Iambic Marrow #1 and #2
Perzines, Marin Doyle, 28 pgs and 20 pgs, etsy.com/shop/marinboyle
I picked up lots of awesome zines at the Hamilton Zineposium this year, but these ones stood out. As soon as I saw Marin Doyle’s table, I was excited about their work, since I’m such a sucker for perzines and political zines, especially with a queer twist. As they put it in their bio, Doyle is a nonbinary, queer and disabled artist who published their first zine in 2015 and has “been writing their fingers to the bone ever since.” I, for one, am so glad that’s the case.
Each issue of Iambic Marrow starts with a short timeline or list of accomplishments and events from the year (2016 and 2017) — going back to school, getting collared by their partner, getting into therapy, stuff like that. But their accessible, classic perzine style writing brings these events to life.
Doyle shares short essays about topics such as Tourette’s Syndrome, about being a sex worker and the way people treat sex workers, and about how fucked up social assistance and disability support bureaucracies can be. While some of their other zines are more specific to issues, these are a mix of diary entries and musings and calls to action, punctuated by bits of art. Their writing is strong and accessible throughout the works and gets more confident and purposeful in the second issue. This is what perzines are for!