BONA POLARI! POLARI WRITING WORKSHOP

 

Bona Polari! (meaning ‘good chat’ in Polari slang) is designed to engage participants to learn about Polari (gay slang) and its sociohistorical significance.Over the course of an hour – ninety minutes, I help them to engage in a creative writing exercise using Polari at its base and develop skills in sharing your writing in an informal, non-judgemental and fun way. The workshop has so far taken place at The Margate School, Margate (Feb 2022) University of the Arts, London (Feb and June 2022), The Transforming Sexuality & Gender Research Centre at the University of Brighton (March 2023), Liverpool Pride (May 2023) Bristol Pride (June 2023), University of Southampton (June 2023), Belfast Pride (July 2023) and London Metropolitan Archives (November 2023). It has, so far, had a fantastic response from participants:

 

Lee Campbell BEARS AND CUBS DON’T JUST LIVE IN THE FOREST (2020) Marker pen on paper 420x594mm 

Watch Slangbang (2023) here: https://filmfreeway.com/SLANGBANG

Whilst the workshop acts as an extension to my ongoing interest in LGBT slang languages (e.g 'bears' and 'cubs') and my poetry film Slangbang (2023), the  workshop specifically relates to my poetry film The Tale of Benny Harris (2022) which includes a poem that I have written entirely in Polari (gay slang).

Watch The Tale of Benny Harris (2022) here: https://filmfreeway.com/THETALEOFBENNYHARRIS

 

Criminals, prostitutes, luvvies and homosexuals all used Polari in different ways. Gay men used Polari to communicate things in public that they didn’t always want people to know about.  

Polari hovers being blunt and not and allows users ‘to get away with’ being very rude. Historically so, when used in abundance on mainstream radio e.g. Round the Horne with Julian and Sandy on BBC Radio when the majority heteronormative listener would be oblivious to the innuendo they were listening to / they were laughing at. Maybe its simplest covert is substituting ‘he’ for ‘she’ when a gay man wanted to talk about a man he liked the look of in public etc.  

Polari in its current version started in the 19th century. Its precursors include Thieves’ cant, a cryptolect – the language and code used by criminals and thieves so people didn’t know what they were talking about, lingua franca used by sailors and those in maritime industries, and also words from Romany primarily through carnivals and festivals because a lot of theatre at the time involved with carnivals which moved around the country. The language was a colourful melting pot of all kinds of influences with different versions spread by the sailors. There is also South African equivalent – Gayle, which has a unique way of using women’s names to refer to things like ‘Aunty Ida’ (AIDS), ‘Amanda’ (amazing), ‘Agnetha’ (acne) and Diana (disgusting). In London there were two different versions of Polari; an East end version which emphasises Cockney rhyming slang elements like ‘Vera’ (from cockney slang ‘Vera Lynn’= gin) and ‘brandy’ (from cockney slang ‘brandy’ brandy rum= bum) and a West End version which was allegedly more classical, drawing more on the Italian and the lingua franca (the language of sailors etc.). Often the East End and West End Polari speaker could not always understand each other as the East End speaker were far more flamboyant and over the top with their language.

At the start of the workshop, I explain how my interest in Polari started in 2018 when I attended the event ‘Polari Creative Writing Workshop for Gay & Bi Men’ at Islington Mill in Manchester where I was encouraged to write my own Polari phrases by workshop host Adam Lowe and how this led to the eventual development of my poetry film The Tale of Benny Harris. I explain to participants that many people assume Polari is about puns, being flamboyant and camp for the sake of it, and being rude but actually often those speaking Polari are not being rude, it’s just that it sounds rude. People often laugh at hearing Polari because there’s an implication that it is innuendo. I suggest that one of the charms of Polari is that you can say anything and make it sound filthy and that what is so fascinating about Polari is that some words are for things that you can’t talk about, and others seem just for fun or play. Participants are then given printed out copies of a Polari dictionary which I use as a basis for discussion including identifying Polari words that they may already be using.

Watch this TV interview with KMTV (local Kent TV) about Polari workshop and screening of my Polari film in February 2022: https://filmfreeway.com/KMTV800 

Click here to listen to a BBC Radio Kent interview about the Polari workshop when held in Margate with Dominic King in February 2022: https://filmfreeway.com/dompol

Click here to listen to a BBC Radio Surrey and Sussex interview about the Polari workshop when held in Brighton with Kathy Caton in February 2023:https://filmfreeway.com/kathy805

I encourage participants to notice how words like ‘naff’ are used in everyday language which makes us question whether these words come from Polari or the other way round. I then invite participants to write their own rhyming Polari poems and then, I invite participants to speak their poems out aloud for everyone to enjoy.