Emotional Literacy
by Ash Brockwell
In this collection of poems and song lyrics spanning four decades, Ash Brockwell – interdisciplinary academic, artist, and transgender activist – shares his authentic life stories for the first time. They encompass love, loss, reverse culture shock, surviving depression, artistic and eco-spiritual inspiration, and emergence from a repressive religious community into a joyful exploration of queer identity beyond the binary.
This book includes Ash’s five Songs of the Gathering and an outline of his Songwork process – using music to hold space for the supportive, creative, and life-giving conversations that are so urgently needed at this time of global crisis.
Ash Brockwell describes himself as a songworker and transgender activist. He is a co-founder of the queer publishing collective Reconnecting Rainbows and the lead editor of the TransVerse anthology series. Ash is an Associate Professor at the London Interdisciplinary School, where he teaches young people to bring together skills and knowledge from different subjects to tackle complex problems. He was the winner of the 2002 T. S. Eliot Memorial Poetry Prize and has shared his poetry and songs in a wide range of venues, from open mic nights to churches, song circles, online international festivals of education, and even the 2021 British Ecological Society conference!
