Queerness & Creativity: Why Have There Been So Many Queer Poets Throughout History?
Virginia Woolf, Lord Byron, Oscar Wilde, Emily Dickinson, Wilfred Owen- What ties these poets together (other than their literary genius)- homosexuality…
Consider some of our greatest poets- Virginia Woolf, Vita Sackville-West, Lord Byron, Oscar Wilde, Emily Dickinson, Langston Hughes, Rudyard Kipling, Ralph Waldo Emmerson, Sappho (of course- The word lesbian is derived from Sappho herself who was born on the island of Lesbos. A poet responsible for the word lesbian- does it get any more iconic), Wilfred Owen, Audre Lorde, William Shakespeare…
Aside from them all being literary geniuses, what’s one thing that also ties them all together? Homosexuality. The evidence of homoeroticism that runs through their, oftentimes sexually charged poetry, is rife.
Some poets were openly queer such as Virginia Woolf and Vita Sackville-West who made no attempts to hide their enthralment with each other, whilst others remained ‘closeted’, perhaps unsurprisingly when it was still a criminal offence to be gay…
Walt Whitman, for example, a 19th-century poet who is lauded as being ‘one of the most influential poets in American history’, never outright declared his sexuality, however much of his writing was a clear nod to his homosexuality, his appreciation of men, particularly young men, being the giveaway.
When I Heard at the Close of the Day’- Walt Whitman (1860)
And when I thought how my friend, my lover, was coming, then O I was happy;
Each breath tasted sweeter — and all that day my food nourished me more — And the beautiful day passed well,
And the next came with equal joy — And with the next at evening, came my friend,
I heard the hissing rustle of the liquid and sands, as directed to me, whispering, to congratulate me, — For the friend I love lay sleeping by my side,
In the stillness his face was in- clined towards me, while the moon’s clear beams shone,
And his arm lay lightly over my breast — And that night I was happy.
^ An undeniable nod to male lust in this poem…
But to ask the question posed in the title of this article
Why?
Why were/are so many poets, whether openly or not, homosexual?
Where writing, especially via the form of poetry, offers an unrivaled outlet for self-expression, allowing us to bring forth our, oftentimes suppressed desires out into the world (whether openly or through metaphors for which we do not have to say something outright in order for it to be received), and where poets/creatives of any kind are generally more open minded*, it makes sense that there would be a high prominence of queerness amongst poets.
[*On creative people being more open-minded, where queerness is a type of ‘political awakening’, many people, in recognising their queerness, want to share what they have learned from the process of emerging from a state of sleep (i.e. from diverging away from a state of unquestionable compliance). And when both queerness and anarchism have historically been seen as ‘radical’, and art is also often seen as ‘radical’, they naturally fit well together. What better medium to express the supposedly ‘radical’ than through the supposedly ‘radical’- what a match, eh?]…
As David Wojnarowicz, openly gay writer/poet/creative wrote in his memoir, Close to the knives, ‘My queerness was a wedge that was slowly separating me from a sick society.’
As empaths, surely when we find a cure for a disease that’s killing people in their droves, we want to share that- we want to be a part of helping to heal a sick society. And where art is our medium, our vehicle for self-expression, artists/writers/creatives choose to share the ‘cure’ (the ‘cure’ which is essentially freedom- to become awakened to the fact that we are all free to determine our own lives), via art… With this (art) being something which was even more invaluable when the likes of Walt Whitman were writing, in the 19th century, when homosexuality was still illegal/decriminalisation still around 100 years away- a form of activism, almost.
With many people understandably not wanting to run the risk of outright disclosing their queerness for the potential prison sentence that doing so could bring back then, they had to find alternative, more subtle ways of doing so, one such way being through poetry…
Sharing the joy of laying with your lover, of waking up happy- the reality that an alternative exists outside of the socially constructed constraints of heteronormativity, while not incriminating oneself.
Yes, Walt Whitman referenced his lover as ‘he’- ‘his face’- but where poetry is open to interpretation, define ‘lover.’
Where poetry is often filled with metaphors, define ‘he.’
Nothing is black and white in poetry, and this is the point- it allows for hidden meanings to be planted that only people who are open-minded enough to appreciate an alternative from the ‘status quo’ will likely understand, and such people will be unlikely to brandish same-sex desire as being ‘at the root of all evil.’ In fact, people who appreciate the courage it takes to divert from the status quo are more likely to be queer themselves, not necessarily in terms of their sexual orientation, but where to be queer, in it’s the most basic definition, means to ‘differ in some way from what is usual or normal’, anyone who isn’t scared to go against the mainstream is arguably ‘queer’, in that they are open-minded enough to do so…
Evidently then, queerness and creativity tend to co-exist. Perhaps the question we should be asking is…
‘What came first- the poet or the queer?’
Did queer people turn to poetry as a way to express their suppressed desires, or did poets turn to queerness (as in, realise their queerness, not suddenly wake up one day deciding to be queer. That’s not *quite* how sexuality works) when the open-mindedness that being a poet demands materialised? (i.e., when people realised their ability to look beyond the surface of what we are told is ‘just the way things are', in order to find a new way of doing things, in their own way, for themselves)…
To answer the question, a poem I’ve written (below)- just to stay on brand.
‘So Be It’
When poetry celebrates the often-overlooked aspects of humanity, utilising the senses- touch, taste, sight, smell, sound, to describe the senseless- what it means to be human, what it means to be alive, as poets, we realise the fact that everything is ultimately socially constructed, that nothing is as simple as black and white*.
[*Where life is never as simple as black and white, we’ve literally made a rainbow the epitome of our lives- iconic*]
When we realise where to be in love is to experience the dissolution of one's self, the coming together of flesh and bones, love and soul- transcending beyond language, beyond anything, we can attach labels to (including gender), the lines between sexuality don’t become blurred so much that they become non-existent.
Intimacy: Whether male on male, female on female, male on female, is intimacy- soul on soul.
Where love is viewed not through ‘gay’ or ‘straight’ eyes, but through human eyes.
^ To realise this though demands that we leave our ego behind and forget what we are told is ‘just the way things have always been/just the way things are…’
This is why queerness thrives in creatives because we do leave it behind (the ego)…
When it is the creative’s job to create, we understand that it is our mission in life to create our own lives- independent of the government and patriarchal institutions that try to deny us of that right.
We recognise that everything we are governed by/ everything we are told we should be living our lives by the ‘mainstream’, is based on lies…
For this is our life, the decisions we make in it, for us ourselves to decide, not a corrupt government or a perverse religious leader with a God complex (pardon the pun), and a, very unhinged, obsession with trying to dictate our sex lives (ew).
Where love is love and light is light, put us in the dark and we’ll make our own light, for, again, I’ll say it again:
It is our job, as creatives, to create our own lives. (and if that includes same sex desire, then so be it).
And so this is why queerness thrives because…
‘So be it.’
Live your life, and I’ll live mine.
