The poem by So Mayer is one of three writing commissions made for the publication Transition, Transformation, Transience, marking the launch of The Wapping Project Commissions – a new scheme supporting production of new works across film, photography, installation, music and literature – in 2016. The brief to the writers was to respond to the themes of transition, transformation and transience: themes central to The Wapping Project’s history and experience.
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So Mayer
So Mayer is a writer, bookseller, organiser and film curator, currently based in London, UK. They write poetry, fiction, essays on film and culture, and creative non-fiction, often at the same time and in a single piece. They can be found selling books at Burley Fisher Books (Best Independent Bookstore, London, 2020 and 2021), hosting events in cinemas with queer feminist film curation collective Club Des Femmes, and writing online at Disturbing Words.
With their collaborators, they have co-hosted the podcasts Hell is For Hyphenates and Burley Fisher’s Isolation Station, and programmed film and literature events including BFDay21, and Revolt, She Said: Women and Film After ’68. So is on the board of LUX, and co-chair, with Preti Taneja, of English PEN‘s Translation Advocacy Group.
So is the author, most recently, of A Nazi Word for a Nazi Thing, a book-length essay on queer films, bodies and fascism for Peninsula Press, and of the poetry chapbook <jacked a kaddish> for Litmus Publishing. Previous publications include (O) (Arc, 2015), Political Animals: The New Feminist Cinema (IB Tauris, 2015), and The Cinema of Sally Potter: A Politics of Love (Wallflower, 2009).
Recent collaborative projects include: The Film We Can’t See, a six-part BBC Sounds podcast about queer films, bodies and censorship; co-editing, with Adam Zmith, Unreal Sex, a queer SFFH erotica anthology for Cipher Press; and co-editing, with Corinn Columpar, Mothers of Invention: Film, Media and Caregiving Labor.