|
Showing 1 - 2 of
2 matches in All Departments
A long awaited collection of poems by Mark Hyatt, one of the great
lost writers of mid-century British poetry. Scarcely published in
his lifetime, Hyatt’s work survives thanks to the intervention
of poets and friends who saved his manuscripts and kept his poems
in circulation. Queer in the decades before Gay Liberation; Romani;
incarcerated in prisons and asylums; illiterate into adulthood:
it’s tempting to read Hyatt according to the familiar script of
the doomed poet, resounding with loneliness and isolation. But his
poetry—“hot and tender,” funny and sad—tells another story:
of love, liberatory commitment, and desire.
"It's mid morning. Cool. Not many coffee bars open. I, the brave
one, god of any telephone kiosk, walk down Dean Street, see the man
of the day; raincoat, shoulders round, hair black, falling out;
heavenly blue eyes cast down into his own hell. Bold as brass I
cross the road stopping dead in front of him. He raises his eyes,
so sadly that I love him for it." Leda is lost. Bouncing from job
to job, from coffee bar to house party, he spends his days watching
the hours pass and waiting for the night to arrive. Trysts in the
rubble of a bombsite follow hours spent in bedsits with near
strangers, as Leda is forced to find intimacy in unusual places.
Semi-homeless and estranged from his given family, he relies on the
support of his chosen one: a community of older gay men and
divorced women who feed and clothe him, gently encouraging him to
find a foothold in a society which excludes him at every turn. And
then there is Daniel, a buttoned-up man of the Lord, for whom Leda
nurses an unrequited obsession - one which sends him spiralling
into self-destruction. With a foreword by Huw Lemmey, this newly
discovered, never-before-published novel - which pre-dates the
Sexual Offences Act of 1967 - is a portrait of lost a Soho, as well
as an important document of queer, working-class life, from a voice
long overlooked.
|
|
Email address subscribed successfully.
A activation email has been sent to you.
Please click the link in that email to activate your subscription.