Neon Manila, the debut poetry collection by Troy Cabida, is an exploration of the queer Filipino body in all of its skin and glitter. Under the spinning disco ball, Cabida captures facets of pop music, fashion, jewellery, dating mishaps, and of London life. These dazzling poems seek perspectives on the relationships we build with ourselves, how the external world shapes us, and how we live with being both fragile and unbreakable.

At their luminous heart, Cabida’s poems range between bittersweet longing, irresistible openness, and the desire to belong and to break out – particularly from the various kinds of discrimination that attempt to confine us. Neon Manila is a glorious, bold, wholehearted resistance to that, full of sparkly and sophisticated poems that refuse to dim their light.