Butch Ado About Nothing by Grace Petrie

This is the text of the show, a monologue, an essay – a personal reflection, but of course the personal is, is always, political.

Grace charts her journey to self-acceptance as a Butch lesbian, that it was the Butch rather than the lesbian part of that identity that she found hard for a long time.

But the twist, the heart of the story, comes because her self-acceptance coincides with the up-tick in attention for “gender-critical” view-points, and the sense that an increasing number of people have been vocalising that “threat” trans people represent is a particular threat to Butch lesbians.

Grace is both puzzled and troubled by this, feeling at times she is unwillingly co-opted into an anti-Trans narrative. She points to the fact that some of the loudest gender-critical voices are people that seem to have said or done little to promote the interests of Queer people, prior to latterly climbing on the gender-critical soap-box.

When the marginalised are set in opposition to one another it is the patriarchy, the powerful, that win – we do the patriarchy’s work for it, dragging ourselves down when we should be lifting each other up.

There are lots of things that make our society unsafe for women, for lesbians, for LGB people – but Grace is forthright in her belief that Trans people are not one of those things.

The rage that this topic creates, on both sides, especially when played out across social media means there is little or no space to listen to the genuine and deep felt beliefs, the fears and the generations of pain, that need to be acknowledged if we are to find a shared future. Is it is we seem unable to do anything but scream across the street at each other.

Bright Fear by Mary Jean Chan

Buy it from Bookshop.org and support local booksellers   

This is such a clear voiced collection – EDI for Migrants (I) cuts so deeply into White privilege, into my White privilege, it is witty, I want to laugh, but it isn’t a joke.

Poems about London and Hong Kong face each other – we recognise the intend of that.

There is a lot about family, the challenges of family, but also a love that reaches past those challenges.

This is Mary’s second collection, taking the cliche of the difficult second album and smashing it out of the park!

Broken Spectre by Jacques J. Rancourt

buy it from abebooks.co.uk   

 

This collection shows that In the Time of PrEP was not a fluke – the poems are strong and get the balance of rawness and beauty pitch perfect.

The mix of sex, and love, and pain, the backdrops of homophobia and HIV/AIDS, and the Biblical imaginary – it is ticking a lot of boxes for me.

Friday I’m In Love by Camryn Garrett

Buy it from Bookshop.org and support local booksellers      

Like Wayward Son, this was an impulse buy, but a delicious one, Mahalia’s story is one that is full of life, that challenges and heart ache she feels feel real, I found myself right alongside her in those moments.

To have a person of colour’s queer story is also powerful – middle-class gay white men like me experience our queerness from a starting point of privilege – Mahalia’s experience of queerness starts in a very different place, and we need to hear these stories, amplify these stories, if we are ever going to make the world a better place.

Wayward Son by Rainbow Rowell

Buy it from Bookshop.org and support local booksellers      

I brought this and Friday I’m in Love on impulse in Waterstones … and I somehow missed the word “sequel” in the blurb on the back!

But I am not sure how much that really mattered. The combination of queer identities and vampires and other supernaturals is something I am on board with – this is not on the level of Wranglestone, but there is a pace to the story telling that is successful.

I find reading teen and youth adult queer fiction now is filling that massive gap in stories and role models my own teen and YA days, it is part of the process of healing some of a lot of baggage.

Song by Brigit Pegeen Kelly

buy it from abebooks.co.uk   

The opening poem, Song, is a powerful and troubling and tender – one of those poems that replays in your head, one of those poems that somehow once read you can’t recall what life was like before you read it.

And so it is hard for the rest of the collection to really live up to this – they are poems of quality, and in any other collection would be stars, but in this collection they are in the shade.

Narcissus by Andre Bagoo

buy it from abebooks.co.uk   

I clearly can do my usual fan-boy praise of Andre Bagoo, it is always such a delight.

I tagged Song of Night Flowers about a Gay club and all the people that pass through, and then it is gone, and we have to wonder how all those connections get to exist without it.

It is the mix of expression that is key to the richness of Bagoo’s work, there is so many forms of poem, the topics diverse, I can go on and on …

Scouse Brows by Madelaine Kinsella

buy it from abebooks.co.uk   

These poems are successful in there rootedness, they are soaked in a sense of place, and you have a strong connection to the Liverpool that Madelaine invokes.

Death of a Baroness is an expression of anger and pain, the relationship of Liverpool with Thatcher, like many industrial cities the economy policies of the 1980s were painful in their consequences, but this was heightened by Hillsborough and the whole way the Police and wider Establishment acted to place blame on the fans, the victims. This legacy is still felt in Liverpool, and I reflected that many of these emotions and reactions are familiar to Gay men, and LGBTQ+ people more generally, as the 1980s was a dark time for so many.

Selected Poems by Thom Gunn & Ted Hughes

buy it from abebooks.co.uk 

It seems odd that Faber felt these two great names needed to share a pamphlet – there is no particular suggestion that this was a collaborative work, they have been bundled together.

In Thom Gunn’s selection there are poems published in his earlier collections, and it was perhaps these revisits that caught my attention the most.

Although I have read occasional individual poems by Ted Hughes this was the first time I have read a collection of his work.

Break the Nose of Every Beautiful Thing by Jack Cooper

from doomsdaypress.co.uk

These poems include sharp observations of various scientific topics, showing that science is worthy subject of poetry.

Ode to Blu Tack is perhaps one of my favourite of the poems, as is the sequence Under the Microscope

The Levels by Helen Pendry

Buy it from Bookshop.org and support local booksellers  

Shaped by questions of power, of the role of the military in economy, of local identities under threat and thrown in sharp relief in a Welsh speaking context, there is a lot going on in this novel, and I found it hard to keep up with it all at times.

The characters, and it is a big cast, risk being caricatures – they have clear roles in the story and perhaps lack a roundedness, motivations lack some of the complexity that typifies real life.

There was a lot to like about it, and wanted to connect with it but something didn’t quiet click for me unfortunately.

Topics About Which I Know Nothing by Patrick Ness

buy it from abebooks.co.uk 

This is an eclectic set of short stories, which is playful in its use of form.

Of these “Jesus’ elbows and other Christian urban myths” was one that perhaps hasn’t stood the test of time – in 2004 this collection of parody conspiracy theories probably read as witty, but now it is hard to separate it from an average day on Twitter, these parodies have been overtaken.

The one that I found most successful was “2,115 Opportunities” which recounts the ‘same’ incident happening in different realities, the chance encounter (or non-encounter) between two people – asking questions of what we might call fate, or see fate in things, it somehow feels more romantic seeing all the times that the spark didn’t happen.

Becoming Ted by Matt Cain

Buy it from Bookshop.org and support local booksellers 

As I mention in earlier post, this echoes Sounds Like Fun, the power dynamic between Ted and his husband is the same toxic space as Eoin and Rich, and we quickly go into a dark place but the bulk of the novel is a long and hope-filled climb out of that place.

Set around a seaside ice-cream shop it is well away from the typical “gay” contexts and stories. But this is part of an uplift of stories of validation about being confidently queer in minority spaces, that you don’t have to run away to the big city to become yourself as a queer person.

I read it in Gran Canaria around a pool where there were only gay men and I am so grateful to have access to that sort of space, but this spoke to the wider reality of life – the majority of life is spent with straight people – and that means you are sometimes a welcome guest, sometimes an unwelcome guest, but very rarely at home.

It also echoes Michael Tolliver Lives because Ted is middle-aged – although the change to his relationship was not a choice it opened up the door to a renewing of himself and his identity. In this we get a really positive message that at any stage in life there can be growth and the opportunity to embrace new challenges and opportunities. That the expectations of others should not be the definition of us.

In lots of ways this was a good holiday read – but it was more than that - it speaks deeply to our humanity, it made me look myself in the mirror and ask if I always give my best self to those I love?

Sounds Like Fun by Bryan Moriaty

Buy it from Bookshop.org and support local booksellers  

I had read Harsh Cravings on the plane to Gran Canaria, I then read this, and later in the holiday read Becoming Ted, all of which look hard at relationships, and in particular Sounds Like Fun and Becoming Ted cover common ground – I almost began to wonder if my subconscious was trying to tell me something…

I don’t think it is a uniquely gay experience that low self-esteem creates the context that the moment anyone shows interest in you you fully embrace that, and often that results in accepting toxic behaviour because you are so grateful to be in a relationship, any relationship feels better than nothing.

Eoin met Rich at the moment of coming out, and everything from the first moment has red flags, yet years later they are in a steady if unfulfilling relationship.

Rich suggests they open their relationship up, this links back to Harsh Cravings insights on what that means, but it massively backfires on Rich – until that moment Eoin had been entirely dependent on Rich for validation, now Eoin has permission to find that elsewhere and then a light bulb goes on for Eoin about the power dynamic between him and Rich.

This is an insightful story about toxic relationships – but it should not be read as a conclusion that all open relationships are in reality exit strategies…

Harsh Cravings by Jason Haaf

From: www.polari.press 

The autumn of 2020 was a time of heightened experience for so many of so, and that framing is a key part of what drives Jason Haaf reflections.

It is honest about sex, in a range of settings, exploring the difference between “open relationships”, Haaf seeing emotionally open and sexually open relationships as distinct, but negotiating the boundaries is a complex ongoing work.

However it is important to have more writing about that experience as it affirms that complex is not unhealthy, and certainly no worse that other “simple” relationship boundaries – indeed it is those that see their relationships as static rather than evolving that are probably in the most unhealthy situations.

This is a shining example of the great work Polari Press is doing.

Dancing on Eggshells by John Whaite

Buy it from Bookshop.org and support local booksellers  

The inclusion of 10 or so pages of recipes between each chapter means the actual memoir is pretty brief, which is a surprise given John has had a life eventful enough to have filled many more pages.

John’s childhood on the farm and in the family chip shop has a nostalgic feel, evoking the late 1960s or 1970s rather than the reality of the 1990s.

Although there is a certain openness about his family I don’t think you ever quite get under the skin of it. I remember very clearly watching the Bake Off final that John won, and his reaction to winning being that now, finally, his Mum would be proud of him. And I remember thinking “wow if you have to win a major reality TV show to cross that Threshold there must be a lot of baggage to work through”. I am not saying that we as readers are owed anything but I feel there is a lot being left unsaid.

When we get to Strictly it was interesting to have read some of John’s reflections on the way, to paraphrase, the producers were keen that he didn’t present “too gay” with the way Leyton has been able to really lean into the queerness of his identity this year.

I was also caused to reflect on the Instagram journeys of the Kiss a Boy participants in light of the roller-coaster of celebrity – they are probably at risk of being at the crest of the wave, as the calendar rolls over in a couple of weeks they will be the stars of “last year’s” hit TV show – and I really hope that they don’t hit the ground as a result so hard they are permanently broken...