Today's Poem: “A Villanelle for Lost Quiltbaggers” by Chris Biles

Flapper Press Poetry Café
Aug 15
3 min read

Updated: Aug 21

By Flapper Press Poetry Café:

The Flapper Press Poetry Café continues its series called TODAY'S POEM, highlighting one poem per article—that's right, just one—from poets from around the world.

Read our SUBMISSION GUIDELINES for TODAY'S POEM and send us your work for consideration to be published in 2025! Of course, you are always welcome to submit more of your work through our regular submission process as well. You can hit the link at the bottom of the article to read our regular guidelines. We'd love to see your poetry!

Today, we feature the work of Chris Biles!

Chris Biles (she/her) currently lives and works in Washington, DC, where she enjoys playing with the light and the dark and losing herself in music, anything outside, and some words here and there. She is published in a number of literary magazines, journals, and anthologies in print and online. You can find her at marks-in-the-sand.com and on Instagram: @marks.in.the.sand . . . and out walking the city streets.

From the Poet:

Many may be unfamiliar with the term “QUILTBAG”—it’s essentially an alternative for LGBTQI+, and the letters can stand for the following: queer/questioning, intersex, lesbian, transgender/two-spirit, bisexual, asexual/agender/aromantic, and gay/genderqueer/gender non-conforming. I then created “quiltbagger,” mimicking “carpetbagger”—historically a derogatory term used for northerners traveling to the South after the Civil War, seen as opportunistic and often considered unwelcome outsiders. "Quiltbagger," in its spin on carpetbagger, takes ownership of a derogatory term like the community has taken ownership of the term “Queer.” I also appreciate how the traveling aspect of carpetbaggers fits with this poem and its focus on queer wanderers.

I rarely write in form but love the challenge of learning a new form’s formula—I find it’s an excellent way to break through writer’s block and stretch myself in new ways, building my vocabulary and phrasing as I search for words that work within the rhythm and rhyme of the form. In the new year, I decided to take a class on the villanelle from The Writer’s Center. It was a three-hour virtual course with teacher and poet Claudia Gary. We went over some examples and wrote a group villanelle to better understand and learn the form. I returned to my notes a few weeks later and decided to attempt my own: “A Villanelle for Lost Quiltbaggers” was the result, and I was both surprised and quite pleased.

This poem was published by the Washington Writers’ Publishing House in CAPITAL QUEER: A PRIDE Celebration from WWPH, out in print at the end of May 2025, and was for sale throughout World Pride in Washington, DC, reaching both local and worldwide audiences.