Alia Boquash – A poet shaped by heritage, community, and Liverpool’s creative undercurrents.
Alia Boquash – known to many as Alia Breeze – writes with an instinct that comes straight from lived experience. Her work is shaped by realism, by the grit of south Liverpool streets, and by emotions that don’t soften themselves before arriving on the page. She describes herself as “emotionally charged, heartfelt, and slightly hard faced,” and her poetry carries that same unfiltered energy. For Alia, writing is where beauty and torment meet, and she doesn’t shy away from either.
A self-driven artist rooted in Liverpool, Alia’s voice has been shaped as much by community as by heritage. Growing up a “real Liverpool northerner,” only later discovering her Egyptian ancestry alongside Irish roots, she writes from a place of cultural layering and local belonging. These elements give her work a distinctive perspective: personal yet outward-looking, grounded but not contained.
Her creative life stretches across art scenes and social spaces. She speaks proudly of the early days of Liverpool’s lively, unapologetic gay scene – “ciggie flicking, chewy clacking, jangling, belter and boss” – a world where identity was performed, protected, and celebrated. It was here that Alia stepped onto the stage as Liverpool’s only Drag King of her age group at Garlands, performing as “Gorge Michael.” The experience opened pathways through Liverpool’s creative circuits and beyond, leading to slots across Europe and collaborations with artists who helped shape her practice.
Alongside this, Alia spent 14 years working within the NHS, an environment that taught her compassion through daily realities rather than abstractions. That combination – nightlife, community, heritage, care – sits behind her writing. Most recently, her independently published book Before I Was Born, She Did This became a number-one bestseller for four months. Her poem for the 52 for 26 Poetry Project continues in the same vein: direct, grounded, and driven by a life lived fully and without apology.
THE BUS DEPOTS LIVERPOOL 2000
It’s dead dead late, two-thousand bifters later she whiffed out a puff. Am fucking cold
and bevvied,
The Royal Court behind me back.
The rain comes down thick and fast, never a drop,
A pissed-off sky that never stops.
Bus depots blurred
in yellow light,
Oil scatty puddles.
50 yellow fellas at night.
The city wheezes and cackles
And I am a Abit of an owlarse
Scouse and proud,
A brassy laugh cuts through the crowd
A real cow ann
Bold as Brass
Hard as nails
I’ve just come out from Russell’s play
Our Day Out lads, coats in grey,
Scuffed up shoes
Dreaming of Conway Bay,
My Scrapbooks full of HAHAHAHAHAHA’s that will not slip away.
A Cherry Jubilee lip that has come out to play
In the distance, Bifters half-lit in the backseat row,
I can Still hear her voice in the after show. One brassy bastard here we go
The Liverpool classroom ain’t far from me own,
The arguments that have been overblown.
But the spirit is never that half arsed, Not even half bothered, We are hell bent, crucified and Leathered, we could be half-hurt, but never cracks on
Never one single iota
Inside the Everton Dakota
Our Liverpool heart inside all this dirt
And somwhere inside me my heart still hurts
She lit a ciggie, And I saw your nan
If anyone can do it, You deffo can.
Our city that is returning, brings us black and blue words
and the liverpool Birds
return to each other.
So Here I stand,
Rain in me face, a fight with me cold hands.
I have found me place.
