Collections
Father Myself (Nine Arches Press, 2025)
Poetry collection exploring McDermott's grief and growth after losing his father to COVID in 2022, released by Nine Arches Press in February 2025. Signed and personalised copies can be purchased here.
“This is emotional, gut-punching stuff. McDermott’s best work to date” Luke Wright
“A meditation on father-son love, queerness, loss, imperfection, and a man slowly becoming his own father. Lyrical, haunting and exquisitely rendered. 'Father Myself' is a bright devastation of a book ” Joelle Taylor
“McDermott lays bare the language of grief in this deeply moving, startlingly authentic collection. Beautifully drawn vignettes of anguish and loss usher the reader from hospital to home, domesticity to deathbed. An examination of the human condition, settings and snippets of dialogue are precise, compelling, often forensic, with imagery of flesh and decay a recurring motif: ‘I see him / in rotten apples liver pâté red steak’. Yet tenderness surfaces again and again like a soft bruise: ‘Dad’s pierced left ear lobe / I touched for the first and last time in the chapel of rest’. Ultimately courage prevails, along with hope for a kind of rebirth: ‘who will I be brave enough to be now / I don’t need your approval’. A memorable read - powerful and affecting” Ian Humphreys
“A brave and self-exposing collection of poems that’s a moving homage to a parent that died too soon, as well as to the love and complexities of a father-son relationship. An honest and probing exploration of coping in the days before and after death that brims with the day-to-day reality of people and place, embracing dialogue and speech, and capturing the private vocabulary of a family. Poems with immediacy and dramatic flair, surprising imagery, and a delicate humour imbued with grief. The book is an incredible testament to the pandemic in which McDermott hangs his father out to die, one where boy becomes man, and where loss brings catharsis and resurrection, but also enables a celebration and affirmation of the queer self. An intelligent, compelling and heartbreaking collection that’s an elegy to COVID and to everything that through all the years could never be said” Paul Stephenson
Wild Life (Nine Arches Press, 2023)
Poetry collection exploring the nature of queerness, queerness of nature and queerness of 'natural' masculinity, released by Nine Arches Press in June 2023. Shortlisted for the New Angle Prize 2024 and The East Anglian Book Awards 2023.
“Wild Life celebrates a more-than-human world ‘always opening / always coming out’. So-called ‘nature’ is revealed as gleefully queer, in its inosculations and entwining, its colourful displays of pansies and nightclubbing bees. Meanwhile, gay culture is feral and strange, with Grindr profiles which seek ‘bears otters / no pets’. And the bizarre everyday performances of masculinity are illuminated, in that ‘factory / to manufacture men’, the gym, and beyond. Wild Life gets into the guts of these themes with a bold, embodied clarity” Caleb Parkin
“Wild Life is a vibrant and visceral work that dances artfully between inspired word play reclamations of language and identity, and revealing the succulent duality of the world all around us. My teenage self feels so seen reading this collection, and is so grateful for its existence. Its musicality, its themes, and its counsel are genuine soul food served by a master of the craft" Rick Dove
"The poet steps out of childhood shame and into strength. James McDermott makes us look again at nature, human nature and the relationship between them. Sexy, surprising and self-affirming poems" Jo Bell
"Poems that mince and skip, strut and limp, saunter and wander. A sunny queer celebration of adolescence, nature and outdoors. McDermott is North Norfolk’s gay flâneur!" Paul Stephenson
"Vividly exciting collection... poems that place the body at different angles to the landscape and our perception of the landscape" Ian McMillan (via Twitter)
Manatomy (Burning Eye Books, 2020)
James's spoken word poetry collection exploring how nature, nurture, politics and pop culture shaped his identity as a camp gay man. Longlisted for the Polari First Book Prize 2021. Signed and personalised copies can be purchased here.
‘The language, wit, insights, power of expression… Magnificent. You don’t have to have grown up gay to love and appreciate this poetry, but it will of course have a special charge, beauty and meaning for those of us who have’ Stephen Fry
"Bold, graphic and startling" Julian Clary
"Hilarious and honest, Manatomy will help you understand gay life, love and sex better. It certainly helped me..." Jonathan Harvey
“McDermott’s debut delivers us his heart, terrors and triumphs” Luke Wright
“A funny, frank and filthy debut” Molly Naylor
Pamphlets
Green Apple Red (Broken Sleep Books, September 2022)
A pamphlet exploring the queerness of nature, which maps the speaker's growth from shamed 'unnatural' adolescent into queer adult proud of their nature. Written with mentoring from Richard Scott and supported by a Developing Your Creative Practice Grant from Arts Council England. Designed and published by Broken Sleep Books.
"Clear yet complex poems which lovingly interrogate queer desire to find shame, intimacy and protest in equal measure – unearthing, ultimately, a resonant wisdom in the Norfolk landscape and natural world" Richard Scott
“Green Apple Red revels in entanglements and inosculations, queering the language of nature: ‘bears’ who ‘are worshipped in sub-cultures’; an apple-eater consuming ‘only Cox’s’. In sensuous poems of belonging and longing, James McDermott carves out space for queer bodies in landscapes. These poems invite us to be shameless and public, ‘out in the open’ amongst our fellow creatures: unique, ‘fizzing with want’ like a bee, but ‘just another animal’ too. There’s abundant clarity, humour and vulnerability here, for wandering queers (and non-queers) everywhere” Caleb Parkin
Erased (Polari Press, August 2021)
A series of erasures on found homophobic newspaper articles, speeches, legislations and biblical passages to reveal queer subtexts and to reclaim works that tried to erase gay lives. Limited edition hand bound pamphlet designed and published by Polari Press.
"Erased is brilliant and very beautiful. We love it" Gilbert and George
"McDermott changes the narrative of homophobic documents, revisits their language and moulds it into a glittery powersong of wonder and unashamedly queer joy. This new pamphlet quivers with political tension and confirms him as a vital voice of queer British poetry" Serge ♆ Neptune
"Erased is a crystallised gem of a collection. Emotive, evocative, and ingenious. McDermott has uncovered something truly special, an iridescent revision of the canon and our received wisdoms" Rick Dove
"Erased deploys erasure poetry to answer back to decades of censorship and homophobia” Caleb Parkin
"Erased is an act of reclamation and fabulous impudence” Simon Maddrell
"I love this book!" Russell Tovey (via Instagram)
Magazines, Journals and Anthologies
James's poems have been widely published in print and online magazines and journals including, among others:
14 Poems
Atrium
Butcher's Dog
The Cardiff Review
Ink Sweat and Tears
Lighthouse Journal
Magma
The North
Poetry Wales
Popshot Quarterly
Southword
Netflix's Heartstopper Commission
James was commissioned by Netflix's Heartstopper to write a new poem 'Fizz' which featured written on the wall of the Here and Queer Exhibition in Series 2 Episode 7.
Films
Manatomy
20 minute spoken word film produced by Inn Crowd, Applause Rural Touring and Creative Arts East; directed, filmed and edited by Mark Hannant.
Father Myself (Nine Arches Press, 2025)
Poetry collection exploring McDermott's grief and growth after losing his father to COVID in 2022, released by Nine Arches Press in February 2025. Signed and personalised copies can be purchased here.
“This is emotional, gut-punching stuff. McDermott’s best work to date” Luke Wright
“A meditation on father-son love, queerness, loss, imperfection, and a man slowly becoming his own father. Lyrical, haunting and exquisitely rendered. 'Father Myself' is a bright devastation of a book ” Joelle Taylor
“McDermott lays bare the language of grief in this deeply moving, startlingly authentic collection. Beautifully drawn vignettes of anguish and loss usher the reader from hospital to home, domesticity to deathbed. An examination of the human condition, settings and snippets of dialogue are precise, compelling, often forensic, with imagery of flesh and decay a recurring motif: ‘I see him / in rotten apples liver pâté red steak’. Yet tenderness surfaces again and again like a soft bruise: ‘Dad’s pierced left ear lobe / I touched for the first and last time in the chapel of rest’. Ultimately courage prevails, along with hope for a kind of rebirth: ‘who will I be brave enough to be now / I don’t need your approval’. A memorable read - powerful and affecting” Ian Humphreys
“A brave and self-exposing collection of poems that’s a moving homage to a parent that died too soon, as well as to the love and complexities of a father-son relationship. An honest and probing exploration of coping in the days before and after death that brims with the day-to-day reality of people and place, embracing dialogue and speech, and capturing the private vocabulary of a family. Poems with immediacy and dramatic flair, surprising imagery, and a delicate humour imbued with grief. The book is an incredible testament to the pandemic in which McDermott hangs his father out to die, one where boy becomes man, and where loss brings catharsis and resurrection, but also enables a celebration and affirmation of the queer self. An intelligent, compelling and heartbreaking collection that’s an elegy to COVID and to everything that through all the years could never be said” Paul Stephenson
Wild Life (Nine Arches Press, 2023)
Poetry collection exploring the nature of queerness, queerness of nature and queerness of 'natural' masculinity, released by Nine Arches Press in June 2023. Shortlisted for the New Angle Prize 2024 and The East Anglian Book Awards 2023.
“Wild Life celebrates a more-than-human world ‘always opening / always coming out’. So-called ‘nature’ is revealed as gleefully queer, in its inosculations and entwining, its colourful displays of pansies and nightclubbing bees. Meanwhile, gay culture is feral and strange, with Grindr profiles which seek ‘bears otters / no pets’. And the bizarre everyday performances of masculinity are illuminated, in that ‘factory / to manufacture men’, the gym, and beyond. Wild Life gets into the guts of these themes with a bold, embodied clarity” Caleb Parkin
“Wild Life is a vibrant and visceral work that dances artfully between inspired word play reclamations of language and identity, and revealing the succulent duality of the world all around us. My teenage self feels so seen reading this collection, and is so grateful for its existence. Its musicality, its themes, and its counsel are genuine soul food served by a master of the craft" Rick Dove
"The poet steps out of childhood shame and into strength. James McDermott makes us look again at nature, human nature and the relationship between them. Sexy, surprising and self-affirming poems" Jo Bell
"Poems that mince and skip, strut and limp, saunter and wander. A sunny queer celebration of adolescence, nature and outdoors. McDermott is North Norfolk’s gay flâneur!" Paul Stephenson
"Vividly exciting collection... poems that place the body at different angles to the landscape and our perception of the landscape" Ian McMillan (via Twitter)
Manatomy (Burning Eye Books, 2020)
James's spoken word poetry collection exploring how nature, nurture, politics and pop culture shaped his identity as a camp gay man. Longlisted for the Polari First Book Prize 2021. Signed and personalised copies can be purchased here.
‘The language, wit, insights, power of expression… Magnificent. You don’t have to have grown up gay to love and appreciate this poetry, but it will of course have a special charge, beauty and meaning for those of us who have’ Stephen Fry
"Bold, graphic and startling" Julian Clary
"Hilarious and honest, Manatomy will help you understand gay life, love and sex better. It certainly helped me..." Jonathan Harvey
“McDermott’s debut delivers us his heart, terrors and triumphs” Luke Wright
“A funny, frank and filthy debut” Molly Naylor
Pamphlets
Green Apple Red (Broken Sleep Books, September 2022)
A pamphlet exploring the queerness of nature, which maps the speaker's growth from shamed 'unnatural' adolescent into queer adult proud of their nature. Written with mentoring from Richard Scott and supported by a Developing Your Creative Practice Grant from Arts Council England. Designed and published by Broken Sleep Books.
"Clear yet complex poems which lovingly interrogate queer desire to find shame, intimacy and protest in equal measure – unearthing, ultimately, a resonant wisdom in the Norfolk landscape and natural world" Richard Scott
“Green Apple Red revels in entanglements and inosculations, queering the language of nature: ‘bears’ who ‘are worshipped in sub-cultures’; an apple-eater consuming ‘only Cox’s’. In sensuous poems of belonging and longing, James McDermott carves out space for queer bodies in landscapes. These poems invite us to be shameless and public, ‘out in the open’ amongst our fellow creatures: unique, ‘fizzing with want’ like a bee, but ‘just another animal’ too. There’s abundant clarity, humour and vulnerability here, for wandering queers (and non-queers) everywhere” Caleb Parkin
Erased (Polari Press, August 2021)
A series of erasures on found homophobic newspaper articles, speeches, legislations and biblical passages to reveal queer subtexts and to reclaim works that tried to erase gay lives. Limited edition hand bound pamphlet designed and published by Polari Press.
"Erased is brilliant and very beautiful. We love it" Gilbert and George
"McDermott changes the narrative of homophobic documents, revisits their language and moulds it into a glittery powersong of wonder and unashamedly queer joy. This new pamphlet quivers with political tension and confirms him as a vital voice of queer British poetry" Serge ♆ Neptune
"Erased is a crystallised gem of a collection. Emotive, evocative, and ingenious. McDermott has uncovered something truly special, an iridescent revision of the canon and our received wisdoms" Rick Dove
"Erased deploys erasure poetry to answer back to decades of censorship and homophobia” Caleb Parkin
"Erased is an act of reclamation and fabulous impudence” Simon Maddrell
"I love this book!" Russell Tovey (via Instagram)
Magazines, Journals and Anthologies
James's poems have been widely published in print and online magazines and journals including, among others:
14 Poems
Atrium
Butcher's Dog
The Cardiff Review
Ink Sweat and Tears
Lighthouse Journal
Magma
The North
Poetry Wales
Popshot Quarterly
Southword
Netflix's Heartstopper Commission
James was commissioned by Netflix's Heartstopper to write a new poem 'Fizz' which featured written on the wall of the Here and Queer Exhibition in Series 2 Episode 7.
Films
Manatomy
20 minute spoken word film produced by Inn Crowd, Applause Rural Touring and Creative Arts East; directed, filmed and edited by Mark Hannant.
