Winner of the Ink Sweat and Tears Pamphlet Commission Competition

Awarded: £2000, a published pamphlet, 100 copies of that pamphlet, and a reading at Café Writers in Norwich in November 2019.
Judges: Jay Bernard, Kate Birch, Chris Gribble and Helen Ivory.

The judges said of Gail’s poems:

“What struck and moved us was the ‘fragility and vulnerability’ in Gail’s poetry at what it is to be in a same-sex relationship wanting a child in a part of the UK – Northern Ireland – where same-sex marriage is not legal, where there is no NHS support for IVF for same sex-couples and where abortion is still illegal. This pamphlet examines what it means to be a non-biological parent (mother? father? fother? mather? something else?) in a queer partnership. It asks what queerness does to pregnancy and parenthood, and what pregnancy and parenthood does to queerness. And it wonders how we might reimagine parenthood without gendering it.”