From John Singer Sargent to Francis Bacon and Keith Haring - covering romantic landscapes and surreal portraits - Masters curates a gallery of writing in response to paintings by queer men.

Mark Ward's voice inks that of the artist, the subject, and the viewer across poems exploring desire, grief, shame, defiance and surrender.

Tender and daring, Masters goes in search of a shared queer male history across the past century, and invites us to look more deeply at the worlds beneath and beyond the brushstrokes.

A bold, intimate collection that reimagines queer art history through poetry - essential for readers of Frank O'Hara and Ocean Vuong.

About the Author
Mark Ward is a poet from Dublin, Ireland. He is the author of the collection Nightlight (Salmon Poetry, 2023), described as 'assured, imaginative and surprising' by Poetry Ireland Review, and chapbooks including Circumference (FLP, 2018), Carcass (Seven Kitchens Press, 2020), the interactive branching sonnet Faultlines (online version 2022, print version 2024) and I Was a Teenage Exorcist (Chaps Poetry, 2024). His work has appeared widely at home and abroad. He is a three-time awardee of the Arts Council of Ireland. He is the founding editor of Impossible Archetype, an international journal of LGBTQ+ poetry now in its ninth year. His second full-length collection, Real Estate, is forthcoming from Salmon Poetry in May 2026.


Book Information
ISBN 9781915628442
Author Mark Ward
Imprint The Emma Press
Publisher The Emma Press
Dimensions(mm) 198mm * 129mm * 3mm