Just Some Punk Kid by Laurel Perez

I began this project with the questions: What is punk rock? Who is and what counts as punk in terms of culture, aesthetic, and lifestyle? While the poems lend themselves to discourse on these questions, I also included collage compositions that work within the DIY punk genre with unexpected materials. I further investigated the aesthetics and lifestyles of working-class men and, especially, women who are drawn to punk rock music and culture. Specifically, I asked questions such as: What sorts of people listen to punk rock and make up the multiple subcultures? How do women enter this discourse? How have men created this subgenre in a way to keep women from entering into the conversation? How have women entered despite this? How does punk subvert the norms? Where does the energy of punk rock come from, both in lyric and sound? How does this energy use erasure and volume to make a point? In conjunction with this research, a collection of poetry emerged—one that experiments with the culture, the genre, and in itself subverts the norms.