Perry Brass (Poet)
Bio
An award-winning poet, author, and gender-rights pioneer, Perry Brass has published 21 books, including poetry, novels, short fiction, speculative fiction, and bestselling advice books (How to Survive Your Own Gay Life; The Manly Art of Seduction), as well as being included in 35 anthologies and books of critical studies. An original member of the New York Gay Liberation Front, he has been involved with the movement toward lgbtq equality since 1969, shortly after the Stonewall Uprising; he co-edited Come Out!, the Front’s groundbreaking newspaper, the last three issues of which were published out of his Hell’s Kitchen walk up apartment. In 1972, with two friends, he co-founded the Gay Men’s Health Project Clinic, the first clinic specifically for gay men on the East Coast, still thriving today as the Callen-Lorde Community Health Service. His latest book is TRIAL BY NIGHT, Two Novellas of Gay Love, Horror, Innocence, and Deception. His work deals with issues of personal authenticity, harmony with oneself and others, and a visionary attitude toward human sexuality coming from a core involvement with the inherent value of all humans. He can be reached through his website, www.perrybrass.com or Facebook.
20th Anniversary Celebration
My work has always been about fitting into the ecology of the human landscape, especially an ecology of cities, something that we are now seeing wrecked by greed and exploitation on a horrble scale. It has also been about nature, and an intimate connection with it. As a poet I feel extremely close to the world of dance and music—in that I am a frustrated singer (I only sing in the shower!), and also a very lyrical poet. I love the cadence, sound, texture, and feeling of words, and the way that poetry uses all of these qualities to say so much, in basically a few words. Dance, music, and poetry are very much aspects of an emotional landscape, ones that can bypass the obstacles of “rational” resistance, the obstacles of the everyday grind of life, and go directly to feelings of loss, or of physical and spiritual union, or of the most profound moments of recognition and ecstacy.
My website: www.perrybrass.com. I can also be reached through Facebook and LinkedIn.
Poems presented: “When I die, I want to go to New York”; “A Lullaby for the Earth”; “George Floyd”; “I Dreamed the Young Allen Ginsberg”; “I Met James Franco”; and “Wish Poem”.
){kind=link}