking. cornstarch instantly polymerizes at 95Ā°C and if you add too much it will turn into an impossibly thick goop.
at some point in your life you will be making some sort of cream based dessert that requires gelatin to thicken it. and you will soak some gelatin sheets in water and think "this is too few gelatin sheets for this amount of cream." this is the devil speaking. it will thicken in the fridge and if you add too much you will end up with milk jelly
at some point in your life you will be baking cookies. you will take the sheet out after twelve minutes as the recipe instructs and the cookies will still be glistening and soft. "these don't seem cooked enough," you will think to yourself, "i should place them back into the oven until their edges are nice and golden." this is the devil talking. this is how you get dry, overdone cookies. the cookies will continue to bake on the warm sheet for several more minutes and then harden up after sitting on a rack for a while. trust the process. trust the process.
at some point in your life you will be adding a small pasta to a soup and you will think "that is not enough small pasta." this is the devil talking. the pasta will absorb the stock and expand. this is how you end up with a soup that is a solid mass of soggy ditalini.
At some point in your life you will be adding garlic to a dish and you will think "that is not enough garlic." These are angels speaking. They are correct. Add more garlic.
New Age people just lying about the history of everything makes it so fucking difficult to research what people actually believed in historical folklore
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So I think that there's a lot of room for nuancing medieval gender but also every single time I see a "women actually, actively fought as a commonplace thing/were knights in the Middle Ages" post my eye actively twitches because (1) they're always usually based on flawed at best sources and (2) if our way of giving medieval women interiority and agency ultimately comes down to "look! Swords! Aristocratic privilege!", there's basically no hope. Pack it up, it's over, feminist scholarship since the 80s was fun while it lasted, we had a good run, but we failed.
I think one of the gentlest things in the world is when a friend just gets your weird little brain. like you say half a sentence and they finish it. you reference something incredibly niche from seven years ago and theyāre already nodding. they understand your strange vocabulary for emotions that donāt have real words yet. itās being seen and known and still loved. maybe especially because youāre known. god. what a gift.
I think one of the gentlest things in the world is when a friend just gets your weird little brain. like you say half a sentence and they finish it. you reference something incredibly niche from seven years ago and theyāre already nodding. they understand your strange vocabulary for emotions that donāt have real words yet. itās being seen and known and still loved. maybe especially because youāre known. god. what a gift.
I think one of the gentlest things in the world is when a friend just gets your weird little brain. like you say half a sentence and they finish it. you reference something incredibly niche from seven years ago and theyāre already nodding. they understand your strange vocabulary for emotions that donāt have real words yet. itās being seen and known and still loved. maybe especially because youāre known. god. what a gift.
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Friendly reminder that adoptees are one of the least-recognised marginalised people in the world. Even though adoption is commonplace. There is unfathomable trauma to being adopted that shakes your world from day one. As an adoptee, please take the time to listen to us when we say that certain things are harmful.
"You're adopted" jokes are harmful. Insisting adoption is always a good thing/nice and rosy is harmful. Using words like "fake" and "real" family is harmful. We are people with complex lives and most, if not all of us, develop some kind of trauma due to being adopted (whether it worked out for us or not).
Don't forget to include adoptee voices and the various intersections we inhabit.
Iām reblogging this 7-year-old comic of mine because, not only is it somehow still circulating, it just passed 400,000 notes??? Thank you, several hundred thousand internet strangers, for keepinā this olā goat girl goinā so long
(Also hi, Iām still making fairy-tale-flavored lesbian romance comics and have a new one coming out very soonā¦)
Y llyfr heddiw yw 'A Little Gay History of Wales' gan Daryl Leeworthy, a gyhoeddwyd yn 2019.
Mae'r llyfr hwn yn gasgliad o hanes LHDTC+ Cymru. Mae'n un o'r ychydig lyfrau ar y testun Cymru a pobl LHDTC+ (fel Llyfr y Dydd ddoe!). Mae Leeworthy yn canolbwyntio ar hanes LHDTC+ dosbarth gweithiol yng Nghymru, er enghraifft, rhyw rhwng dynion a thrawswisgo ym Merthyr Tudfil 1908-1915.
Ydych chi wedi darllen y llyfr hwn?
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Today's book is 'A Little Gay History of Wales' by Daryl Leeworthy, published in 2019.
This book is a compilation of the history of LGBTQ+ Wales. It is one of the few books on the subject of Wales and LHDTC+ people (like yesterday's Book of the Day!). Leeworthy focuses on working-class LGBTQ+ history in Wales, for example, sex between men and cross-dressing in Merthyr Tydfil 1908-1915.
The HSE has admitted that transgender healthcare is ālimitedā and is ānot meeting peopleās full range of needsā.
This is a very sympathetic article for once. I was not expecting that from The Journal! It mentioned a lot about how invasive the questions were from the NGS, though Iāve also heard from other people (adults around 30 or older) that they were refused care if their parents didnāt attend the appointment with them. Nonbinary people as well as those with autism or ADHD are also frequently denied care. I wouldāve liked if they spoke to any trans masc people in their investigation but for such a supportive article in these times I will take it.
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Important: 2026 update on my Patreon (please read if you are a member)
Good evening all,
I have paused billing for members of my Patreon for the last few months as I intend to do some major restructuring of my project and how supporters are able to show support.
As of late, Iāve been dealing with flashbacks due to previous traumatic experiences. Iāve never actually talked about this so frankly before in public ā I might have mentioned it in passing but I have never been able to express the true depth of it until now. I hope that supporters of my project who also struggle with poor mental health know theyāre not alone and that more people than you might think struggle with these kinds of things.
Last year, I was diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) stemming from adverse experiences I had in my youth. Since then, Iāve been on a merry-go-round of medications to try and treat this, but I have to be honest ā mental health services in Wales (and the UK generally) are extremely poor. Iāve been quiet on here, on this project and on my social media as a whole for so long due to being passed from practitioner to practitioner, service to service. Recently, I had an appointment which I hope will effect some change in my mental health care so that I can feel well enough to work full-time on Llyfr Enfys again. I feel strongly that mental health needs to be talked about, not shied away from. Which is why Iām taking the step to publicly talk about my PTSD and how it affects my creative output. As my PTSD has caused me to lose a few months in writing time, continued support of my project is still very much cherished. However, I would like to make it clear that I cannot provide content at a rate that would justify repeated billing, which is why for the last two months it has been suspended. I am multiply disabled in other ways and so pushing myself to burnout every few months is not healthy. Doing this in the past has had ramifications for my health and wellbeing ā the most sensible thing to do is be frank about my limits and communicate this clearly.
Going forwards, until I am at a physical and mental place where I can provide extra content on top of working behind-the-scenes on this latest draft of the dictionary, any financial support is towards supporting me to live and for access to my queer Welsh Discord server, rather than to create additional content at this time. With this in mind, Iām completely reworking my tiers. There will now be only two tiers ā Buwch Goch Duw Tier ($1) and Enfys Tier ($5) ā Patreon is based in the USA, hence the $USD. Both of which are general support and Discord access tiers. I have suspended all other tiers ā if you are on any of the legacy tiers, please cancel or change tier membership as appropriate by the 15th of June 2026 ā after this time the pause on billing stops and will resume. Iām hugely thankful for any support, but if you need to cancel for any reason I suggest doing so asap to avoid being rebilled after this date.
However, itās not all bad news. I cannot share the full details just yet, but I have been in talks with a publisher for Llyfr Enfys and things are looking promising so far! Getting Llyfr Enfys published is officially in the pipeline and more real than ever before. I just have to put pen to paper when Iām feeling better and before you (and I) know it, itāll be a real, physical object you can hold and own (or download!).
I want to thank everyone who has been patient with me so far and has believed in my project from day one. I hope I can do you proud when Llyfr Enfys makes the jump from project to published! I also want to thank everyone who has ever supported me ā your generosity and the collective belief that a book like this should exist has sustained me through thick and thin. You have my genuine and heartfelt thanks.
I would also like to be honest about the way Iāve structured this project previously. Iām 25 now, and I was a mere 20-year-old when I began this project. A lot has changed and, naturally, so have I. I feel strongly that my older writing (especially my undergraduate dissertation) is stifled under what I felt my writing should be like, rather than what it is truly like. I had some bad advice at undergrad that taught me to write passively rather than actively, which Iām still in the process of unlearning. Suffice to say, I can do so much better than my undergraduate dissertation (it would be weird if I ā or any academic worth their salt ā couldnāt!). My undergraduate dissertation is decidedly not a good metric for the form and tone of the final draft of Llyfr Enfys. My writing skills have grown since then, thankfully, and I intend to write a lot closer to my natural style and stop self-policing my own language, going forward. Most recently, on the 29th of May 2026 I presented a paper at the Gender in Medieval Insular Literature Symposium at Aberystwyth University on possible intersex-related terminology in medieval Welsh literature.
Those of you who follow my tumblr (@llyfrenfys) know Iām a lot more casual over there and less afraid to speak my mind and be true to myself. In other spheres (i.e. on more mainstream social media platforms like Instagram and Facebook ā the domain of established publishers) I have held my tongue more times than I can abide any longer. I cannot live that way. In this house we say fuck, we speak our truth and we donāt self-censor, not any more.
I hope that this long overdue update has helped clarify where my project is currently.
Free the Palestinian, Iranian, Ukrainian and any other peoples suffering from wanton aggression in unjust wars. Love your neighbours, keep your friends close.
Hwyl for now, but I will be back before you know it.
Much love,
Luke Blaidd (Editor in Chief, Llyfr Enfys)
Update: May 2026 by Prosiect Llyfr Enfys on Patreon. Join Prosiect Llyfr Enfys's community for exclusive content and updates.
Celticist making an LGBTQ+ Welsh Dictionary @llyfrenfys - Tumblr Blog | Tumlook
