As we wrap up the Queering The Archive project and Canterbury Pride celebrations start this weekend, we’re proud to share with you the final zine! It’s available to download now, and you can get your pdf here:

DOWNLOAD ‘MAKING FRIENDS’ ZINE HERE

The project has been really fun to work on, meeting new people who are interested in our archives, making the zine itself and discussing contemporary approaches to queerness.

As I’ve done more reading and research on Jocelyn Brooke over the project, I’ve grown more fond of his writing and work. He writes in such a personal semi-autobiographical way, it can be overwhelming to know where to start with his books. The Orchid Trilogy is his calling card and most famous enduring work. If you want a more self contained fictional work, The Image of The Drawn Sword is a great starting place, a delirious fever dream of well worn Brooke themes or if you like unnerving queer literature, The Scapegoat is a quick, haunting and sometimes comically erotic novella. Once you’ve got a taste for his work, you’ll be ready for the unpublished manuscript that we have in the collection, Furious and Deadly, his most personal and self-reflective work. My favourite anecdote is when he casually mentions meeting Jean Genet at a party, and I hope one day Brooke will join lists of Kentish cult queer writers, taking his place among the likes of Derek Jarman and Denton Welch.

The zine is called Making Friends, after a throwaway comment Brooke wrote about going drinking in Dover and ‘making friends’ with soldiers. It was these kinds of euphemistic hints at affection that we found (or projected) onto many of our archival discoveries. It was also a happy accident that we attended a Letterpress workshop in the Daphne Oram building, and got to use a Letterpress to make the heading.

There will be some physical copies of the zine Making Friends at Canterbury Pride 2024, to browse at the CCCU table. In the weeks after pride there will be some copies to pick up in Augustine House. There is a temporary display of items from the Jocelyn Brooke Collection on the second floor, just before the StressLess area and next to the sustainability collection. If you’re in the library, do help yourself to a copy.

If you have any questions about the project, want to be involved in future Archives and Special collections events or become a volunteer, do get in touch with the library at our usual email address.