It was a dark and stormy night on Wednesday - it was pissing-down - but despite the weather I, and a handful of stalwarts including Our Paul, Emma, Toby, Simon and chums, made our way to the cavernous surroundings of the legendary Heaven nightclub under Charing Cross... for the very welcome return of "London's peerless gay literary salon" Polari to its home city, after too long away!
With our "hostess-with-the-mostest" Mr Paul Burston presiding, we were in for another treat in store, with another selection of class acts:
Jake Arnott, Alice Denny, VG Lee, John McCullough
First up, Mr Jake Arnott, one of the UK's most successful crime writers - among his works are The Long Firm and He Kills Coppers, both adapted into much-lauded television serials. In his customary style, acting the roles of the characters, Mr Arnott read for us a dramatic segment of his new novel Blood Rival - heavily based around the multiple historic Greek stories of Oedipus - in which the anti-hero Eddie Pierce has "inherited the crown" (and wife) of the previous Kentish gangster kingpin Lee Royle, who was murdered in an apparent road-rage incident. During their efforts to uncover the secrets and lies left behind by his death, Eddie confesses that as a teen he had been raped by Royle - yet still loved him, nonetheless; and it was this desperate desire that drove his ambition to live up to, and eventually take over the "throne".
Mesmerising stuff!
Next was Alice Denny – a Brighton-based performance poet and judge for the Polari Prize 2026 - who read for us some of her pieces, tackling gender, love, loss, sexuality, marginalisation and injustice. Quite downbeat, but heartfelt.
Although it seemed that Paul B was hesitant to offer us a break, I think we needed it. A pee, a fag, a top-up and some mingling - and it was time for part two...
...opening with the lovely Polari stalwart VG Lee, everybody's favourite "Provincial Lesbian"! She read for us a segment from her forthcoming new novel Our Shadow Selves, focusing in on the experience of a lesbian of a certain age, whose life is drifting along in a shabby seaside town, and the frisson that she experiences when a long-distant butch "crush" of hers swans back into town - and she finally gets the attention she deserves!
There is no footage of the actual passage VG read for us, but here's another from the same book:
Our final reader was the faboo John McCullough, another stalwart - he won The Polari First Book Prize 2012 - reading selection of quirky, often quite amusing poems from his new collection Crowd Voltage. Like this one:
You're working-class my lad,
don't you forget it, said Mum.
She was talking to a giraffe,
a lanky boy prone to ideas
above his station, soft ways
of slipping skyward.
I loved being a giraffe,
a vegetarian in fairyland,
the staircase of my neck
leading nowhere sharp.
I loved not being a lion
even though that meant
being hunted, carnivores slashing
at me till I galloped away.
I loved withdrawing to invisible
acacias - cathedrals of leaves
where my elastic tongue,
licked what it liked.
Because I loved discovering
other giraffes, entwining
bodies and probing necks
or simply standing together
as a crowd, a forest
of extravagant breathing.
We love him!
THen, by way of an encore, we had a faboo live set from the effervescent Son of a Tutu!
Despite the somewhat smaller then usual audience (I blame the rain), all concerned got a well-deserved ovation:
We love Polari!
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