Polari

“Polari,” from the Italian “polare” (“to talk”) is a coded language, originating in the UK and dating as far back as the 16th century. Overheard in outdoor markets, the theatre, fairgrounds, and circuses, it was appropriated by gay men to provide them with cover as well as with a way to assert personal and shared identities. It spread around the English-speaking world via the Royal Navy, the merchant marine, and cruise ships, adding and subverting many foreign-language words — like polari — along the way.

While Polari does not employ this jargon or probe its success as a mode of connection between gay men, the language of Barton’s poems may be viewed as an effective tool for communicating a sense of history, politics, and aesthetics. Think of Polari as a cross-sectional scan of a living tree that reveals ring after ring of Barton’s experience of language, with the new buds at the tips of its branches adding colour, movement, and ornament.

Most of these poems were written using set forms drawn from Robin Skelton’s The Shapes of our Singing: A Comprehensive Guide of Verse Forms and Metres from Around the World (Spokane: Eastern Washington University Press, 2002). While the forms Barton has appropriated are not by themselves the vehicles of a particular sociolect or an anti-language, except, say, of poetry itself, he have nevertheless twisted them to follow the turns of his point of view and aesthetics.

When it comes to time, geography, and subject, Polari covers a lot of ground: from child memories to the frailties and deaths of ageing parents; from Queen Victoria’s coronation to the first ascent of Everest; from the October Crisis to the trial of Omar Khadr. The titles of nine poems are borrowed from the Diagram Prize, an award given out by the UK magazine, The Bookseller, for the oddest book title of the year. The titles chosen — an example is “Highlights in the History of Concrete” — may sound frivolous, even absurd, but the poems are less or more so. The serious nature of their themes being at odds with their titles gives them an engaging tension, and will be read as signature of his particular brand of polari.

AUTHOR

John Barton

John Barton is a poet, essayist, editor and writing mentor. His books include Polari, For the Boy with the Eyes of the Virgin: Selected Poems; Seminal: The Anthology of Canada’s Gay-Male Poets; We Are Not Avatars: Essays, Memoirs, Manifestos; and The Essential Douglas LePan, which won a 2020 eLit Award. Formerly the co-editor of Arc Poetry Magazine and editor of The Malahat Review, he now lives in Victoria, where he is the fifth poet laureate.

Reviews

polari (pe ‘la:ri): from Italian parlare, a coded anti-language or idiolect at one time spoken by gay men for cover — or a précis of John Barton’s unique experience of language.

In this expansive collection, there are no boundaries of time, geography, or subject. Giving voice to history, to political and environmental anxieties, to the immediate past and the fluid present, Barton understands that we all live and speak in code, whether in language common to millions, in 0s and 1s, or in gestures, silences, and the most intimate of glances.

Polari> is John Barton’s eleventh collection of poetry.

“Barton’s collection, written in lush language that is as entrancing to behold as Polari once was in a forgotten place and time, is a major accomplishment for its variety and poetic dexterity. … Barton’s work is a brilliant example of grace on display, from a poet who continues to illuminate his literary powers for those of us who consider poetry as alive and essential as air and dance.”
– The Bay Area Reporter

“In Polari, John Barton has plugged language into all sorts of power sources, exploring the intricacies of structure and design through the politics of identity. Whether he’s writing about sex or marmalade-making, he stares down desire, delving into needs ‘laid bare for each seductive watcher and the one he watches.’ These are opulent, daring poems.”
“In Polari, Barton weaves an impressive soundscape, clothing old bones — like the villanelle, sonnet, glosa, and many others — with fresh clobber. With all the refined heft of a queer life lived long in language, this book pumps with the vitality of sex, thought, and rhyme. Sometimes traditional, sometimes blue, sometimes zhooshy and new, this is poetry plated for pleasure.”
“John Barton’s poetry swings with lyric intelligence and worldly brilliance, like a contemporary Auden. Polari is absolutely beguiling.”