Revealing the Hidden Life.

Damon Galgut talks about his novel Arctic Summer, what drew him to EM Forster, and how Forster’s hidden life brought on his writer’s block.

“I’m fascinated, in a literary sense, by that: what happens if you don’t express what you’re feeling? I’m interested in what’s not said, what’s not acted upon, and the kind of plot that might arise from inaction”

Damon Galgut at Kings Place

Win tickets to see Damon Galgut at a special Gay’s the Word event as well as a copy of his novel Arctic Summer.

[rating=5]
368 pages • Atlantic Books • March 06, 2014 [HB]
Damon Galgut’s remarkable novel Arctic Summer imagines the life of the great novelist E.M. Forster and the conflicts that led him to write A Passage to India.

“Forster knew when his great work had been completed, and the wonder in Damon Galgut’s Arctic Summer is that it enables the reader to feel both the triumph as well as the pain at the heart of this conflict. “

Polari’s Editor Writes His Coming Out Story.

This is the first in a new Polari Magazine series.

“Maurice armed me with a phrase that I still use to this day, for the most part because it’s so funny: “I’m an unspeakable of the Oscar Wilde sort,” as the hero tells his therapist. It was that exact phrase I used when I came out to my friend.”

Key Dates in the Queer Calendar

As LGBT History Month 2012 ends Tim Bennett-Goodman takes a sideways look at queer history.

“To my mind, modern queer history, in the British Isles and Ireland at least, begins in 1885 with the Criminal Law Amendment Act, and most particularly the pernicious Section 11 or Labouchere Amendment (named after the MP who introduced it) designed to prosecute male homosexuals for acts of ‘gross indecency’.”

Edward Carpenter

Selected by Jim MacSweeney from Gay’s the Word for Polari Magazine’s list of LGBT Heroes.

“This is a man who in the latter part of the 19th century and early 20th century was a committed socialist; a pioneering sex reformer who wrote on homosexuality and the emancipation of women; interested in environmentalism and an advocate of sustainable farming; an anti-vivisectionist and supporter of animal rights.”

E.M. Forster

The editor selects E.M. Forster for Polari Magazine’s list of LGBT Heroes. For UK LGBT History Month 2012.

Written in 1913-1914, Maurice is the story of a young man coming to terms with his homosexuality. It was passed amongst friends, yet it remained a secret, first because it would have been almost impossible to publish, and then because Forster guarded that secret, despite repeated attempts by Christopher Isherwood to have him publish.

[rating=2]
212 pages • Ward, Lock, and Company • 1891

This classic book starts out well enough but Wilde looses control of the plot as it meanders toward its conclusion.

The Picture of Dorian Gray is an acknowledged classic in the canon of English literature. Reading it through one has to wonder why. It is not so much the book itself but the associations with the book’s author, his history.

[rating=4]
198 pages • Penguin • 1971

This pre-WW1 novel, finished in 1914 yet not published until 1971, is a great work about the struggle of Maurice Hall to come to terms with his sexuality.

In 1911 Forster wrote in his diary of his “weariness of the only subject that I both can and may treat – the love of men for women and vice versa”. In Maurice Forster tackled the subject of homosexuality and assessed what it meant. Maurice is as pioneering a book now as it was then.

[rating=4]
198 pages • Penguin • 1971

This pre-WW1 novel, finished in 1914 yet not published until 1971, is a great work about the struggle of Maurice Hall to come to terms with his sexuality.

In 1911 Forster wrote in his diary of his “weariness of the only subject that I both can and may treat – the love of men for women and vice versa”. In Maurice Forster tackled the subject of homosexuality and assessed what it meant. Maurice is as pioneering a book now as it was then.