A Gothic world, a gangland lesbian, the Filth Peddler, a Georgian feminist and 'that piece of shit'

It was strange to be in such a minority last night (venturing out on my own without the usual "gang"), as I was among only a handful of other men (the only other I recognised was Chris Chalmers) in the Weston Pavilion atop the Royal Festival Hall - by far the majority of the packed house were female (including stalwarts Val, Jayne, Anny and chums, and Anya Nyx and several others of the "literati"). It was, of course, Polari's own evening to honour female voices as part of the Women of the World festival. Mr Paul Burston, opening proceedings at "London's peerless gay literary salon", said: "mine will be the only male voice you'll hear from the stage tonight!"



And so it was as our first reader, the (very young) radio and music journalist and self-professed sci fi and fantasy nerd Sophie Sparham took to the stage. Her début published novel is Snow in Hell, and is blurb reads thus:

There's something wrong with our world and this time it's no fault of human beings. After years of war, peace has fallen over the earth, due to a mysterious voice claiming to be humanity's god. However, despite this apparent revelation, not everything is as straightforward as it seems. Prepare to enter a Gothic world as scientists Margot Grant and Jade Wilde are confronted with hooded deceivers, obnoxious vampires and necromancers.

It's a very bizarre concept - the "heroes" of the story being killers-for-hire in a dystopian world of monstrous creatures, and all... As was the piece she read from her new work-in-progress, all about the sinister personification of "Time itself" and his solicitation of the pair's services to rid him of a troublesome sibling...



Bringing things right down to earth with an almighty crash, VA (Veronica) Fearon could not be more different. On her last appearance at Polari in May 2014 she introduced us to the tough-as-nails "street gangs negotiator" Dani, her "band of soldiers" and her temptress girlfriend Susanna. Now - speaking in first person all of the parts - 'VA' brought to life the various other characters in her book The Girl with the Treasure Chest, each having their own opinions on the tempestuous and risky relationship between the two women: Dani's childhood Jewish neighbour, her henchman Sonny and the sulky sister of Susannah. Beautifully portrayed, all of them - I and the rest of the audience loved it!



Ms Jacquie Lawrence, up next, has had a long career as a television producer, writer, director and commissioning editor; among her notable successes were Channel 4's Oscar nominated documentary The Celluloid Closet and Rikki Beadle-Blair's drama series Metrosexuality. She has the proud accolade of being called "The Filth Peddler Of Channel 4" by the Daily Mail! Of her new novel, she said:

“Different for Girls originated as an idea for a television drama series about a group of women whose lives and loves were different. It was a project that I put on hold, whilst looking after my two pre-school age daughters. When my youngest started nursery, I took the original concept of these six single women, whose love lives were entangled, and thought about how they would be living their lives seven years later. During this seven-year hiatus, changes in family law, fertility treatment and gay marriage has given an even different context to these different girls so I created relationships for them and, in some cases, families."

In fact - as she confided to us - the proposed TV series hit an insurmountable obstacle when, before it could enter production, a rather more successful series The L-Word arrived on the scene. So "the lesbians in the desk drawer" lay forgotten until Jacquie got around to producing the book. Here's the prologue to Different for Girls, read by lesbian songstress Heather Peace:

Jacquie Lawrence - Different For Girls

Fabulous stuff - and thus, part one of our evening came to a close. Time for ablutions and a top-up.



When former Blue Peter presenter Miss Janet Ellis [mother of the rather more internationally-famous Sophie Ellis-Bextor] - who opened the second half - was last at Polari in 2014, hers was an early draft of a novel. Now she is extremely proud indeed that The Butcher's Hook is finally published, and has received some favourable reviews. With very good reason! From the passage she read - an extremely sad one about the bereavement of a young girl in 18th century England, on the death of her baby brother to a fever - Miss Ellis' writing is excellent, and the story is intriguing. Apparently, the girl (Anne Jacob) learns to fight her grief, her loveless and ultra-traditional parents, society's norms and all that goes with them, in order to strike out for a life of her own - but for the rest of the story, I guess we'll have to buy the book:

Janet Ellis - The Butcher's Hook

Our headliner Miss Mari Hannah - winner of the Polari First Book Prize in 2013 - is an accomplished writer, specialising in gritty crime dramas; her series of stories featuring the extraordinary Kate Daniels is soon to hit our TV screens courtesy of Stephen Fry and Gina Carter's Sprout production house. But it was from her newest tale The Silent Room, which features instead a male protagonist, that she read a passage. Its blurb reads:

A security van sets off for Durham prison, a disgraced Special Branch officer in the back. It never arrives. On route it is hijacked by armed men, the prisoner sprung. Suspended from duty on suspicion of aiding and abetting the audacious escape of his former boss, Detective Sergeant Matthew Ryan is locked out of the investigation. With a manhunt underway, Ryan is warned to stay away. Keen to preserve his career and prove his innocence, he backs off. But when the official investigation falls apart, under surveillance and with his life in danger, he goes dark, enlisting others in his quest to discover the truth.

And here is part of the extract that Miss Hannah read, featuring the prison van hijack:

Realising they were trapped, Storey began to weep.

Irwin urged him to get a grip. They were going to be fine. He’d get them out of there. Somehow. The words had hardly left his lips when the gun was raised. Both security guards ducked as the windscreen shattered, a large gaping hole appearing at its centre where the shot had pierced the glass. No longer could either guard see their attackers, but they could hear the shooter’s instructions to climb down and open up the back, his voice muffled through a balaclava.

‘Do it!’ Storey yelled. ‘It’s not worth losing your life for peanuts – or that piece of shit in the back.’

Irwin told him to shut it. ‘Do I look stupid to you?’

‘No!’ Fenwick bawled. ‘They’ll kill us all.’

‘That’s helpful, pal,’ Irwin yelled back. ‘Got any bright ideas? Because, if you do, now’s the time to spit em out.’

The Special Branch officer’s opinion was valid – and probably correct – but then he wasn’t the one with the gun pointing at his head. His reply was lost in the general mayhem as the passenger door was yanked open. Whimpering in fear, crying for the mother he couldn’t stand the sight of, Storey was pulled from the vehicle, the butt end of a gun rammed into his stomach. He dropped to the ground like a stone. With the gun now in his back, he was told to lie face down.

Seconds later, Irwin joined him, thrown with such force, two of his fingers snapped as he hit the deck. Out the corner of his eye, he saw keys dangling from the Clio’s ignition. For a split second – no more – he wondered if he could make the car without getting shot in the back. He decided against. He couldn’t leave Storey to the mercy of these two. Besides, this was no time to play the hero.

Sucking in a breath, Irwin tried to lower his heart rate.

His chest felt like it might explode. If he were a gambler – which he wasn’t – he’d have taken bets that the men in the masks weren’t going to kill him. Why bother dragging him out of the van otherwise? Why not shoot him dead in his seat? Still, he decided not to test his theory...

...For a moment, nothing happened. Then Irwin heard the familiar squeak of the van’s back door as it was pulled open. With sound but no sight of what was going on, he counted the seconds, his nerve gone completely. No longer sure it wouldn’t end there on that wet and deserted stretch of road, he shut his eyes, wondered if he’d hear the shot that killed him.

Idling engines purred...

Rain hit the tarmac...

Storey vomited.

Flinching as a pair of heavy-duty boots arrived by his side, Irwin exhaled as they moved away again, his stomach heaving in relief. A door slammed, then another and another. Expensive. The Audi. As it took off at speed, he lifted his head. His prisoner was gone.

Utterly engrossing.

And so, with rousing applause for the assembled readers, that was it for another brilliant evening.



Cheers!

Next month (11th April) Polari "returns to its roots" in Soho for a one-off special event at the ever-so-swanky Light Lounge, featuring Diana Souhami, Alexis Gregory, Keith Jarrett and VG Lee.

Should be fun!

Oh, how we love Polari.

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

A murderous lion, a transsexual diva, the N-word, tuberose, evening wear and Miss Lederer

We decided that on such a noteworthy occasion as the sixth anniversary of "London's peerless gay literary salon" Polari - for one night only relocated to the prestigious (if a bit soulless) Purcell Room for the occasion - and the announcement of the winner of the Polari First Book Prize, we would dress up a bit. We all (Madam Arcati, Paul, little Tony, Jim, Wayne and a host of regulars including Alex, Paulo, Lauren/Rebecca, Diane, Val, Peter, Emma, Toby, Anni and the rest, and non regulars including Mzz Kimberley) looked very smart indeed, I thought!



Paul Burston appeared as proud as punch at the turnout, and with good reason - in six years, Polari has risen from "just another" author evening in a bar in Soho to one of the most respected regular literary events that the Southbank Centre has! Always brilliant, always entertaining, and a firmly-established part of London's premier artistic showcase. Tonight's line-up was certainly something rather special...



Opening the show was the marvellous Ms Rosie Garland - in another life she is known as "Rosie Lugosi the Vampire Queen, cabaret chanteuse and mistress of ceremonies" - whose estimable talents have turned of late to writing. Indeed her first novel Palace of Curiosities, from which she read us an extract, was only published earlier this year.

It seems a quirky, sinister, brilliantly-written tale - the piece she read graphically described the moment when the mangy and tortured lion ("Jambo") in a Victorian circus finally turns and rips his tormentor the trainer's throat out (before itself being killed) in front of a horrified audience. Well, almost all horrified. The narrator of the book just happened to be conceived that very night, as her mother, evidently consumed with perverse passion at the carnage, takes the opportunity to consummate her relationship down an alleyway...with the lion's blood still dripping from her clothes. What the resulting freak-child is like and how her subsequent life story unfolds is for us to discover in the rest of the book, methinks... Here is Ms Garland (with short snippet from the book) at a recent spooky “Crime & Fear“ event at Staffordshire University:

Rosie Garland at Crime & Fear

As Mr Patrick Flanery quite rightly said, "How do you follow that?" An American ex-pat resident of London, Mr Flanery has two well-received novels under his belt - and a third on its way - and he read first from one of those Fallen Land, a convoluted tale of the paranoia that engulfs a selection of haunted characters tainted by their doomed pursuit of the "American Dream". It was difficult to get the measure of this complex story, as it was with the taster he gave us of his next novel that features the agonies faced by a closeted gay actor in the midst of the "studio system" that ruled the Golden Age of Hollywood - whether it was the pace of the reading itself, the acoustics of the cavernous hall, or merely the multitude of interwoven conversations between Mr Flanery's characters, I don't know. Maybe a more leisurely read of the books might unravel the threads, but we were exhausted.

Thankfully, entertainment of a simpler, more musical kind was to follow.



Miss Dee Chanelle, the glamorous trans founder of the annual Miss Diamond Queen contest, sang (beautifully, admittedly) two songs that are not exactly our cup of tea - Luther Vandross' dreadful Dance With My Father and Emeli Sande's Clown - but finished off with the most faboo version of Dame Shirl's eternal classic This Is My Life [please excuse the crappy clip - as with all such hand-held phone videos, the audience "participation" rather ruins the impression one gets of the singer; she was excellent last night!]

Dee Chanelle - This is My Life

And so to the break, the inevitable shitty service at the Queen Elizabeth Hall bar, a little varda at the gorgeous views of the Thames from the terrace, and back to the auditorium, hardly having had a chance to speak to anyone [the consensus from most people was that they missed the milling around and mingling that is possible in our usual function room at the Royal Festival Hall].



Regardless, our opener for the second half, the charming Mr Dean Atta is always welcome - with his "in-yer-face" punk-poetry challenging racism, homophobia and hypocrisy in modern society. He got the biggest cheer for his most famous poem I Am Nobody’s Nigger:



But the anger soon turned to laughter as our adorable special guest star Miss Helen Lederer took to the stage!



Miss L is an absolutely on-the-ball comedienne, playing up to the "ditzy" persona that made us adore her so much in classic series such as Ab Fab and Naked Video, yet always with perfect timing for the punchline. She regaled us with recollections of appearing semi-naked with Tom Daley (lucky cow) in his universally panned reality show Splash, of school-days, auditions and the unexpected complexities of trying to get "crowd-funding" to put together a stage show. Speaking of which, her WTF spoof panel show is on at the St James Theatre on 28th November:

Helen Lederer - WTF

[We would have had some lovely photos of us with Helen, with whom we were chatting after the event - quite impassioned and seriously - for a while, but Jim fucked up and managed to take two of the blurriest images known to man, short of actually smearing the lens with lard. This is the best I could do to actually be able to make out that we were all in it. I know it looks like a crappy old Polaroid, but then again thanks to the oh-so-trendy-bollocks that is Instagram, this is quite the look nowadays. Apparently.]



Miss Lederer having suitably perked us all up, it was time for our headline reader to come to the lectern...



Ms Charlotte Mendelson is an author of some magnitude – she's won the Somerset Maugham Award and the John Llewellyn Rhys Prize and has been short-listed for the Sunday Times Young Writer of the Year Award and the Orange Prize for Fiction, and her latest novel Almost English was long-listed for the Man Booker Prize in 2013. And it was from this that she read us a truly absorbing piece, a short extract of which is below:

The air stinks of tuberose, caraway and garlic: the universal scent of central European hospitality. But Marina is not hospitable. After only an hour her skin is tender with cheek pinchings; she has been match-made, prodded and instructed beyond endurance, and the night is young.

Soon they will come to find her, to admire the shape of her fingernails, the thickness of her lashes, their eyes peeling back her clothes, weighing her like fruit. This is not new. She has been brought up to accept the questions and kisses as if nothing could please her more, however much lava is boiling inside.

The problem is that Marina has changed. She can bear their scrutiny no longer because her life is a disaster, and it is her fault. She betrayed them and escaped them, and now she wants to come back.

Sumptuous.



So, finally, we came to the crux of the evening, as Paul B and Val Lee announced the winner of the Polari First Book Prize 2013 - Ms Mari Hannah, for The Murder Wall.



She appeared absolutely overjoyed as Vincent Francois from sponsors Societé Generale presented her with a cheque for £1000. And so another deserving winner was crowned!



Lots of mingling and chatting later (including and especially with the lovely Miss Lederer), and that was another marvellous evening over and done with...

I think many of us will be relieved that the Polari Xmas bash returns to its cosy environs of the 5th Floor Function Room on 9th December - with a line-up that includes our lovely friend Marcus Reeves as well as Philip Hoare, Barbara Brownskirt, Neil Spring and Ann Mann.

I can't wait!

Polari