Pride and Poetry

This year’s London Pride was certainly the most enjoyable I remember: perfect weather for the march, excellent stewarding and a really great atmosphere amongst both the participants and the crowds. The Liberal Democrats made a bigger splash than ever before, with a striking banner, a balloon-festooned, disco-music blaring, Union Flag-topped Mini driven by Hackney South and Shoreditch PPC Dave Raval and borough-specific placards for other LibDem participants to hold aloft as they walked. Very positive response from the punters. I don’t know what the speeches and entertainment in Trafalgar Square were like afterwards, as along with many of the other marchers, I retired to a local hostelry to rehydrate.

In the evening, I went to Jeremy Trafford’s literary salon in Earls’ Court to hear Lord Gawain Douglas give a reading with interlocking textual commentary of his book of poetry, Fortuna (Alma Books, £9.99). I first met Gawain many years ago at an Oscar Wilde Society dinner, but unlike the Irish playwright, who followed the then traditional path of writing poetry in the spingtime of his life, Gawain came to the ‘highest art’ in the late summer of his. The result is not just mature but finely honed and some of his generally short poems are as pregnant with suggested meaning as a Zen-inspired Japanese haiku. I far prefer his work (as well as his personality) to that of his great uncle, Oscar Wilde’s nemesis Lord Alfred ‘Bosie’ Douglas. Most poets are rubbish at reading their own work and usually should not be let within a million miles of it. But Gawain, as I discovered this evening, is an exception: his performance was brilliant, giving added value to the text and much for one to ponder on a still almost midsummer’s night.

Link: www.pridelondon.org and www.almabooks.co.uk