Patterflash

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 a variety of language registers, both 'high' and 'low' in tone, the masking sometimes makes use of Polari, the gay street language that reveals and conceals, excludes and invites, estranges and makes familiar. The collection connects the poet as a wry, humane observer of the scene, and the persona of 'Lowe' as both actor in and narrator of his own dramas, who performs, exults and sometimes suffers in a wide range of guises and disguises. What unites them is the urge to embrace possibilities of being exactly who you want to be whatever the complications or consequences of your choice.