Act Cute is the second poetry collection from Queer Poz (PLHIV) writer and performance-maker, Andrew Sutherland.
Read on for a poem from the book.
ABOUT THE BOOK
In Act Cute, the poet addresses the gap between memory and the present, and asks how to perform a coherent self amidst the forces of nostalgia, institutional entanglements and reckonings, and queer desiring.
Shifting between autofictive address and canonical personae, the structural codes of romantic drama uneasily frame the poet-as-actor through five sections, titled ‘Audition Sides’, ‘you stop me at the airport and tell me that you love me’, ‘twink death in Europa!!’, ‘Wedding Scenes’ and ‘forgiveness’.
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on Invasion Day 2024
something feels off about western Europe
like I can’t quite grasp what the point of it is
but then I’ve always lived on stolen land
so what would I know
from Morwenna’s house in Dresden today
I have a clear view of the lake on Whadjuk Noongar land
where I walked with a newborn southwest snake-neck
the long and fragile path from emergence to the water
and where an action of genocide was committed1
by my ancestors people the settlers I remain today
pointless pointless
or pointed or pointed
the gaze up from Europa down
from here it looks like there are turtles gathering
at the surface of the water. on the rocks. and swans
and all with their long necks
necks craned toward the sky
in Germany today the performance of contrition
also means to look away from Gaza
to be homesick is the feeling in your body
that it knows the absent place is there
across an unrealised hemisphere
I long for all our necks to unfurl
unfurl. unfurl. and how long?
how longing? how long alongside.
1 I want to acknowledge on the page that my knowledge of and relationship to the site of Galup has been greatly influenced by the powerful, generous truth-telling of the Galup project. samedrum.com/galup
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
ABOUT THE AUTHORAndrew Sutherland (he/they) is a Queer Poz (PLHIV) writer and performance-maker from between Boorloo (Perth) and Singapore, currently based in Naarm on the unceded lands of the Kulin nation. His work draws upon the viral instabilities of identity, pop culture and the autofictive self. Andrew’s debut poetry collection Paradise (point of transmission) was published by Fremantle Press in 2022 and shortlisted for the Small Press Network Book of the Year prize. His second, Act Cute, is forthcoming in 2025.
Andrew was the scholarship recipient of the Faber Writing Academy in 2022 and a Wheeler Centre Hot Desk fellow in 2024.
Andrew holds a BA (First Class Hons.) Acting from LASALLE College of the Arts Singapore and works in the performance space as collaborative maker, playwright, director, performer, dramaturg, arts educator, and mentor. He has been part of the creation of dozens of new performance works across the independent sector, particularly in Western Australia. Andrew has been an arts educator for Western Australian Academy of Performing Arts, WA Youth Theatre Co., Black Swan State Theatre Co., Perth Festival, Centre for Stories, Australian Theatre for Young People, SingLit Station, among others. He is a current PhD candidate at the Victorian College of the Arts, pursuing practice-as-research surrounding the ‘haunted repertoires’ of the HIV+ undetectable status.
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