Dreamer and the Dreamed : FriesenPress : 9781039167698 : 1039167691 : 05 Dec 2023 : Shame and acceptance, love and loss, life and death. These dichotomies of being are at the heart of Joseph Leahey's LGBTQ+ experience and this volume of collected poems. The Dreamer and the Dreamed: Collected Poems of Joseph Leahey Vol. 1 navigates the poet's evolution starting with his tumultuous, life-changing artistic self-discovery in the early 1980s. Throughout this collection, Joseph grapples with the haunting memory of that experience and the ways his upbringing has shaped him sexually and socially. This process of coming to terms is underscored by a conflicted period of mourning following the death of his mother. Moving from themes of love and sex to grief and ageing exposes the tension between the adventurous young poet and his mature, older self. More than an exploration of the passage of time, these poems inhabit the liminal space between reality and the dream world. They consider the ways a