Dance on My Grave by Aidan Chambers

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Published in 1982 this story of two gay, or bi, teenagers is hard to fit into context – it treats their sexuality in such a fuss free manner which is a real surprise – there are different things shaping this, it is written just before the era of AIDS, it is written several years before Section 28 (it is partly books such as this that those behind Section 28 worried about) which might help explain the relaxed approach, but on the flip side it is written when the age of consent was still 21 therefore the sex was illegal.

The things that date the novel include the use of typewriters (younger readers please Google to find out what these devices were used for!) and more significantly the narrowness of the opportunity for post-16 education – only a handful, of invited, pupils get to stay on into Sixth Form – there is an echo of the History Boys.

Although it is a story that feels fresh and liberating, even reading it 40 years on, but of course it is not completely hope-filled. For all the joy that we share in Hal and Barry’s relationship it is finite – it is hardly a spoiler to note that the Grave in the title is Barry’s – a star that shone brightly but tragically briefly. We are left to wonder what the next chapter of Hal’s life will be like – just a few years younger than the gang in It’s a Sin, the 1980s were a tough time to be young and gay…

Towards the end he reflects…

“Three days to write Bit 24! But I learned something.

I have become my own character.

I as I was, not I as I am now.

Put another way: Because of writing this story, I am no longer now what I was when it all happened.

Writing the story is what has changed me; not having lived through the story…

You become your own raw material...” (p221)

This relationship to story is a theme that Pádraig Ó Tuama often draws out – we are the stories we tell of our lives – the story shapes us as much as, probably more than, we shape the story.

Witness by Jonathan Kinsman

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From the poem matthew

“…

it begins outside, under the orange glow of a

lamp post while god smokes like he’s been doing it

since fifteen. Your ted baker suit a black stain in

a crowd of charity shop jumpers and hand-me-down

boots. they’re saying what, him?

and god says yeah, him.”

From the poem philip that plays the feeding of the five thousand into contemporary foodbanks

“…

and you watch, astounded,

yet knowing that the problem with maths

is it just keeps going

just like he does, exhausted, mumbling his mantra:

i’ll feed them,

i’ll feed them.”

Straight Razor and Breakfast with Thom Gunn by Randall Mann

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Randall offers that mix of sexy Californian sun-shine and earthy, embodied, reality that is part of the power and charm of Armistead Maupin.

From Breakfast with Thom Gunn I tagged:

Night: A Fragment

Ovid in San Francisco

Stranded

“I nibble a melancholy quiche Lorriane”

Monday

“… It isn’t

beautiful, of course, this life. It is.”

Easy Meat by Rachel Trezise

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Recounting this single day in Caleb life is a tale of disappointment, a man at that point in life when hope is fading, the young have the promise of a bright future held up in front of them – but you get to an age when either the promise has come true or it is time to accept that “this” is as good as it is going to get.

There is a strength in the writing that gives Caleb a deep credibility, it makes his hurts hauntingly real.

That the day in question is Brexit Referendum day adds an edge – avoiding the party political Trezise offers an uncomfortable insight into the outcome of the Referendum.

Remain tried to tell people like Caleb that they had never had it so good, Leave told them that Brexit equalled a better life.

If life was little more than a daily grind to keep your head above water, you didn’t have to be an idiot to vote Leave. You could be well aware that Leave were selling snake oil and yet still vote with them. If the current, bleak, reality was really the best you could hope for, there was nothing really to lose on the risk, however unlikely, that the snake oil might just work.

That same sense of disconnection and hopelessness is common in many places, and it means sensible people will continue to make “bad” political choices – if you live in a dark squalid shed then it is easy for you to become the Turkey that votes for Christmas.

The Man with Night Sweats by Thom Gunn

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I put tags in the following…

The Hug

“It was not sex, but I could feel

The whole strength of your body set,

Or braced, to mine...”

Meat

‘All Do Not All Things Well’

Terminal

Words for Some Ash

(I might have this at my funeral?)

Memory Unsettled

“…

‘Remember me,’ you said.

We will remember you.

...”

The J Car

“…

Unready, disappointed, unachieved,

He knew...”

A Blank

Too Young Too Loud To Different – Poems from Malika’s Poetry Kitchen

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This is a Prayer by Anne Enith Cooper repeats the line:

“This is a Prayer for the dispossessed, for the fallen and we’ve all fallen sometimes, for the children...” listing situations of struggle and signs of hope.

My Headstone Read ‘Beloved Daughter’ by Fikayo Balogun talks of sexual violence and ends:

“The world asked me to speak, but words cannot

describe the injustice that has been dealt to my soul.

Words would buy you justice, they said.

I told them, what has been taken from me is my life

with my soul ripped from its root. I have disappeared

into oblivion, words cannot bring me back.”

Route by Sundra Lawrence

The news charcoals my fingers.

Syria is closed, I tell my daughter,

of course, she wants to know why:

The country is hurting itself -

people want to find safety.

She sketches a map on paper

from her toy globe

then colours in the countries,

she draws a route from Damascus to London:

It’s so they can find us.

If they wear good shoes

can the Syrians walk through Turkey

and catch a boat to Greece?

I say it’s a good plan

but crossing the water is costly.

Are there beds? Will their mummies tuck them in?

Families hold each other for the journey, I say,

I pull the cover up to her chin.

Her breath is all that remains of the day;

guiding the cheap rafts through rough seas.

Felix Ever After by Kacen Callender

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I found this a slow burn of a book, the setting of 17 year olds at a New York art school living a seemingly impossibly grown up life that was a universe away from 17 year old me rattling around Baldock took a lot for me to form a connection.

But what I enjoyed was the layering of the serious and the playful – as Felix explores their identity there are moments that are deep and dark, but equally moments that are joyful and even silly. These don’t have to exist separately, indeed it is the playful that very often the validation to the serious, the joy that illuminates the dark.