'coal': in conversation with author Remi Graves

Celebrate LGBT History Month 2026 with a free talk with award-winning author, Remi Graves, about their poetry anthology coal (2025):

BLACKFRIARS BRIDGE, 1905. A Black Cherokee trans man is arrested and charged as a ‘wandering lunatic’. In the City of London asylum, he is photographed; looking directly at the camera, he insists and refuses. He dies in the asylum one year later. In the absence of Paul Downing’s own account, Remi Graves writes from and into the trans archive, presenting a sequence of poems and experiments mapping resonances between selves across historical records. Through river crossings and library passes, chance meetings and visitations, coal is a document that interrogates what we do with the scattered fragments of a life.

This event is open to all, regardless of library membership.
John Harvard Library is a free public library located in the heart of London, moments from Borough and London Bridge stations. We are also well located for the C14 cycle route, with a hoop cycle rack directly in front of the library. There is a public parking lot a 5 minute walk away, run by 'Your Parking Space' on Union Street. More information here: John Harvard Library | Southwark Council

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