NEW POETRY FILM 'RECLAIMING ,MY VOICE'

 

‘Loving the little snippet vibes … like fleeting memories’-

' Self-affirmation and self-acceptance are the keys to a contented fulfilling life. To each his (or her) own, they say'

'Brilliant, inspired and inspiring in equal measure, and - as ever - delivered with positive intent'

'‘Really related to that, that some camp or feminine qualities that some gay men have because sometimes we (gay men) don’t acknowledge that we have that so it’s like they are invisible. So when people are talking about these things it’s like ‘oh what you are talking about..?’. We are all the same, men are just men. I’ve been looking at that a lot recently. I used to feel like that as well that my voice was too gay and my mannerisms were too gay and that affected my mental health for a long period of time. You almost have to come out as a whole person including your mannerisms, your voice. I really feel that it’s part of reclaiming being gay. The last ten years, it’s been like oh men are just men and women are just women. That’s not true at all. If you put a camp guy next to a straight guy, that’s two completely different things so reclaiming who we are in every way!’ audience member at Poetry LGBT Online, June 2022

This short poetry film speaks about my difficulty as a teenager growing up gay in a heteronormative environment in 1990s Britain, me being a ‘lad’ (a man demonstrating stereotypical almost hyper masculine behaving) and trying to act my ‘lad-self’ to fit in with others (my heterosexual mates) by speaking and behaving like a ‘lad’. ‘Sound manly, act the geezer on my Harley. Hide the fact, in my bedroom, I learnt Polari’. speaks about my fear of acting/sounding ‘camp’/effeminate to not reveal to my friends I am gay. The poem finishes with sharing how I overcame these difficulties and no longer worry about how I act/behave/fear of sounding camp; ‘I was born with this voice. I did not have a choice. My voice no longer haunts me, it liberates’. 

This short poetry film contains drawings that I made in 2005 and 2018, moving image footage shot on my Sony Ericsson Cybershoot K800i mobile phone in 2007 and photographs taken on my iPhone in 2018.