This Is A Dagger: or, 'This is a Dagger'

It starts with the Buggery Act of 1533. Or perhaps the arrest of Eleanor Rykener. Or perhaps the execution of James Pratt and John Smith. The truism goes that queer people have always been here, but for as long as there have been written records of us those records have dealt with our suppression, criminalisation, and punishment. How can we construct a sense of our own history when its wilful erasure has been violently enacted time and time again across the centuries? Composed over a ten year period, Noises Again is a hugely ambitious and staggeringly complex literary collage that blurs the lines between literature and visual art. Stringing together scraps of text from history books and pornographic novels, newspaper clippings and love letters, drunk sexts and court records, JD Howse explores the buried, obscure ephemera of gay history and returns with a text by turns violent, tragic, erotic, and confounding. This is a truly singular book, defying characterisation, description, and logic.

​JD Howse is a writer who works across poetry, prose, and collage. His debut collection Just Meat Not God was published in 2022 and he has published a number of pamphlets and artist's books. He has a BA in English and an MA in Creative Writing from Royal Holloway, University of London, and is the currator of Permeable Barrier.