[rating=4]
224 pages • Serif • 31 May, 2012 [PB]

Drawn and written when he was 17, Federico Garcia Lorca’s beautiful Sketches of Spain has been translated into English for the first time.

“Lorca’s murder by Nationalist gunmen during the Spanish Civil War at the age of 38 makes any reading of Lorca’s thoughts on death resonate with totemic force. His own body, never found or identified, has become part of the Spanish earth that he loved.”

[rating=4]
329 pages • Serpent’s Tail • 7 March, 2013 [PB]

Petite Mort, by Beatrice Hitchman is a book that is by turns sensitive and coarse, gentle and brutal, beguiling and horrifying.

“This secretive ménage à trois, conducted in the claustrophobic atmosphere of the Durand’s grand but isolated home in the Bois de Boulogne on the outskirts of Paris, becomes stifling and, ultimately, destructive.”

How To Create An LGBT Friendly World.

“Every subject can be completely open, that’s the goal, to make all workplaces and all schools LGBT friendly.”

Jimmy Sommerville, by Andi Fraggs.

To end LGBT History Month, 2013, singer-songwriter Andi Fraggs rounds out the LGBT Heroes series.

“I was frantically searching for something I could relate to. There was nothing until one day I ventured into a second hand shop and there was a big pink triangle on the front of the Bronski Beat album.”

Ani DiFranco, ‘Both Hands’.

To end LGBT History Month, 2013, Polari asked the singer-songwriter Sabrina Chap to recall a song important to her.

“I knew that Ani sometimes slept with girls, but part of the thrill of the song was that there was no gender to the person she was talking about – it could have been anyone.”

Rom-Coms and Coffee.

Gay Relationship Column. Scottie catches up on the genre he used to love, the rom-com, and decides that his tastes should be redefined.

“All three were just as cheesy as you’d expect, with endings that you could predict from the opening credits. Still, I found myself going all teary-eyed and gasping at all the right moments, totally lost in the flawed-but-sweet plot of each one.”

Hans & Sophie Scholl, by Christopher Bryant.

To celebrate LGBT History Month, 2013, Polari is publishing a daily series of LGBT Heroes, selected by the magazine’s team of writers and special contributors.

“Hans was arrested in November 1937, and in June 1938 tried under under section 175a of the German Criminal Code. Hans faced expulsion from the Army, and banishment to a concentration camp to wear a pink triangle.”

Ella Fitzgerald & Duke Ellington, ‘Mack The Knife’.

To mark LGBT History Month, 2013, Polari asked its contributors to recall a song that had an impact their own stories.

“I didn’t just learn about the Civil Rights movement in the US, but of the context of R ‘n’ B and Jazz and some of its hidden language too. That’s when I first learnt about ‘gay’ too.”

Queer Music.

“I’ve never had anyone say ‘No you’re gay, you’re singing about gay love, this doesn’t suit our venue’. But I know I have missed out on oppurtunities because of the content of my music and the way I’m presenting it as an openly gay artist.”

Jim Akers, by Bryon Fear.

To celebrate LGBT History Month, 2013, Polari is publishing a daily series of LGBT Heroes, selected by the magazine’s team of writers and special contributors.

“My preconceptions about HIV, formed out of the terrorizing poster campaigns in the ‘80s, were shattered. Jim’s blog gave HIV a human face and not only for me.”