Kay Gabriel at Giorno Poetry Systems

KAY GABRIEL PERVERTS HER FRIENDS at Giorno Poetry Systems

“Perverts collages my dreams with others’ dreams. It’s an exercise in collective capacity—in people producing together a shared, sometimes outrageous language that no one person could assemble on their own.

It’s a choral, book-length poem with a hard-on for (1) excessive conviviality and (2) people doing things together. So we’re going to read it together, too. Twenty people or so, without whom the poem wouldn’t exist in the way that it does, read from Perverts, to an audience of perverts, that’s you, dear.”

—Kay Gabriel

Over the last few years, Kay Gabriel sent a wide range of people a simple prompt—“send me your dreams.”

Kay took what she received and used it to write a book—it’s called Perverts (Nightboat, 2025). Conceived as a piece of collaborative writing, the book combines Kay’s own words and dreams with those of others, turning private experience into shared consciousness and illicit desire into common cause.

For this event, Kay has invited a cast to bring Perverts to life, some of whom contributed dreams to the book. She’s assigned each person their parts to read—making this almost like a play, not quite a reading.