CARRION CITY

In 2022, a lot of things happened in my neck of the woods. First of all was, of course, the "Freedom Convoy", a bunch of people in trucks that set up in my neck of the woods (quite literally on my doorstep, actually). I lost my job as a result -- and my mental health, always something I've struggled with, started spiralling. Over the next year, my girlfriend and I went through separate periods of housing instability -- for the first time in my life, I was genuinely homeless, couch-surfing, and trying to secure housing with no success. I managed it through the kindness of a near-stranger (who has now become family) but the experience, as anybody else who's been homeless or housing-insecure knows, changes you. Out of that experience was born the first Carrion City; an art-zine about famine, hunger, poverty, and cannibalism.

But the idea of Carrion City stuck with me. The zine was good -- the zine was excellent! But the zine wasn't enough. (Funnily enough I'm not the only one who's had the phrase Carrion City stick in my head -- it's also the name of a Cassandra Khaw series.) So I kept writing, and with wildfire smoke in the air, I produced The Singularity. And still, the poem that was intended to be the finale of The Singularity...kept growing. So I published The Singularity, and I returned to reading.

Edgar Allan Poe and Emily Dickinson are the poets of many childhoods -- but I also have a strong attachment to T.S. Eliot and Walt Whitman, who aren't often given to eager, verse-hungry six year olds, ...A thousand others, too, who have constructed the literary landscape we live in without us even being aware of it. We know the name Robert Frost, but perhaps not that of Emma Lazarus, even if she is responsible for the words of Lady Liberty -- and Phyllis Wheatley and Voltairine de Cleyre have never been schoolroom names. So, too, do our songwriters occupy a place within this canon -- a canon not for the novelist or the essayist, but the crafter of single lines or couplets that resonate in the mind for years, even decades. Sometimes an entire verse will rest inside your heart until the appropriate mind. Paul Simon, Art Garfunkel and Leonard Cohen are classic examples who few people would deny, but too easily the words of Lewis Allan (given voice by Billie Holliday in Strange Fruit) or Gil Scott-Heron aren't given the same importance -- nor are more modern voices, like Ada Rook. And of course, no modern thoughts about poetry and its power could possibly be complete without a bow of the head to the dearly departed Refaat Alareer and the poem heard around the world. 

It was that -- the death and collective mourning of Professor Alareer -- that finally drew GULA into focus. It wasn't and isn't enough to dwell on the cruelty of poverty on my own back door, or my own experiences even if expanded to include others like me. I've written plenty of poetry about my own sorrow and grief; but GULA is about more than that. GULA is about fury just as much as sadness, and love as much as hatred -- and its reach spans all the way from Carthage to Palestine. Nobody is free until we are all free -- and when even one of us is in chains, that weight still pulls us down. 

Who are you backing? Important question. As much as I would love to cloak myself in mysterious shadow, it's useful to know who you're supporting!

My name is Elliott Dunstan (he/him/it), and I'm a Canadian-based queer author, poet and activist. I've been writing semi-professionally since 2015, mostly in the zine and short story world, and specialize in poetry, horror, surrealism and Gothic. My first traditionally-published novel, Grotesque, is coming out from Poplar Press in May 2026, and you can find my prior chapbooks and zines on my Payhip store, listed below!

Revenant's Hymn -- A collection of the macabre, Gothic and Baroque, centered around questions of identity, death and undeath. (Or, get the special edition as an add-on to your pledge tier!)

Home is Where The Ghosts Are -- A short zine about a haunted home and trying to understand those who came before you.

Deep in the Bone -- A poetry zine about myth, magic and folklore.
 

Post-Traumatic Anatomy -- A poetry chapbook about trauma and the first steps towards recovery.

The Shining Wire -- An experimental-poetry chapbook about rabbits, robots and propositional calculus -- or, how hard it is to be only half-healed.