By the People, For the People: Trans Poetics and DIY Culture, Part 2: The Ephemeral Things That Save Us

Rae White

Acknowledgement: This piece was written on stolen lands in Magandjin, the lands of the Jagera and Turrbal people. Sovereignty was never ceded. This always was and always will be Aboriginal land.

One of the most fascinating things about zines and open mics is how temporary they are compared to the endurance of their emotional impact. A zine fair might last six hours at a local hall. An open mic might run for an evening before everyone disperses into the night carrying notebooks full of half-finished poems. But these fleeting gatherings can completely alter the trajectory of a person’s creative life, or just their life.

If you’ve never been to a zine fair, imagine rows of tables draped in colourful tablecloths and covered with zines, each one lovingly handmade and wildly different from the next. Behind the tables are zinesters eager to chat with you about their work on anything and everything: fanzines, perzines (personal zines), political and activist zines, art and collage zines, comics, and many more. They absolutely rock! I remember Alison Evans (they/them) mailing me a copy of their mini-zine Word School (or: trans people are not their trauma). I still carry this minimalist black-and-white zine with me everywhere: in my heart, my head, and my backpack. It’s a zine that has shaped how I write and who I write for: ‘we deserve to hope,’ writes Evans, when speaking about trans stories, ‘and so I am going to write hope’. Since being gifted this zine, I have shifted much of my writing focus to trans joy and euphoria.

What I love most about zines and zine culture is that selling is only part of it. Swapping is equally as important, sometimes more-so. At most zine fairs you can trade your weird little handmade object for someone else’s weird little handmade object. Money is secondary to the exchange, conversation, and connection. There’s the knowledge that zines are not a commodity but art objects in themselves, as well as ways of connecting with one other.

Frank Lee Frivolous (she/they) describes this beautifully in Connections/Collections: Interviews with Queer Zine Makers (Martin): ‘It’s by the people for the people, it’s a brief snapshot into a culture, a time, a place and for some zine creators deeply personal’.

The phrase ‘a brief snapshot’ really sticks with me, because trans and gender diverse culture itself can feel incredibly ephemeral. We build communities in temporary venues, late-night group chats, queer bars, community centres, Discord servers, and share houses. Our histories are often poorly archived, and our stories can disappear easily. I wonder if this isn’t just because archives and institutions often ignore us, but also because we’re never expected to survive long enough to become historical. Beyond the baseline of brevity that shapes so many trans lives, at time of writing, the Lemkin Institute for Genocide Prevention has raised a Red Flag Alert for Anti-Trans Genocide in the USA.

And yet trans and gender diverse people continue surviving, thriving, and documenting ourselves anyway. Photocopied zines become archives. Open mic performances become oral histories. These avenues preserve emotional truths that may never enter official literary canons, such as Transgender Australia: A History Since 1910 by Noah Riseman; Before We Were Trans: A New History of Gender by Kit Heyam; and Nothing to Hide: Voices of Trans and Gender Diverse Australia edited by Sam Elkin, Alex Gallagher, Yves Rees, and Bobuq Sayed.

That’s one reason I get frustrated when people dismiss zines or spoken word poetry as somehow ‘less serious’ than traditional literary culture. Trans poetics have never waited around for institutional approval. Neither have oral histories, DIY archives, or community storytelling. Long before universities, publishers, or arts organisations decided certain voices were worth preserving, marginalised communities were already documenting their lives—passing their stories hand to hand, voice to voice, person to person. Australian literary culture has always depended on people creating spaces for each other outside of official publication, and official gatekeeping. Independent presses, community radio, experimental theatre, DIY music scenes, zine fairs, open mics—all of these ecosystems overlap and intersect.

While I value many aspects of having my work published in journals, magazines, and similar spaces, those avenues can sometimes operate at a slower pace. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing. It’s simply that, as anyone who knows me knows, I move very fast. I will often draft, write, and make a zine within the span of a day, even hours. Open mic and zine cultures move at the speed you want them to. They move at the speed of lived experience.

You can write a poem about something that happened yesterday and perform it tonight. You can make a zine responding to anti-trans legislation, gender euphoria, community grief, or your new favourite trans punk band, and hand it directly to people who immediately understand why it matters.

That immediacy is powerful and communal. As Laura Bibby (she/they) says in Connections/Collections, ‘You don’t have to have an audience when you make a zine, but somehow, your audience will find you’.

Trans creatives face significant barriers in mainstream media and publishing, where gatekeeping, tokenism, and transphobic backlash often limit our opportunities to tell our own stories in our own voices. Even when trans narratives are included in the conversation, they are frequently filtered through cisgender perspectives, reducing the space for authentic representation and creative control.

I think trans and gender diverse people gather in zine and poetry spaces because we want to make things, and because we want to witness each other making things. We want spaces where experimentation and play are encouraged, rather than any kind of focus on marketability. We want to share our unfinished thoughts, fragmented blackout poetry, and art we sketched onto pub coasters. We want art to feel alive.

Poetry open mic and zine communities invite participation. In Connections/Collections, Nadia (they/them) says, ‘I think people think that they can’t create things, or that there’s only a certain kind of people who are creators. But absolutely everyone can make a zine.’ And absolutely anyone can read at an open mic. You don’t need to wait for permission.

That might be the real magic of these spaces. They encourage trans and gender diverse people to see ourselves not merely as consumers of culture but as active contributors to it. They encourage a culture of reciprocity: I share something, you share something, we come together to create community.

So this is my gentle yet enthusiastic call to action, to everyone, especially trans and gender diverse people: Make the weird zine. Read the vulnerable poem. Go to the open mic even if your hands shake while holding your notebook on stage, then trade your badly folded zines with strangers. Clap loudly for first-time performers. Support local queer events and become part of the ecosystem. If you make space for other trans and gender diverse people, the community will make space for you.

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You can hear Rae read from their first blog on radio show Tranzmission. Tranzmission is a radio show on 4ZZZ, airing Mondays 10am-12pm and podcasted weekly. Tranzmission‘s mission is to amplify the trans and gender diverse voices of Magandjin/Brisbane and beyond, by highlighting the latest in trans community news, events and discussion.

Listen now: https://4zzz.org.au/program/tranzmission

Rae reads in the 10th August 2026 episode, from 75:00-80:30.

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References

Evans, Alison. Word School (or: trans people are not their trauma). Melbourne, Victoria, 2017. HENDERSON 1718. The Nick Henderson Zine Collection, National Library of Australia (Canberra).

Lemkin Institute, The. ‘Red Flag Alert – Anti-Trans Genocide in the USA – #3’. The Lemkin Institute, 11^th March 2026. Available at: https://www.lemkininstitute.com/red-flag-alerts/red-flag-alert—anti-trans-genocide-in-the-usa—%233 (accessed 28^th July 2026).

Martin, Bianca. Connections/Collections: Interviews with Queer Zine Makers. Giabal and Jarowair Land (Toowoomba), self-published, held at the State Library of Queensland, 2024.

Strobel, Wesley. (TRANS)FORM: Spoken Word as Queer and Transgender Testimony. 30^th March 2021. Otterbein University, Undergraduate Distinction Papers. Available at: https://digitalcommons.otterbein.edu/stu_dist/95 (accessed 19^th May 2026).

The series

Blog 1, ‘Jagged Edges and Rough Words’: https://southerlylitmag.com.au/by-the-people-for-the-people-trans-poetics-and-diy-culture-part-1/

Blog 2, ‘The Ephemeral Things That Save Us’: https://southerlylitmag.com.au/by-the-people-for-the-people-trans-poetics-and-diy-culture-part-2-the-ephemeral-things-that-save-us/

About the author

Rae White is a queer non-binary transgender writer, and author of Milk Teeth (UQP 2018), Exactly As I Am (UQP 2022), and All the Colours of the Rainbow (Lothian Children’s Books 2025), with illustrations by Sha’an d’Anthes. They won the Thomas Shapcott Poetry Prize, and have been shortlisted for the Prime Minister’s Literary Awards, Queensland Literary Awards, and Victorian Premier’s Literary Awards. Rae is the Creative Director and Founder of Uplift Poetry, a community poetry initiative; Founding Editor of #EnbyLife, a journal for non-binary and gender diverse creatives; and a co-host on the 4ZZZ radio show Tranzmission.