Paul Burston – Homosexual Culture at
the
London Literature Festival
It started with a moan, really. Myself and Rupert Smith were moaning about the lack of opportunities for us as gay authors, the lack of invitations to read at major book festivals, the lack of invitations to read anywhere. Out of that conversation came Polari, the gay literary salon night I launched last November, and which has grown at such a rate, it surprised even me. Myself and Rupert read together at the first Polari. Neil Bartlett read at the second.
Since then we’ve had Stella Duffy, Christopher Fowler and Will Self, to name just a few.
Then in February, to mark LGBT History Month, Polari joined forces with Rupert’s House of Homosexual Culture for a night debating the state of gay publishing in the basement bar at Freedom. We had 150 people through the door that night. But were we happy? Were we buggery. It was all very well raising our profile on the gay scene, but what about the wider literary world? Were we destined to remain in the ghetto forever?
Unbeknownst to us, someone, somewhere was listening. Barely a week later we were called into a meeting at the South Bank, and invited to curate at this year’s London Literature Festival. We left the meeting in a daze. I actually remember turning to Rupert and uttering those immortal words, ‘What just happened?’
What just happened, in fact, was that gay programmers were invited to curate at a major British book festival - for the first time ever as far as we can tell.
Five months later, we’ve just completed out first season of gay literary events at the South Bank. Under the umbrella heading of The House of Homosexual Culture, we staged three events in all, involving a total of 20 writers and performers, including two male strippers. <more>
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Patrick Gale has written over ten novels, the most recent of which, Notes from an Exhibition, has become a bestseller thanks to its being picked up by the Richard and Judy Book Club.
Nick: So how are you today?
Patrick: I’m dead on my feet. I've just got back from my other, non-writerly life spending two weeks chairing the St Endellion Summer Music Festival. It was our Golden Jubilee this year which meant we had the BBC down to broadcast evensong, and the Sunday Times and Telegraph sent critics and I had to organise a five course marquee dinner for 240 on top of my usual duties so it was a bit like throwing a simultaneous wedding, old boys' reunion and sports day on top of learning a lot of new music in record time. Fantastic fun, though and I was lucky to be so closely involved in something so special.
Nick: When you say, learning new music – you play an instrument?.
Patrick: I play the cello but at the festival I only sing.
Nick: A singer too! I'm impressed. So what have you been up to this morning?
Patrick: Answering 650 emails, watching the drizzle and listening to the dogs sigh.
Nick: You live near Lands End, right?
Patrick: That's right. On my hubby's family farm.
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Lee Houck and Charlie Vazquez, two New York City-based writers, sat down in July 2008 to talk about their lives as outsiders, their process of creating compelling, original fiction, and blowjobs in expensive cars.
Lee: How are you today? Are you coming from work?
Charlie:Yes, I’m good. The summertime here is so crazy. There was a homeless guy with pink hair-curlers in a terrycloth bathrobe directing traffic in the middle of Eighth Avenue. I had to stop and watch for a few minutes—he almost caused a few accidents, but by Port Authority you can expect just about anything crazy.
Lee: I love summer in New York. It’s a very public city, everything happens out on the sidewalk. I’ve always wanted to ask you why you moved away from here.
Charlie: I was born and raised here and left in 1988 for Oregon, where I had family at the time. It was very escapist. It was also really necessary for coming to terms with sexuality and ‘what am I going to be when I grow up’—which back then was a rock star. I was there for 17 years and then did six months in Baja and Southern California, which was cool. Then I lost two grandparents really close to each other and that was really hard on my mom, so I came back in 2006. Writing in New York brings out the strongest of my writing, I think. It’s my home and it’s impassioned—for good or bad. I can’t hide here like I did on the west coast—I’ve become comfortable with myself, more honest. And that’s great for writing. When did you get here? <more> |
My high school chemistry teacher was also a forensics investigator. He specialized in arson, burned bodies and flammable chemicals, and he entertained us with sometimes gruesome stories from more than twenty-five years of duty. There was the skeleton of a woman, average height—which is to say five foot four—somewhere around thirty years old, reduced to blackened bones and cinders in a house fire. He gave us two clues: “For example, the middle finger on her right hand has a large calcification on the top section, like you might have if you wrote heavily with a pencil, for example.” He said ‘for example’ at the beginning and end of everything. “For example, she also has a tiny indention, a notch, in her front tooth, also the right one, for example.” It was our job, eager students, wound up by the grisly details, to figure out her occupation.
Work changes you. It shows itself on your body. In the same way that a carpenter’s hands are tuned to the nuances of hammer and nail, the way wood can talk to you through your arms, my hands listen to numbers on files, to injection records and saturation levels, to painful and courageous histories. I filter through the hundreds of thousands (could be millions) of dead medical records at St. Vincent’s Hospital, and line them up in ascending order by year of admittance.
The files begin with a complaint. Something like “My back hurts and I don’t know why,” or “My leg is broken,” or worse things—usually only one sentence, typed up by someone in Admitting. Then a social and family history, which is dictated to the nurse by the patient, and hand-written.
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The city was quiet and dressed in
the deep of dark; it was hours past midnight and dawn seemed days away. I wandered to the elevated rails of the public transit system and boarded a train to the mainland. It arrived—sparking, yet noiselessly—as soon as I stepped onto the platform. I remember sitting, but never stepping in. I was alone in my car and I realized I hadn’t brought anything with me. I had nothing—no keys, wallet or belongings. Not even coins.
In a city of what should’ve been millions, I was alone. The dark metropolis passed by the scratched windows with little spectacle, save for the occasional flash of muted railway spark. The buildings were dark and looming up ahead. I wasn’t sure why I was riding that train at so dark an hour, but I did know where I was going and who I needed to find. It was only ‘why’ that eluded me. I wasn’t sure what day it was and when I tried to remember anything, nothing came to me. The train descended into a tunnel and the world became even darker—as I raced beneath the mighty and lifeless honeycombed core of the city.
An uncertain time later, the train ascended, miles from where it had slid into the Earth. None of the many stations it passed had names. Had the train even stopped while I was on it? When the train opened to let me out, I drifted down the length of the platform and descended to the street level, where I continued to walk—guided by instinct. I was in a landscape of chipped brick and graffiti.
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Future tense affair
I saw someone today
a somebody-not-there
beside me on the slope
of Primrose Hill
where I sat beneath
a windloved tree, bent
in the history of its ardour
and London below me, spreading
into its own future
around Wren’s dome
I could not see the Thames
nor hear it flow
but knew, but know
as I will always know
that it flows there
I saw him then, this
somebody-not-there, this
somebody whose hand
did not hot hold mine
which tapped the earth
and stroked the grass
for company instead
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