Patterflash (Paperback)

Paperback. Patterflash embraces the performative, self-ironising aesthetic of campness but, as a mask, it is a complex and very malleable one, capable of showing features of tenderness, bravery, righteous anger and sometimes sadness and alarm as well as the comedic. Within a collection that displays an engaging variety of language registers, both high and low in tone, the masking sometimes makes use of Polari, the gay street language that simultaneously reveals and conceals, excludes and invites, estranges and makes familiar.What unites them is the urge to embrace the possibilities of being exactly who you want to be whatever the complications or consequences of your choice. From the four-year-old boy who, though always easy in his mixedness of race, also wants to wear a blonde womans wig without any angst of self-contradiction, through the poems delighting in the frank physicality of gay sex, to the mature man experiencing domestic contentment, Adam Lowe takes us on a journey rich in observation and always in a poetry that makes an art of patterflash. A Poetry Book Society Recommendation A Poetry Book Society Recommendation, Adam Lowe's debut collection takes us on a journey rich in observation and always in a poetry that makes an art of patterflash. Shipping may be from multiple locations in the US or from the UK, depending on stock availability.…