Bookkake

Last night I was in Soho for the gay lit salon Polari, to hear readings from Stella Duffy and Maureen Duffy (no relation, I’m fairly certain, although some in the audience were a little confused).

Maureen Duffy read from her most recent novel, Alchemy, a wonderful love story with two strands in history, the 17th Century and the present day. Duffy’s writing always encompasses a vast range of references, and Alchemy muses on Shakespearean cross-dressing and compares cyberporn with the more tactile pleasures of tart cards.

Stella Duffy is always a joy to hear, and she was in fine form reading from her new novel The Room of Lost Things as well as 2006′s Singling Out the Couples, which involved some extraordinary yogic leg-raises, and a vicious but brilliant single-person’s attack on smug couples, although she was at pains to point out that life does not always mirror art, or vice versa, and she and her girlfriend of 14 years were very happy, thank you very much.

Maureen Duffy also spoke of the lack of support for gay publishing in the UK, singling out her novel The Microcosm of 1966, a groundbreaking lesbian work set in the legendary Gateways club and now out of print. But there was obvious pleasure – tinged with sorrow – in reading from her recent poetry collection, Family Values, one of whose bittersweet verses I’ll include here – without permission, but I hope she won’t mind.

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