Readers of this blog may recall me hinting in the last blog, announcing the imminent publication of By Grand Central Station We Sat Down and Wept in October, that I would be up to something else during October as well.
What that something is is taking a trip down to London for a little bit of sightseeing and to do a couple of spots at two open mike nights in the Great Wen: Raw Poetry at the Central Station pub, Wharfedale Road, on Monday 4th of October, and Poetry Unplugged at the Poetry Cafe in Covent Garden on Tuesday the 5th. I will then be heading up to Hebden Bridge to take part in the monthly Write Out-Loud Read-around at the Hole in the Wall. The London gigs are about having a go at performing somewhere where people aren't familiar with my stuff; Hebden Bridge is about that too, but I've also been keen to do something under the WoL aegis since someone introduced me to their site a while ago. I really can't recommend it enough: it's a fantastic way to find out about gigs or places that are looking for submissions. I wouldn't be able to plan these gigs in London without it. So I figured if I was going to do a bunch of gigs outside the North East, I should try and fit in one of their own events. So I did.
Anyway, that's what I'm planning for October. If you're in the area for any of the gigs, do please come along. I'll probably post a reminder nearer the time. And I imagine there will be a veritable stream of tweeting from both locations for your shallow entertainment. In the meantime I have a rather needy cat to attend to so it's au revoir for now...
Sunday, 29 August 2010
Friday, 27 August 2010
A Quickie
Just popping by swiftly to inform you all that I have heard from poet and publisher Kevin Cadwallender that his forthcoming anthology of poems inspired by Elizabeth Smart's By Grand Central Station I Sat Down and Wept - which features my poem 'The Smiling Animal at his Appointed Hour' - is due to be published sometime in October. I'll have more news - including details of how and where to purchase the book which, aside from me, will feature work by loads more really fine versifiers - closer to the time.
I do have some other news regarding my poetry-related activities in October, but I'll say more about that later. Important to take a drip-feed approach to the publicity thing...
(the anthology is called By Grand Central Station We Sat Down and Wept, by the way, but you probably figured that out)
I do have some other news regarding my poetry-related activities in October, but I'll say more about that later. Important to take a drip-feed approach to the publicity thing...
(the anthology is called By Grand Central Station We Sat Down and Wept, by the way, but you probably figured that out)
Tuesday, 24 August 2010
Hot Sex Action (there isn't any)
It snuck up on me this morning that it's over a year since my wife and I split up. It then occurred to me that it's been even longer since the last time I had sex with anyone. Which is, y'know, kind of a shame because, to be honest, I'm pretty sure that last time is going to turn out to be, well, the last time.
I know it sounds slightly mawkish to say so here (and in fact I had been toying with submitting this to Arwyn's series Naked Pictures of Faceless People over at Raising My Boychick until I thought no, sod it), but I've been feeling increasingly that I'm fundamentally not ready for a relationship with someone else that goes beyond friendship (although to be honest, when you don't conform to normal gender standards, have a bad case of social phobia and tend towards bouts of misery if not abject depression, just making friends on its own is hard enough). A serious relationship would entail entirely too much. Too much opening up, too much letting people in, too much exposing the vulnerable parts of myself to someone while giving them the kind of access that means they can really, really hurt you.
It's ironic that the prospect of opening up in this area should be so frightening, because I'm only beginning to get used to how liberating it is in my writing. As I've written recently, it's only at the last couple of gigs I've done that I've started to do some of the poems I've written, but always feared to read. And I've found that to be an incredibly powerful experience: it makes me feel more honest as a writer and, strangely, more connected with my audience - probably because they get to see the real me, rather than the front I put on for so many years. It feels good to tell the truth in public.
But as liberating as that can be, I worry that opening up in private will be too much of a high-stakes gamble. On the page, on a stage, there are rules and limitations. If it's just you and someone else, alone...No. Too much risk. And too many practicalities to be negotiated. It sometimes seems to me that explaining to someone what I want out of a sexual relationship would simply take too much bloody time to explain. Heck, some days (this is one of them: can you tell?) I'm not even sure I can explain it to myself. Factor in a similar amount of time coming to understand what a partner wants, where their lines of desire intersect with mine, and what things to keep off-limits...who needs all that meshugah?
And so you get used to it: the terror of potentially romantic interaction; the pain of seeing people that you think you'd be so right with when you know that in all probability you're wrong, and that's a mistake you can't afford; the fact that you will spend your life watching other people enjoy a happiness you'll never feel again. You get used to it, and you hope that one day you can even make your peace with it, and you work as hard as you damn well can on making sure you never let the experience turn you into some horrible, shrivelled up old puritan arsehole who hates the thought of anybody having fun.
Oh, I don't know. In the grand scheme of things 'not being able to have the sex' doesn't really figure in the top 100 in a world where you can have your house blasted to shit by people who will then give you a pamphlet about Jebus; and it isn't as if there aren't many, many pleasures in life besides the old thirty seconds of squelching noises (I'm listening to one of the most orgasmic non-sex-related things I've ever experienced, John Adams' 'A Short Ride in a Fast Machine' even as I'm typing this). Besides, given the way my life keeps twisting itself into odd new shapes at the moment, for all we know next week will find me desperately trying to type out a blog entry using only my big toe, while being thrown brutally around some kind of sex-dungeon by a posse of Amazon Love Titans. Hope, as they say, springs eternal; though on the other hand, hope can be crueller than resignation. And , on that vaguely Soviet note, goodnight for now. My next blog entry will be more of the usual ranting, I'm sure. I just felt a need to get this off my chest. You can make up your own joke about me doing that in the absence of someone wanting to get on it.
I know it sounds slightly mawkish to say so here (and in fact I had been toying with submitting this to Arwyn's series Naked Pictures of Faceless People over at Raising My Boychick until I thought no, sod it), but I've been feeling increasingly that I'm fundamentally not ready for a relationship with someone else that goes beyond friendship (although to be honest, when you don't conform to normal gender standards, have a bad case of social phobia and tend towards bouts of misery if not abject depression, just making friends on its own is hard enough). A serious relationship would entail entirely too much. Too much opening up, too much letting people in, too much exposing the vulnerable parts of myself to someone while giving them the kind of access that means they can really, really hurt you.
It's ironic that the prospect of opening up in this area should be so frightening, because I'm only beginning to get used to how liberating it is in my writing. As I've written recently, it's only at the last couple of gigs I've done that I've started to do some of the poems I've written, but always feared to read. And I've found that to be an incredibly powerful experience: it makes me feel more honest as a writer and, strangely, more connected with my audience - probably because they get to see the real me, rather than the front I put on for so many years. It feels good to tell the truth in public.
But as liberating as that can be, I worry that opening up in private will be too much of a high-stakes gamble. On the page, on a stage, there are rules and limitations. If it's just you and someone else, alone...No. Too much risk. And too many practicalities to be negotiated. It sometimes seems to me that explaining to someone what I want out of a sexual relationship would simply take too much bloody time to explain. Heck, some days (this is one of them: can you tell?) I'm not even sure I can explain it to myself. Factor in a similar amount of time coming to understand what a partner wants, where their lines of desire intersect with mine, and what things to keep off-limits...who needs all that meshugah?
And so you get used to it: the terror of potentially romantic interaction; the pain of seeing people that you think you'd be so right with when you know that in all probability you're wrong, and that's a mistake you can't afford; the fact that you will spend your life watching other people enjoy a happiness you'll never feel again. You get used to it, and you hope that one day you can even make your peace with it, and you work as hard as you damn well can on making sure you never let the experience turn you into some horrible, shrivelled up old puritan arsehole who hates the thought of anybody having fun.
Oh, I don't know. In the grand scheme of things 'not being able to have the sex' doesn't really figure in the top 100 in a world where you can have your house blasted to shit by people who will then give you a pamphlet about Jebus; and it isn't as if there aren't many, many pleasures in life besides the old thirty seconds of squelching noises (I'm listening to one of the most orgasmic non-sex-related things I've ever experienced, John Adams' 'A Short Ride in a Fast Machine' even as I'm typing this). Besides, given the way my life keeps twisting itself into odd new shapes at the moment, for all we know next week will find me desperately trying to type out a blog entry using only my big toe, while being thrown brutally around some kind of sex-dungeon by a posse of Amazon Love Titans. Hope, as they say, springs eternal; though on the other hand, hope can be crueller than resignation. And , on that vaguely Soviet note, goodnight for now. My next blog entry will be more of the usual ranting, I'm sure. I just felt a need to get this off my chest. You can make up your own joke about me doing that in the absence of someone wanting to get on it.
Sunday, 22 August 2010
Why do the spacemen always have guns?
Lazy day today, mainly spent watching old episodes of Babylon 5 with a friend. FX seem to be running the series on permanent loop, which can be disorienting. Last time I saw any of it, I caught a snatch of an episode from the disappointing last season. This time, we were lucky enough to come across a bunch of eps from the end of Season 4, the whole 'liberation-of-Earth' thing, which was much more enjoyable, even if I did find myself trying to remember whether or not this occurs before or after the defeat of the Shadows, but it set me thinking about an odd thing about sci-fi TV shows. Specifically, why are so many about the millitary?
Think about it. There are a few exceptions - Firefly, Dr Who, etc - but most sci-fi TV shows tend to concentrate on the adventures of some millitary or quasi-millitary organisation. Star Trek is obviously the big boy among this bunch, and an interesting exampe in that the Federation try very hard to come off as a kind of intergalactic peace corps but, essentially, they're a great big space-navy: uniforms, heavily-armed warships, culture of obeying-the-captain (which becomes vital to the plot in First Contact) - they can go on about the Klingons being a weird warrior-race but they aren't fooling anyone: the Federation are at least as heavily-millitarised as the funny-forehead brigade, maybe even more so: the Federation are all about the discipline, whereas whenever the Klingons appear they always seem to be more like crazy space pirates (with a healthy interest in BDSM if what little we ever see of Klingon mating rituals is anything to go by). At least the Klingons know how to have fun.
There are very few civilians in the Star Trek shows...Deep Space Nine has a few but, with the exception of Quark the barman and Garrack the tailor, they tend to stay in the background (and the extent to which Garrack is actually a civilian is debatable... he's technically retired from espionage but...) Voyager pulled an interesting variation by making terrorists as well as boy scouts part of the crew, but non-state-actors are a far cry from your run-of-the-mill civvie.
Babylon 5 does have civilians, and indeed many of the main characters fluctuate between employment in the armed services, politics and more shady lines of work; but the main thrust of the plot is a massive Manichaean war between good and evil, fought with starships and PPGs.
Perhaps the most successful sci-fi series of recent times, the Battlestar Galactica remake, does manage to strike a good balance between civillian and millitary affairs, largely because that balance - the way you manage to keep all the elements of a civil society going in conditions of near-total war - is one of the main drivers of the series in terms of plot.
The point is that all three of these series, to whatever degree they balance millitary and civilian elements, feature a large millitary component - and that is even more bizarre when you consider that, generally, in most non-sci-fi shows that concentrate on millitary themes don't succeed. Most mainstream TV-shows tend to be either comedies, soaps, or police procedurals: all genres which, with a few exceptions, tend not to work in a sci-fi context on TV. It actually annoys me that there has never been a properly successful TV sci-fi crime series (don't talk to me about fucking BUGS), perhaps because two of my favourite sci-fi films are Blade Runner and Strange Days - two films which, while they take place in a futuristic sci-fi context, are basically films noir.
I'm not really sure if there's a massive point to this, except to say that...well, why? Why is it that we can have a variety of sci-fi concepts on the big screen, but most small screen sci-fi tends to be millitary space opera? Why does it mostly have to involve spaceships, for god's sake? There isn't a single spaceship in Strange Days and it's still - despite being set in a 1999-era world which has virtual reality which runs off fucking minidiscs - one of the best sci-fi flicks I've ever seen. But TV sci-fi needs to have spaceships, space navies, intergalactic wars...even Doctor Who very often degenerates into Big Spaceship War storylines. Why can't we have a sci-fi detective series? Why can't we have a sci-fi soap? I'd watch a sci-fi soap. The elements of most of the sci-fi TV shows I've enjoyed are the soapy ones: Ivanova's lesbian relationship in B5; the odd-couple friendships between G'Kar and Londo in that series, and Odo and Quark in DS9; the general organic sense of a community growing, living, adjusting, finding its way.
Let's face it, Quark's bar and the Zocolo are basically the Queen Vic: why can't we have a sci-fi show that does away with all the COSMIC WAR bollocks and just deals with normal people, in the future, getting on with things, getting into situations and getting out of them? You can still have futuristic technology; you can still have aliens; hell, you can still have spaceships - 'The Ballad of Halo Jones', one of the soapiest (and best) sci-fi comics of all time, set it's entire second series on a spaceship - except that said ship was a cruise liner, not a warship - so a whole range of issues regarding class, race, age, love, and the human/robot thing (a major sci-fi theme) - could be explored without anyone having to point a raygun at someone else for the very future of humanity.
Well, of course, Alan Moore could get away with that in Halo Jones - that was a comic. No-one's gonna commit to watching one hour of teevee sci-fi a week unless there are space battles, explosions, a massive conspiracy and threats to the very future of reality itself every fucking week. Right?
Well, I don't know. I mean, I would. And I don't think I'm that atypical. So in all the hours and all the channels available...why isn't that niche being filled?
Think about it. There are a few exceptions - Firefly, Dr Who, etc - but most sci-fi TV shows tend to concentrate on the adventures of some millitary or quasi-millitary organisation. Star Trek is obviously the big boy among this bunch, and an interesting exampe in that the Federation try very hard to come off as a kind of intergalactic peace corps but, essentially, they're a great big space-navy: uniforms, heavily-armed warships, culture of obeying-the-captain (which becomes vital to the plot in First Contact) - they can go on about the Klingons being a weird warrior-race but they aren't fooling anyone: the Federation are at least as heavily-millitarised as the funny-forehead brigade, maybe even more so: the Federation are all about the discipline, whereas whenever the Klingons appear they always seem to be more like crazy space pirates (with a healthy interest in BDSM if what little we ever see of Klingon mating rituals is anything to go by). At least the Klingons know how to have fun.
There are very few civilians in the Star Trek shows...Deep Space Nine has a few but, with the exception of Quark the barman and Garrack the tailor, they tend to stay in the background (and the extent to which Garrack is actually a civilian is debatable... he's technically retired from espionage but...) Voyager pulled an interesting variation by making terrorists as well as boy scouts part of the crew, but non-state-actors are a far cry from your run-of-the-mill civvie.
Babylon 5 does have civilians, and indeed many of the main characters fluctuate between employment in the armed services, politics and more shady lines of work; but the main thrust of the plot is a massive Manichaean war between good and evil, fought with starships and PPGs.
Perhaps the most successful sci-fi series of recent times, the Battlestar Galactica remake, does manage to strike a good balance between civillian and millitary affairs, largely because that balance - the way you manage to keep all the elements of a civil society going in conditions of near-total war - is one of the main drivers of the series in terms of plot.
The point is that all three of these series, to whatever degree they balance millitary and civilian elements, feature a large millitary component - and that is even more bizarre when you consider that, generally, in most non-sci-fi shows that concentrate on millitary themes don't succeed. Most mainstream TV-shows tend to be either comedies, soaps, or police procedurals: all genres which, with a few exceptions, tend not to work in a sci-fi context on TV. It actually annoys me that there has never been a properly successful TV sci-fi crime series (don't talk to me about fucking BUGS), perhaps because two of my favourite sci-fi films are Blade Runner and Strange Days - two films which, while they take place in a futuristic sci-fi context, are basically films noir.
I'm not really sure if there's a massive point to this, except to say that...well, why? Why is it that we can have a variety of sci-fi concepts on the big screen, but most small screen sci-fi tends to be millitary space opera? Why does it mostly have to involve spaceships, for god's sake? There isn't a single spaceship in Strange Days and it's still - despite being set in a 1999-era world which has virtual reality which runs off fucking minidiscs - one of the best sci-fi flicks I've ever seen. But TV sci-fi needs to have spaceships, space navies, intergalactic wars...even Doctor Who very often degenerates into Big Spaceship War storylines. Why can't we have a sci-fi detective series? Why can't we have a sci-fi soap? I'd watch a sci-fi soap. The elements of most of the sci-fi TV shows I've enjoyed are the soapy ones: Ivanova's lesbian relationship in B5; the odd-couple friendships between G'Kar and Londo in that series, and Odo and Quark in DS9; the general organic sense of a community growing, living, adjusting, finding its way.
Let's face it, Quark's bar and the Zocolo are basically the Queen Vic: why can't we have a sci-fi show that does away with all the COSMIC WAR bollocks and just deals with normal people, in the future, getting on with things, getting into situations and getting out of them? You can still have futuristic technology; you can still have aliens; hell, you can still have spaceships - 'The Ballad of Halo Jones', one of the soapiest (and best) sci-fi comics of all time, set it's entire second series on a spaceship - except that said ship was a cruise liner, not a warship - so a whole range of issues regarding class, race, age, love, and the human/robot thing (a major sci-fi theme) - could be explored without anyone having to point a raygun at someone else for the very future of humanity.
Well, of course, Alan Moore could get away with that in Halo Jones - that was a comic. No-one's gonna commit to watching one hour of teevee sci-fi a week unless there are space battles, explosions, a massive conspiracy and threats to the very future of reality itself every fucking week. Right?
Well, I don't know. I mean, I would. And I don't think I'm that atypical. So in all the hours and all the channels available...why isn't that niche being filled?
Monday, 16 August 2010
'Between violence and silently seething, between my fist and my Polyanna flower...'
First things first. Check out the magnificent Laurie Penny's newest blog over at the equally magisterial New Statesman website.
Next, familiarise yourself with the points about status made in this Wired Article about the effects of stress on the human immune system and life expectancy (curtsy in the direction of Lilith von Fraumench, who first brought said story to my attention on Twitter.
Next, equip yourself with a copy of Mind Bombs by Garrick Alder, a book I heartily recommend for a variety of reasons, one of which is this gem of a fact based on a survey by Mary Shaw of Bristol University:
'The suicide rate is higher in deprived areas than in prosperous ones. For some inexplicable reason, the poor seem to suffer from fatal depression...Herefordshire reported only four suicides between 1991 and 1996, compared to 208 in Manchester during the same period.'
The facts are in and the facts are these: kyriarchy kills. Wherever there are disparities in status, those inequalities make the people on the receiving end sicker, weaker, and fatally miserable. They shorten lives either through the slow attrition of stress effects on the nervous and immune systems, or by making it more likely that someone will be pushed to the point where they see no other option but to kill themselves.
Conversely, more equal societies save lives - a fact amply demonstrated by The Spirit Level, a book which, by an astonishing coincidence, has came under sustained attack by right-wing demagogues just at the precise moment when a government that seems hell-bent on increasing inequality to Victorian levels is fucking the country without benefit of butter.
I'm going to say this: the only reason you could possibly have for opposing greater equality (and here I'm not talking merely about equality between economic classes but between abled and disabled people, people of different ethnicities, people of differing gender identities, sexualities, etc etc), given the fatal consequences of an unequal system, is that you're doing alright from it. Other people may be dying but hey, you're alright, Jack (a phrase which was often used by right-wing moralists to bash union members in the fifties - how bitterly amusing that modern exponents of the attitude are exactly the type who huffed and puffed when it was poorer people who were doing okay). And if that's your attitude, then I find you morally and, frankly, physically repugnant.
And I'm brutally aware that I do okay from this system. I'm white, I'm reasonably able-bodied (though mentally often crippled by low self-esteem, depression, social phobia, and a history of self-harm and eating disorders), and, while I might occassionally court harassment for my genderqueer antics, I run nothing like the kind of horiffic risks faced by trans women, or a lot of cis women for that matter. But I am trying, in my own way, to make a more equal system; and I'm not engaged in defending the tapestry of fuckery just because, from where I'm standing, it looks kinda pretty.
The kyriarchy kills. If you defend it, you have blood on your hands. And more and more people are realising that, and getting sick of suffering at your bloodstained fingers.
You know what happens next.
Next, familiarise yourself with the points about status made in this Wired Article about the effects of stress on the human immune system and life expectancy (curtsy in the direction of Lilith von Fraumench, who first brought said story to my attention on Twitter.
Next, equip yourself with a copy of Mind Bombs by Garrick Alder, a book I heartily recommend for a variety of reasons, one of which is this gem of a fact based on a survey by Mary Shaw of Bristol University:
'The suicide rate is higher in deprived areas than in prosperous ones. For some inexplicable reason, the poor seem to suffer from fatal depression...Herefordshire reported only four suicides between 1991 and 1996, compared to 208 in Manchester during the same period.'
The facts are in and the facts are these: kyriarchy kills. Wherever there are disparities in status, those inequalities make the people on the receiving end sicker, weaker, and fatally miserable. They shorten lives either through the slow attrition of stress effects on the nervous and immune systems, or by making it more likely that someone will be pushed to the point where they see no other option but to kill themselves.
Conversely, more equal societies save lives - a fact amply demonstrated by The Spirit Level, a book which, by an astonishing coincidence, has came under sustained attack by right-wing demagogues just at the precise moment when a government that seems hell-bent on increasing inequality to Victorian levels is fucking the country without benefit of butter.
I'm going to say this: the only reason you could possibly have for opposing greater equality (and here I'm not talking merely about equality between economic classes but between abled and disabled people, people of different ethnicities, people of differing gender identities, sexualities, etc etc), given the fatal consequences of an unequal system, is that you're doing alright from it. Other people may be dying but hey, you're alright, Jack (a phrase which was often used by right-wing moralists to bash union members in the fifties - how bitterly amusing that modern exponents of the attitude are exactly the type who huffed and puffed when it was poorer people who were doing okay). And if that's your attitude, then I find you morally and, frankly, physically repugnant.
And I'm brutally aware that I do okay from this system. I'm white, I'm reasonably able-bodied (though mentally often crippled by low self-esteem, depression, social phobia, and a history of self-harm and eating disorders), and, while I might occassionally court harassment for my genderqueer antics, I run nothing like the kind of horiffic risks faced by trans women, or a lot of cis women for that matter. But I am trying, in my own way, to make a more equal system; and I'm not engaged in defending the tapestry of fuckery just because, from where I'm standing, it looks kinda pretty.
The kyriarchy kills. If you defend it, you have blood on your hands. And more and more people are realising that, and getting sick of suffering at your bloodstained fingers.
You know what happens next.
Sunday, 15 August 2010
'What goes up must come down, all that swims can also drown...'
And so to the Trent House, Newcastle, for my second appearance at Jibba Jabba, that bar's new spoken word night. Jibba Jabba is shaping up to be a good venue, attracting a decent crowd and striking a nice balance between newcomers and regular performers. I'm not sure which of those categories I fall into at the moment: I wasn't sure if I was going to perform last night - having planned to go just to discuss dropping some books off for a charity regular JJ attendee Amina Marix Evans works with - but planned a set anyway just in case.
In the event this turned out to be a good strategy as I wound up performing third in the set. I like performing fairly early (for one thing it gives you the chance to relax with a couple of post-performance beverages instead of spending the whole night sober, jittery, and waiting to go on) but I worry about going on first - I'm not the most cheerful of poets, and I worry that sending me on to plough through my tragic tales of gender-incongruity might kill off the room. Equally, the last spot is tough, because you need to provide the exclamation mark to the evening. Inadvertently I wound up doing just that last week at Cellar Door in Durham, and, given that I was in a rage after the cisfail that had been waved in our faces earlier in the evening, it was a weird kind of ending. So it was nice to nestle comfortably in among everyone else's performances, where I could do my thing without too much worry.
I was still kind of worried though. Not only was I doing 'Criminally Fragile' for the second time ever, I also decided to challenge myself by reading 'NSFW' a sort of sister poem to Fragile which is about...well, it's about sex, and desire, and particularly the experience of having desires that are kind of kinky. I figure if I'm going to start performing stuff about my gender identity more openly, I may as well come out and admit to being a bit of a pervy little bitch as well.
Or at least that's what I told myself. I was still bricking it when I got up. Why not junk the planned set? Just do some funny, silly stuff, set people at their ease, don't take risks. On the other hand I'd pretty much outed myself, gig-wise, a week ago, so...
Reader, I read the kinky sex poem. I did the set exactly as planned. And I wasn't shunned or stoned or anathemised by papal decree. In fact, the poems seemed to go over quite well. It still took a while to decompress after coming off-stage (those post-gig drinks came in very handy) and making it back from the gig through the stag-and-hen apocalypse that is Newcastle on a Saturday night was the usual exercise in pure fucking terror, but overall it turned out to be a good night. Particularly because - once I was over my nerves - there were fine sets from Jake Campbell, Jeff Potts, Radikal Queen and many other excellent local poets to enjoy, plus excellent material from co-hosts Karl Thompson and especially Jenni Pascoe, who actually performed and compered in spite of having a bad attack of labyrinthitis.
So Jibba Jabba is shaping up to be a rather excellent night, even when I'm not airing my dirty lingerie in public. Do get along to the next event if you can. As to moi, it's looking like the next time I'm going to be getting my words out will be at the next of Steve Urwin's poetry slams at the Lamplight Arts Centre in Stanley, which won't be until the 21st of September. So in the meantime, fans of the pissed-off ranting which results from the usual blend of boredom and sheer teeth-grinding frustration with the kyriarchy which powers this blog will, doubtless, have much to look forward to. As to what I have to look forward to...well, I'm wondering about that more and more. But that's another entry, for another day.
In the event this turned out to be a good strategy as I wound up performing third in the set. I like performing fairly early (for one thing it gives you the chance to relax with a couple of post-performance beverages instead of spending the whole night sober, jittery, and waiting to go on) but I worry about going on first - I'm not the most cheerful of poets, and I worry that sending me on to plough through my tragic tales of gender-incongruity might kill off the room. Equally, the last spot is tough, because you need to provide the exclamation mark to the evening. Inadvertently I wound up doing just that last week at Cellar Door in Durham, and, given that I was in a rage after the cisfail that had been waved in our faces earlier in the evening, it was a weird kind of ending. So it was nice to nestle comfortably in among everyone else's performances, where I could do my thing without too much worry.
I was still kind of worried though. Not only was I doing 'Criminally Fragile' for the second time ever, I also decided to challenge myself by reading 'NSFW' a sort of sister poem to Fragile which is about...well, it's about sex, and desire, and particularly the experience of having desires that are kind of kinky. I figure if I'm going to start performing stuff about my gender identity more openly, I may as well come out and admit to being a bit of a pervy little bitch as well.
Or at least that's what I told myself. I was still bricking it when I got up. Why not junk the planned set? Just do some funny, silly stuff, set people at their ease, don't take risks. On the other hand I'd pretty much outed myself, gig-wise, a week ago, so...
Reader, I read the kinky sex poem. I did the set exactly as planned. And I wasn't shunned or stoned or anathemised by papal decree. In fact, the poems seemed to go over quite well. It still took a while to decompress after coming off-stage (those post-gig drinks came in very handy) and making it back from the gig through the stag-and-hen apocalypse that is Newcastle on a Saturday night was the usual exercise in pure fucking terror, but overall it turned out to be a good night. Particularly because - once I was over my nerves - there were fine sets from Jake Campbell, Jeff Potts, Radikal Queen and many other excellent local poets to enjoy, plus excellent material from co-hosts Karl Thompson and especially Jenni Pascoe, who actually performed and compered in spite of having a bad attack of labyrinthitis.
So Jibba Jabba is shaping up to be a rather excellent night, even when I'm not airing my dirty lingerie in public. Do get along to the next event if you can. As to moi, it's looking like the next time I'm going to be getting my words out will be at the next of Steve Urwin's poetry slams at the Lamplight Arts Centre in Stanley, which won't be until the 21st of September. So in the meantime, fans of the pissed-off ranting which results from the usual blend of boredom and sheer teeth-grinding frustration with the kyriarchy which powers this blog will, doubtless, have much to look forward to. As to what I have to look forward to...well, I'm wondering about that more and more. But that's another entry, for another day.
Sunday, 8 August 2010
Be Advised!
Okay. I'm going to lay down a little truth about writing poetry here. A point that is often overlooked, but is very important. It is not the kind of thing that necessarily makes one popular with other writers - writers being a somewhat narcissistic breed - but I feel it needs saying. You may want to sit back for this one.
If you are going to write a poem about something, do some fucking research on it first.
This goes double if the poem you are writing is about the experience of someone from a marginalised group.
Because there is nothing worse than being at a gig, hearing someone say 'And now - Transsexual Builder!' and then cringing as you hear some well-meaning but fundamentally ignorant cis person publicly fumble their way through a poem which manages to be partly a decent stab at imagining what it might be like to experience harrassment and abuse from people for not conforming to gender expectations, but then arses it all up by constantly referring to the rather complex procedure of gender reassignment surgery as 'having your willy chopped off.'
This kind of mistake has never been easier to avoid, people. You see, there is a magic machine called the internet, on which is stored the sum total of human knowledge, and a sizeable proportion of the sum total of funny cat pictures. Finding out the truth about what surgical treatment for gender incongruence involves might, in the past, have required you to wade through long and complex tomes in university libraries, but now, a mere few minutes' googling will provide you with all the information you need. You don't even have to have your own computer - you can get down the library and use the PCs there. Admittedly you will have to have the guts to be seen in public looking up information about GRS ops - but if you haven't got the basic writer's courage (and professionalism) to research your goddam material you shouldn't be writing anyway.
And it should not be the responsibility of gender-incongruent people to educate your privileged ass on the things you should be researching yourself in order to be a decent fucking writer, but because I am a helpful little Willow Rosenberg tribute act, sit back, strap in, and join me for a thrilling whirligig ride through the incredible world of knowing what the fuck you are talking about.
The two most common forms of gender reassignment surgery are phalloplasty, the creation of a penis, performed on trans men who undergo surgery, and vaginoplasty (NB: link NSFW if you work somewhere that doesn't like vaginas), the construction of a vagina, performed on some trans women who undergo surgery. The latter of these procedures does not involve something as simple as 'chopping off a willy.' It is in fact a mystery to me how any adult human, with a basic understanding of how plastic surgery works in general, could imagine this is all that's involved. What, do you imagine it functions as a straight swap? Do you think trans women have their bits removed, and those bits are then put in a sling and carried, by the magical gender reassignment stork, to the nearest trans man's place of residence? 'Look, darling, a penis was left on our doorstep in the middle of the night! Now we can fuck!' Jesus wept.
Like most plastic surgeries, gender reassignment surgery involves the repurposing of the existing tissue. It would be a fucking incredibly wasteful procedure if it didn't. A few moments' thought and a layperson's understanding of the basics of plastic surgery would lead one to realise how obvious this is. A few minutes' googling, as pointed out above, would actually help you find out what's what. But hey, who cares about that when you've thought up soooo many funny little rhymes about people having their willies chopped off? Oh, and that hilarious bit at the end of your poem about the leftover bits of willy being used to make Big Macs? Ha ha ha ha ha ha that's not funny either, you big pathetic failed human you. You stay classy, there.
(Note: I am not a doctor, nor do I play one on television. When I'm talking about the surgeries involved in gender-reassignment here, I'm simplifying a vast and complicated body of knowledge. There are other procedures involved beyond these two basic ones, there is the whole business of hormones, which I haven't even gone into, there's the fact that not all trans people choose to have surgery on their genitals - there's a massive, massive load of other issues, procedures, and aftercare stuff involved. But you know how you can find out about all that stuff? Google. Or whichever search engine you prefer to use. The internet exists. It is your friend. Use it.)
(Other note: aside from 'Transsexual Builder' and a similarly witless poem based on the oh-so-relevant Cher vehicle 'Mask', the gig was okay. In fact, listening to the douchery kind of spurred me on to finally get around to reading Criminally Fragile, which I've been wussing out of reading at gigs for aaaaages. It is not 'all good', though. I came this close to walking out, but figured an alternative view was needed. Ooooh, look at me being all brave and that. Yeah, right.
If you are going to write a poem about something, do some fucking research on it first.
This goes double if the poem you are writing is about the experience of someone from a marginalised group.
Because there is nothing worse than being at a gig, hearing someone say 'And now - Transsexual Builder!' and then cringing as you hear some well-meaning but fundamentally ignorant cis person publicly fumble their way through a poem which manages to be partly a decent stab at imagining what it might be like to experience harrassment and abuse from people for not conforming to gender expectations, but then arses it all up by constantly referring to the rather complex procedure of gender reassignment surgery as 'having your willy chopped off.'
This kind of mistake has never been easier to avoid, people. You see, there is a magic machine called the internet, on which is stored the sum total of human knowledge, and a sizeable proportion of the sum total of funny cat pictures. Finding out the truth about what surgical treatment for gender incongruence involves might, in the past, have required you to wade through long and complex tomes in university libraries, but now, a mere few minutes' googling will provide you with all the information you need. You don't even have to have your own computer - you can get down the library and use the PCs there. Admittedly you will have to have the guts to be seen in public looking up information about GRS ops - but if you haven't got the basic writer's courage (and professionalism) to research your goddam material you shouldn't be writing anyway.
And it should not be the responsibility of gender-incongruent people to educate your privileged ass on the things you should be researching yourself in order to be a decent fucking writer, but because I am a helpful little Willow Rosenberg tribute act, sit back, strap in, and join me for a thrilling whirligig ride through the incredible world of knowing what the fuck you are talking about.
The two most common forms of gender reassignment surgery are phalloplasty, the creation of a penis, performed on trans men who undergo surgery, and vaginoplasty (NB: link NSFW if you work somewhere that doesn't like vaginas), the construction of a vagina, performed on some trans women who undergo surgery. The latter of these procedures does not involve something as simple as 'chopping off a willy.' It is in fact a mystery to me how any adult human, with a basic understanding of how plastic surgery works in general, could imagine this is all that's involved. What, do you imagine it functions as a straight swap? Do you think trans women have their bits removed, and those bits are then put in a sling and carried, by the magical gender reassignment stork, to the nearest trans man's place of residence? 'Look, darling, a penis was left on our doorstep in the middle of the night! Now we can fuck!' Jesus wept.
Like most plastic surgeries, gender reassignment surgery involves the repurposing of the existing tissue. It would be a fucking incredibly wasteful procedure if it didn't. A few moments' thought and a layperson's understanding of the basics of plastic surgery would lead one to realise how obvious this is. A few minutes' googling, as pointed out above, would actually help you find out what's what. But hey, who cares about that when you've thought up soooo many funny little rhymes about people having their willies chopped off? Oh, and that hilarious bit at the end of your poem about the leftover bits of willy being used to make Big Macs? Ha ha ha ha ha ha that's not funny either, you big pathetic failed human you. You stay classy, there.
(Note: I am not a doctor, nor do I play one on television. When I'm talking about the surgeries involved in gender-reassignment here, I'm simplifying a vast and complicated body of knowledge. There are other procedures involved beyond these two basic ones, there is the whole business of hormones, which I haven't even gone into, there's the fact that not all trans people choose to have surgery on their genitals - there's a massive, massive load of other issues, procedures, and aftercare stuff involved. But you know how you can find out about all that stuff? Google. Or whichever search engine you prefer to use. The internet exists. It is your friend. Use it.)
(Other note: aside from 'Transsexual Builder' and a similarly witless poem based on the oh-so-relevant Cher vehicle 'Mask', the gig was okay. In fact, listening to the douchery kind of spurred me on to finally get around to reading Criminally Fragile, which I've been wussing out of reading at gigs for aaaaages. It is not 'all good', though. I came this close to walking out, but figured an alternative view was needed. Ooooh, look at me being all brave and that. Yeah, right.
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