Troy Cabida
is a poet and writer. He was born in 1995, grew up in Las Piñas City, Metro Manila and is currently based in west London.
He is the author of Neon Manila (Nine Arches Press, 2025), a Poetry Book Society Recommendation for Winter 2025. An exploration of the queer Filipino body in all of its skin and glitter, these poems look at pop music, fashion, jewellery, dating mishaps, and everyday urban life to gain a better understanding of the relationships we build with ourselves, of the internal as constantly contoured by the external.
His pamphlets include War Dove (Bad Betty Press, 2020) and Symmetric of Bone (fourteen poems, 2024), the Poetry Book Society Pamphlet Choice for Spring 2025. He also has two spoken word records, Two Poems (Pearl Home Records, 2025) and Neon Manila: The Album (self-published, 2025).
His other work have been featured in Cha: An Asian Literary Journal, And Other Poems, The Madrigal, Exiled Ink Magazine, Pearl Home Records, & Change, Plastic Language, berlin lit, Paper Boy, StepAway Magazine, and bath magg, anthologised in Masculinity, Bi+ Lines, State of Play, and 100 Queer Poems, commissioned by Barbican Centre, Tiffany & Co, TAPE Collective, and Small Green Shoots, and shortlisted for the Bridport Prize for Poetry 2022 and 2024.
Performance credits include Southbank Centre, Yer Bard, Verve Poetry Festival, Red Bean Poetry, Venn Diagram, the Newcastle Poetry Festival, ESEA Lit Fest, The RAP Party, Yeah OK!, Everything, TOAST Poetry, Barbican Centre, The Prince Charles Cinema, and ArtfulScribe Lit Fest.
An alum of the Barbican Young Poets, Troy currently works as co-editor for fourteen poems, producer for London open mic night Poetry and Shaah, and library assistant for the National Poetry Library.
Troy’s other favourite things include bubble tea, having money, Paul Gilroy’s theory on postcolonial melancholia, Fast Times by Sabrina Carpenter, everything Elsa Peretti, tapas dates, and turtleneck jumpers.
#FreePalestine #TransLivesMatter #BlackLivesMatter #StopAsianHate
Contact
For enquiries on commissions, performance opportunities and collaborations, please contact me on:
troycabida@yahoo.com
troy.cabida@poetryandshaah.co.uk