Brother For A Day
For anyone in the Glasgow area on Saturday 1st December, I'll be doing a reading as part of the Brother for a Day benefit organised by Diane Torr for the Terence Higgins Trust. I was a spectator at last year's, so I can tell you there should be all sorts of fun things going on. We've got comedienne Viv Gee as compere, a pinch of poetry from meself, a bit of burlesque and a dash of drag, a set by the Glasgow Glam Bangers, a slave auction, a raffle, and dancing into the wee hours with DJ Hushpuppy (Record Playerz / Death Disco).
Me, I'll be reading selections from a sonnet sequence I call Sonnets for Kouroi Old and New. It kinda riffs off the homoeroticism you find in classical mythology, where every other Greek god seems to have gone homo at some point in his life, with the twelve sonnets in the sequence each based round a set image in yer typical gay porn photoshoot. Like: here's two hot men in the woods; oh, look, here all their clothes have fallen off; oh, and now he's putting that man's penis in his mouth; and now they're... oh, MY! Anyway, you get the picture -- rhyme meets raunch, doggerel meets doggy-style, and so on.
As a sampler, here's one sonnet I'll be doing:
***
Among narcissi, hyacinths and cypress trees
Pan teaches shepherd Daphnis how a pipe may please.
Here, let me show you... Lips purse, blow a tender breeze,
A touch of breath upon his flute, a gentle tease.
His eyes lashed down in bliss, Daphnis is blind
As singer Thamyris, the first to kiss
That flower of a boy, first of his kind,
Cut down, as you and I, by sweet Apollo's disc.
There is no need of sight to learn these tunes
Of bodies tangled naked in long grass,
The contours of a song, soft as the dunes,
Blown on a cock and fingered on an ass.
My fingers, like Poseidon’s gaze on Pelops, trace the curve of truth --
A shoulder. On your foreskin now the slip of tongue, the nip of tooth.
***
So, um, yeah... a tad saucy.
Anyway, the essential info:
Brother for a Day
The Carnival Arts Centre
34 Albion Street
Glasgow
Saturday 1st December
9pm - 2am
Tickets £7 / £5 at the door
All proceeds go to The Terence Higgins Trust.
Me, I'll be reading selections from a sonnet sequence I call Sonnets for Kouroi Old and New. It kinda riffs off the homoeroticism you find in classical mythology, where every other Greek god seems to have gone homo at some point in his life, with the twelve sonnets in the sequence each based round a set image in yer typical gay porn photoshoot. Like: here's two hot men in the woods; oh, look, here all their clothes have fallen off; oh, and now he's putting that man's penis in his mouth; and now they're... oh, MY! Anyway, you get the picture -- rhyme meets raunch, doggerel meets doggy-style, and so on.
As a sampler, here's one sonnet I'll be doing:
***
Among narcissi, hyacinths and cypress trees
Pan teaches shepherd Daphnis how a pipe may please.
Here, let me show you... Lips purse, blow a tender breeze,
A touch of breath upon his flute, a gentle tease.
His eyes lashed down in bliss, Daphnis is blind
As singer Thamyris, the first to kiss
That flower of a boy, first of his kind,
Cut down, as you and I, by sweet Apollo's disc.
There is no need of sight to learn these tunes
Of bodies tangled naked in long grass,
The contours of a song, soft as the dunes,
Blown on a cock and fingered on an ass.
My fingers, like Poseidon’s gaze on Pelops, trace the curve of truth --
A shoulder. On your foreskin now the slip of tongue, the nip of tooth.
***
So, um, yeah... a tad saucy.
Anyway, the essential info:
Brother for a Day
The Carnival Arts Centre
34 Albion Street
Glasgow
Saturday 1st December
9pm - 2am
Tickets £7 / £5 at the door
All proceeds go to The Terence Higgins Trust.
posted by Hal Duncan | 12:11 am
2 Comments:
I didn't know you where a poet from San Francisco
http://www.list.co.uk/event/156955-brother-for-a-day/
Or is that just code that I ain't cool enough to get ?
Love the poem, wish I could get to the event.
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