My Publications
Rocksong
Shortlisted for the Polari Prize 2022
‘ROCKSONG is a shamelessly baroque ride through the nadirs and summits of the contemporary queer. It’s a decadent book, where decadence isn’t a cipher for self-indulgence, but a fierce and fugitive resistance. As Audre Lorde writes ‘We survived and survival breeds desire for more self’. Or, in the glowing neon precincts of Rocksong, more selves, plural. These poems flirt and confront in turns, they seduce and attack, they are tender and grotesque. They create a strangely exultant burlesque on identity, sexuality, desire and language. I love them for that.’ Fran Lock
Impure Thoughts
Longlisted for Live Cannon Pamphlet Prize
‘Riotous and fizzing with language, the poetry of Golnoosh Nour boldly explores what it is to be utterly alive and ecstatically, yet complicatedly, in desire.’ –Richard Scott
‘Impure Thoughts is a dizzying dance through impurity’s several selves. Half bal masqué, half Grand Guignol, Nour confronts the limits of desire with an almost uncanny intensity of focus. Even at their most tender and elegiac these poems tremble with the white-hot heat of libidinal energy and gleam with oracular fury.’ –Fran Lock
The Ministry of Guidance
Shortlisted for the Polari Prize 2021
Set mostly in Iran, but making forays to London, Mecca, Germany, and the transit area of a Ukrainian airport, the stories are brilliantly deft in summoning up the dilemmas of their protagonists, be they characters who are kicking against the confines of the society into which they are born, or characters wanting to embrace those confines. Nour is a brave and acute observer of how the human spirit fights free of social repression in all its guises. These are stories that argue for nuance in a world that wants to make things black and white.
‘A strong original voice with unprecedented stories to tell’ Marina Warner
‘A remarkable collection: as insistently witty as it is serious; powerful and moving… a stunning contribution to contemporary queer fiction’ Gareth Gavin
‘A fresh new voice exploring the queerness of sexuality, identity and desire with subtlety and authenticity’ Saleem Haddad
‘Elegant and subversive’ --Nell Stevens