A [Cupboard] Full of Tomboys

Enter the evocative world of Jay Farley—a neurodiverse filmmaker and poet—as they unravel gender, class, and identity through a raw, cinematic, and unapologetically honest lens. A [Cupboard] Full of Tomboys is a bold, immersive performance exploring the journey of an older, working-class, non-binary person confronting the constraints of labels and embracing the fluidity of becoming.

In this new iteration, Farley's spoken word is accompanied by the ambient, resonant landscapes of Quieting Sounds, whose experimental soundscapes amplify the emotional undercurrents and invite deeper sensory engagement. Together, they create a powerful, disorienting, and intimate space where binaries dissolve and expression transcends boundaries.

Expect a night of poetic resistance: language as liberation, identity as protest, and performance as catharsis. From the metaphorical cupboard to the wide-open world beyond it, Farley invites you to question what's fixed, celebrate what's shifting, and revel in the raw beauty of queer existence.

Reviews

This book is a bursting open of closet doors, a superb non binary encyclopaedia, more vital ammunition for the queer canon.

— Joelle Taylor

Dazzling, sprawling, gasping — these changeling poems fly at us, each a carnival rooted in poetry's sense of creation and revolution. At their heart is an astonishing polyvocal experiment; a swirling crown that dares us to listen to "the sea inside" and the hidden geometries of worlds that land as softly as dandelion seeds, as powerfully as hurricanes.

— Andre Bagoo

A fast-moving stream of brilliance singing with the rhythms of Liverpool's streets and the heart-strings of explosively lived experience.

— Chris McCabe
 

About

Jay Farley is a non-binary, neurodivergent award winning filmmaker and digital artist. Discovering their Non-binary identity in 2022 aged 48 was profound and they found their voice as a performer and poet. Farley subsequently became award winning with 'I Wish I'd Won the Miners' Strike', published in HOW IT STARTED, Creative Futures Writers' Award 2022 anthology. They are published in the QUEER ICONS anthology. SPARKS, HOT POETS anthology and illustrated in WOOP WOOP magazine.

Their debut book of poetry "A [Cupboard] Full of Tomboys' was created under the mentorship of T.S. Elliot Award winning Joelle Taylor and published by Broken Sleep Books.