Dale Booton

Dale Booton (he/him) is a queer poet from Birmingham. His work explores masculinity, queer identity, intimacy, and place, often focusing on the emotional undercurrents of everyday life. With a style that is attentive, lyrical, and grounded in lived experience, his poems balance clarity with vulnerability, allowing meaning to surface through image, tone, and restraint.

His poetry has been widely published in magazines and journals including The North, Magma, Aftershock Review, The Madrigal, & Change, Egri Press, Acid Bath Publishing, Carrion Press, and Spelt. Online, his work has appeared with Young Poets Network, iamb, Propel, Impossible Archetype, Queerlings, and t’ART Press, among others.

Dale has also been anthologised. His work appears in We’ve Done Nothing Wrong. We’ve Nothing To Hide – The Verve Anthology of Diversity Poems, where his poem received a commendation, as well as Queer Life, Queer Love (all three volumes, Muswell Press), Masculinity: an anthology of modern voices (Broken Sleep Books), Elements (Fawn Press), HE / SHE / THEY / US (Macmillan), You’re Never Too Much (Macmillan), out.skirts (The Broken Spine), and Lineage (Oblique House). These collections reflect the central concerns of his work: identity, connection, inheritance, and the politics of being seen.

Alongside publication, Dale tries to be an active presence in live poetry spaces. In 2021, he read at the Polari Literary Salon’s 14th Anniversary event in Manchester, and in 2022, he hosted the Young Poets Takeover at Verve Poetry Festival.

He has published two poetry pamphlets: Walking Contagions (Polari Press, 2023) and On This Stretch of Queerland (Fourteen Poems, 2024).

In 2024, he was a runner-up in the International Book and Pamphlet Competition.

This website brings together his published work, ongoing projects, and new writing, offering a space for poetry rooted in honesty, attention, and lived queer experience.