Bedroom Music (Paperback) (ISBN-13: 9781950380008)

Castor is a renowned musician with the band Vigil & Thieves, and presents this hardcore look into life on the road, heavy drinking, and all the bedroom music one desires. These are poems of love and all its problems, the joy of makeup after the horror of breakup, the self abuse, loyalty and the big question of what does love look like. This is an unflinching look into a queer relationship, vulnerable and brave.

"With both the warmth of nostalgia and the urgency of lust, Bedroom Music is a refreshing new breed of poetry. Steph Castor's poems burst with an eager aesthetic energy. Here, the reader is invited into one poet's road trip through memory, into landscape, dogma and generational inheritance. The lyrical and often unpredictable narrative weaves through secret lusts, confessions and cinematic meditations. One part memoir and one part poetic discourse--Bedroom Music is rigorous yet fleeting, elusive while still candid. It's an experience to read, one which draws the reader in only to breaks their heart. Perhaps it is this breaking that is a central theme in the collection--the reminder that we must break before we mend."

-Tristan Silverman

(7th overall in the nation at the 2010 Women of the World Poetry Slam, has been on 2 semifinalist National Poetry Slam teams, was the 2009 and 2010 Chicago Female Grand Champion, and 2008 Chicago Poetry Champion and is the winner of the 2010 Gwendolyn Brooks Poetry Award. )