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Sometimes poetry is necessary
Jun. 28th, 2009 10:50 pmI read at the Stonewall Riot Fortieth Anniversary concert this afternoon and I am told that it went quite well - I need to get used to working with a microphone though, because I am too used to small audiences in bookshops...I'll talk about the rest of the day in another post, and the rest of the concert come to that, but this bit is all about me and my stuff. So there.
Except to say that one of the origins of this post was a response to a whole string of memorial pieces which try to write trans people out of the riot (like this one here by redefining various people who were in fact trans as cis because at the time they were not necessarily wearing full drag. That piece is particularly egregious, in that it misgenders both Sylvia Riveira and Marsha P. Johnson; oh! and also by lying about various other people...
Anyway, I got into an exchange of letters with Susan Stryker, eminent trans historian, and ended up not with the polemical piece I had planned but with something else instead...
( Stonewall - a poem )
Of course, I got people to shout out Present in the right place - old Italian partisan memorial thing, is apparently where I got it from, who knew? - and I actually sang the Stonewall song first time, which I did not know I was going to until I did it. And the chant at the end goes on as long as you can get it to, not very long this afternoon, miserable bunch...
Anyone, everyone seems to like it - various friends have read various drafts and one friend told me to trim down the first section, and was right. My thanks to everyone who helped because it takes more than one person to write a final draft of a poem.
And I may even get to do it again, possibly at Wotever.
I amended the original version to include the story of Baby Val
Except to say that one of the origins of this post was a response to a whole string of memorial pieces which try to write trans people out of the riot (like this one here by redefining various people who were in fact trans as cis because at the time they were not necessarily wearing full drag. That piece is particularly egregious, in that it misgenders both Sylvia Riveira and Marsha P. Johnson; oh! and also by lying about various other people...
Anyway, I got into an exchange of letters with Susan Stryker, eminent trans historian, and ended up not with the polemical piece I had planned but with something else instead...
( Stonewall - a poem )
Of course, I got people to shout out Present in the right place - old Italian partisan memorial thing, is apparently where I got it from, who knew? - and I actually sang the Stonewall song first time, which I did not know I was going to until I did it. And the chant at the end goes on as long as you can get it to, not very long this afternoon, miserable bunch...
Anyone, everyone seems to like it - various friends have read various drafts and one friend told me to trim down the first section, and was right. My thanks to everyone who helped because it takes more than one person to write a final draft of a poem.
And I may even get to do it again, possibly at Wotever.
I amended the original version to include the story of Baby Val
