Gender Fluid The Nigerian community has recently lost its most prominent poet. Instead of passing away, “they” have simply stepped back from public view.
Aaron Barry, a 29-year-old writer, goes by several pseudonyms, including “Adele Nwankwo,” “Bh Fein,” and “Respect for Dirt Hogg Sauvage.” Barry identifies as white, male, and straight. Unfortunately, none of these identities seem to favor him within the publishing industry.
Barry expressed frustration with how he felt excluded from the demographics that publishers embraced. “It seemed if you had any connection to these identities, it was likely much easier to get a foot in the door,” he noted, commenting on the industry’s claims about advocating for disenfranchised voices.
(My literary agent friend said they didn’t even consider letting a young white male writer look at the first novel. Regardless of talent, there’s little interest. This is genuinely disheartening for writers who might critique their own “privilege.”)
– Joyce Carol Oates (@joycecaroloates) July 24, 2022
Barry has been in this situation for two years now. He plans to “test the boundaries of the poetry sector.” In a Substack post titled “Jasper Ceylon,” he shared motivations to see “how many clowns are still welcomed today.” Over 2023 and 2024, he claims to have submitted more than 50 poems under various pseudonyms to the International Journal of Poetry.
Barry described the works he encountered as often sexualized, inconsistent, and sometimes utterly meaningless. “They all shared one thing in common: they were garbage,” he added.
Interestingly, these poems and their authors seemed to catch the eye of the ideologues in the publishing world.
Despite his dismissive views on their quality, Barry claims that all his “trash” poems have been accepted. His initial achievement was with a piece titled “Yah jah gah hah ‘One,” which included lines like “Voodoo Prak Tik Casta oyal Drip Drip.”
He also had a poem published in a journal named Nee Me Pow Pow, portraying a fantasy about a first-person lesbian wrestler, concluding with a skull emoji.
On the other hand, Bh Fein received an enthusiastic response from Arteidolia.
According to Free Press, one of Barry’s works has even been nominated for the 2025 Best of the Net Award, purportedly containing themes related to Shakespeare but too vulgar to discuss further.
As if his experiment didn’t already shed enough light on the industry’s issues, he proceeded to experiment even more. Barry compiled several poems and initially submitted them under commonly accepted names. He then submitted the same works under his alternate name, noting that those from standard white authors garnered rejection while those from “delightfully LGBTQ+” personas faced minimal rejections.
Barry isn’t alone in feeling disadvantaged as a white male writer.
“In the 2010s, publishing channels for white men were practically closed off,” Jacob Savage remarked in a piece for Compact. “No white American man born after 1984 has published a literary novel in The New Yorker.”
There could be solutions for overlooked talented individuals in America, perhaps even through some unusual Caribbean pseudonyms.
