Elderly drug-dealers, monsters, a Brownskirt, a psychopath and an heir to Virginia Woolf

"The Polari First Book Prize is for a first book which explores the LGBT experience and is open to any work of poetry, prose, fiction or non-fiction published in the UK in English within the twelve months of the deadline for submissions. Self-published works in both print and digital formats are eligible for submission."

So it was with antici...pation [again!] that John-John, Paul, Jim, little Tony, Wayne, Emma, Jayne, Lexi, Val, Simon, Bryanne, Anni, Lauren and a horde of other keen readers thronged to the rather posh venue of the Purcell Room in the Southbank Centre for the gala evening to announce the winner of the Prize. Mr Paul Burston, as nervous as a first-time Dad, was, as ever, Master of Ceremonies, and artfully steered us to welcome our readers to the centre of a much larger stage than is normal for our intimate event.

Absolute sweetheart and Polari regular Justin David had the unenviable task of being first to take the stage in front of that vast, echoey hall, to open the show. However he confidently leapt straight into a passage from his début novella, titled The Pharmacist; the tale of amateur photographer Billy and his growing entanglement (with less-than-fatherly motives, one is led to suspect) with his eccentric, mysterious elderly neighbour Albert, and his unlikely and rather surprising way of supplementing his income:

"...he's gripped by this debonair gentleman. Billy disregards the transaction he thought might have taken place. It's the old man he's interested in. He must live locally. Billy's seen him at least three times before, here on this street. Unmistakeable. When the old man walks, trailing rich aromatic smoke from his pipe, he holds himself taut and regal. This graceful image of a man is enough to spark Billy's interest for unconventional behaviour, and he manages a couple of good shots of the man, amid his photographs of the flowers.

From his place in the sunlight, he observed the old man doff his hat and say goodbye to the flower seller, punctuated by a flourish of his hand.

Look at that, thinks Billy. The flair, the twirl - he loves that the man doesn't conform to any normal code of behaviour. Swanning swiftly through the crowds of fashionably dressed people carrying freakishly cut flowers, the old gentleman disappears round the corner into Laburnum Road. Billy follows quickly to see if he can get another shot to take back to the studio. The old man fascinates him and he wonders if he may have found new subject. The gentleman heads down the east-end street towards the Victorian maisonettes where Billy lives. It's a great surprise to him to see the old man take a key from his pocket and slip into the communal entrance of his building; Billy's building. 'Oh my God!' Billy can't help saying out loud, before reaching the front door. 'He lives upstairs.'

All rather enthralling, we thought...



Trapeze artist, aerial acrobat and award-winning author - and another familiar face from Polari - Mr Will Davis was up next with a very odd short story indeed, all about a neurotic and distinctly un-monster-like giant sea monster, titled I Eat People(!) Quirky, funny and completely off-the-wall - one of his early works, it was long-listed for the Fish Publishing Short Story Prize 2012/13, yet remains unpublished. Instead, here's a little potted video all about the man himself:



Cute.



All twirling and quirky literary thoughts were rudely brushed aside in a thrice, however, when the grandiose stage was invaded once more by the Dame-Judi-obsessed and self-proclaimed "Poet-in-residence at the 197 bus stop", Barbara Brownskirt, with her "menstrual fuelled words". Poems, actually. Well, sort of. More like rants, really:

Barbara Brownskirt - The Normal Day

Barbara Brownskirt - Big Day Out

Unstoppable as always, she progressed through several classics from her as-yet-unpublished eighteen volumes of poetry, much to the delight of the audience. We congratulated the lovely Karen MacLeod (for it is indeed she) later for making us once again roar with laughter, and for being possibly the first person to say "vagina" on stage at the Purcell Room.

After the break and a little smoke'n'drink-fuelled promenade on the Thameside terrace of the Queen Elizabeth Hall, it was time to reclaim our seats and on with the show!



Mari Hannah is a class act. Winner of the Polari First Book Prize in 2013 for her first novel The Murder Wall, she's certainly a prolific writer - she's already published her fourth book (all featuring the lady lesbian DCI Kate Daniels), with a fifth apparently on its way.

It was from her latest, Monument to Murder, that she read a gripping extract - flick-flakking between the edgy scenario of our heroine facing a potentially lethal encounter (alone, on a wintry Northumberland beach, site of the recent discovery of two murdered children's bodies) with a psychopath on the loose, and the book's other female lead character (prison psychologist Emily McCann, who is being stalked by said sex offender) as she returns home to find her daughter apparently missing...

It's all heart-stopping stuff. No wonder that the rights to her novels have been optioned for a future television adaptation - by none other than Stephen Fry's production company, Sprout Pictures!



Our headline reader, the wee Scottish academician and author Ali Smith ("an heir to Virginia Woolf", according to the Telegraph) must be waiting with bated breath at the moment - for on 14th October she will find out if she's "third time lucky"; having been twice previously short-listed for the prestigious Man Booker Prize for fiction, her novel How To Be Both is on the short-list again this year!

And it was from that very book that she read us (at breakneck speed, without losing any clarity) a most wonderful passage - just one snippet from this much-lauded "multi-layered" story that simultaneously charts the modern-day life of recently bereaved pubescent George(ina) and the 15th century fresco painter Francesco del Cossa, and how they (figmentally?) actually get to meet. In her piece, she hilariously related an account of the remarkably successful trip by young Francesco (in Ms Smith's version of this real-life character, "he" was actually born a "she") to a Florentine brothel where, rather than be "entertained" by the prostitutes, "he" ends up painting them (and, in a twist, the girls pay him for this service)... It was utterly superb. She deserves to win. Here is Ali Smith talking about the book on BBC 2's Newsnight programme this week:



Miss Smith was wildly applauded for her reading, but it wasn't over yet, folks!



And so it came to the climax of the evening's celebrations - as the very lovely panel-member Matt Cain took to the podium to make the announcement we had all been waiting for. The winner of the coveted Polari First Book Prize 2014 is Diriye Osman for his seminal Fairytales for Lost Children, an anthology of tales of "people constantly on the verge of self-revelation; these characters - young, gay and lesbian Somalis - must navigate the complexities of family, identity and the immigrant experience as they tumble towards freedom."

Mr Osman was obviously overjoyed at his success! We congratulated him (clutching the award to his chest, together with his £1000 prize money presented on stage by the hunky "Men-At-Play-type" Vincent Francois, Chair of the UK LGBT Network and Regional Head of Audit at Societé Generale) in the lobby afterwards, and he was still out-of-breath but (as always) smiling. Bless. A deserved winner.



Thus, it was all over for another glittering evening (and, in the case of the Prize, for another year) bar the schmoozing...

Our next outing will be to wish "London's premier gay literary salon" Polari a happy seventh birthday in the esteemed company of Neil Bartlett, Ben Ferguson, Sarah Bramley, Niven Govinden and Alex Marwood on 26th November. Once more - I can't wait!

Polari

Dragman, faux fox, Santa's syndrome and snapping fingers

In the last 'peerless gay literary salon' - Polari - of the year, the theme was understandably Christmassy, and Paul Burston, resplendent in a faux fox fur borrowed especially from Lana Turner or Arlene Dahl for the occasion, had a marvellous line-up of entertainment ready and waiting for the packed house of regulars and literary types (and the lovely actress Barbara Ewing, of Brass fame, too)!



Opening the show with a real element of sparkle and pizzazz was the inaugural live appearance for house fave Mr David McAlmont's new project Fingersnap, with pianist Guy Davies (visit their website). Their song Some Kind of Masterpiece particularly caught my attention:

Fingersnap - Some Kind of Masterpiece

A couple more numbers, including an Amy Winehouse memorial, later they concluded with a particularly poignant ballad. For our friend Ange (proudly sat with us at the front of the stage) had a couple of years ago submitted a story to Mr McA in response for his call for ideas for themes for his songs. She had told him the full story of the difficult birth of her son James, born prematurely on Christmas Day, and it had moved him so much he wrote this song, Merry Christmas is You, as a tribute:

Fingersnap - Merry Christmas is You

Having moved everyone to tears and sniffles it was time for a bit of light relief!



And right on cue, the very wonderful Rebecca Chance (aka Lauren Henderson) bounced onto the stage to play the "MC" rather than reader for a change and introduce our first reading. She explained that as she was currently in Casualty (the programme not hospital!) the former Corrie actress and screenwriter Tracy Brabin was unfortunately unable to appear in person to read from her forthcoming novel, so in her place the actress Siân Reeves (apparently nominated "Best Villain" at the British Soap Awards 2010 for her role as Sally Spode in Emmerdale) would take the spotlight.

She treated us to some rip-roaring passages from Tracy's work in progress, her novel Paradise, featuring the suffocating consequences of a family argument involving a rebellious teenager. It sounded fabulous, and I look forward to reading the finished work!





Steven Appleby is one of my favourite off-the-wall cartoonists. The outpourings of his bizarre imagination have followed me around through the years, ever since he first started publishing them in the NME in the 1980s - and since then, of course, he has had regular comic strips in such esteemed tomes as The Times, The Observer and The Sunday Telegraph, and currently The Guardian. [Check out his Loomus cartoons for inspiration!] I had never seen him in person however, and had no idea he would be wearing a sparkly skirt and jacket with such aplomb - a style that has inspired Lesley Joseph, no doubt.



Steven introduced the unsuspecting audience to "his world", much of which is featured in his new collection, The Coffee Table Book Of Doom. A fascinating world it is, too! I loved it - being familiar with some of the cartoons that form Steven's "favourite things" - as did the audience, who gave him rousing applause.

Next up was the charming Miss Susie Boyt (author of the rather fab My Judy Garland Life), who we last saw at Polari way back in February 2009.



Inspired by an article in an American magazine about a woman who claimed she suffered from "an almost-illness she called over-giving", and in the spirit of the season Susie pondered whether this was an affliction also experienced by Santa Claus:

Human beings can be terribly literal about repairing the damage of their past. I know I am. People who are most obsessed with things and their distribution are often those who grew up on the edge of plenty, looking through its windows, pressing their noses up against its lavish colours and promise.

Was that Santa’s realm, a poor-relation or very minor royal, raised in a palace in a bad neighbourhood, with no civil-list income and a Robin Hood ethic?

It’s very unfashionable just now – dammit! – to think we can change the world by giving thoughtful trinkets to our loved ones, let alone to strangers.

When shopping for gifts I nurse a desire to find presents that will prove so essential to friends’ well-being that they cannot imagine how they functioned previously without the gift, without me.

In the past people rather admired me for this tendency. Now they nudge each other and term it a neurosis. “What’s that all about?” they smirk. So I tell them the cracker-motto version, which is that when I was five, walking home from school one day, I found £200 on the pavement in £20 notes. I handed it to my mother, solemnly. Red bills which were languishing in the hall were paid. Buns were bought, more than we could eat. Suddenly I wasn’t a schoolgirl any more; I was a provider, a little war-hero, practically the man of the house. I walked a little bit taller after that. These things go deep.

And what of Father Christmas’s domestic set-up? It’s not hard to construct. Do Mrs Claus and the nippers suffer as the families of other world-class geniuses often do? “Just this year can you spend Christmas at home with us? Do you really have to work? Oh please? You’ve done the Christmas shift for as long as any of us can remember, please think of delegating this year.” Cut to Father Christmas with a pained expression and a tear in his eye, protesting in a whisper, “But darlings! It’s who I am ...”

Our headliner Ali Smith, twice-nominated for both the Orange and the Man Booker literary prizes, treated us to a couple of saucy (and very fast-paced!) extracts from her estimable works There But For The and Girl Meets Boy - her two passages were on the theme of sex; one for men (“it’s very quick”, she joked), and one for women, which lasted longer(!). Very entertaining, indeed...



And thus, with a final flourish, Mr Burston welcomed Fingersnap back to the stage for a few more numbers before it was all over until 2012...

Inspired by the furore over the appointment of the out-gay Gene Robinson, The Bishop of New Hampshire:

Fingersnap - The Bishop of New Hampshire

...and the duo's new single, I Wanna Rise:

Fingersnap - I Wanna Rise

Roll on the first Polari of the New Year!!