Composed in two halves, Erica Gillingham's The Human Body is a Hive is a playful and observant reconception of queer love and queer family-making. Opening with a shameless celebration of sex and desire, the collection expands the boundaries of love to include friendship, romance, and lifelong partnership. The latter catalogues the cyclical heartbreaks and wonders of fertility treatment through the microscopic lenses of nature, medicine, and art. Both quietly moving and profoundly celebratory, this exciting debut evokes tenderness and resilience.
This astonishing debut pamphlet by American born London resident queer, Erica Gillingham, focusses on the body in a queer relationship - as an object of adulation and also as a vehicle that can be made to produce a child. Honest, moving, and celebratory - this unflinching look at queer love and parenthood breaks new ground in queer poetry.