Madder Love

This post was contributed by local author, blogger and music reviewer, Craig Laurance Gidney.

The surrealist movement has had a profound effect on my own writing. Liberating the subconscious and the idea of imagination as a revolutionary are all tenets in the surrealist manifesto I am simpatico with. It is a known fact that founder Andre Breton was homophobic and sexist; in spite of this, the female surrealists are, in my opinion, the best visual and literary artists the movement spawned. In addition to the well-known practitioners, like Dali and Magritte, the movement spawned lesser known, edgier artists—like the cryptic paintings of Leonora Carrington and Remedios Varo, and the metaphysical works of bisexual writer/revolutionary René Crevel. The movement also influenced Frida Kahlo and the recently deceased Negritude poet Aime Cesaire.

When the call of submission to an anthology, Madder Love: Queer Men in the Precincts of Surrealism, ed. Peter Dubé (Rebel Satori Press) was announced, I jumped at the opportunity. It's an honor to be in a book alongside such long-admired authors like Stephen Beachy and Kevin Killian. Here is an excerpt of my own piece, "The Magus Club," which is influenced by Lautreamont and queer playwright Joe Orton:

Strange cities sprouted on the rotting ground of the Corpse. Structures of bone and gristle, cemented by blood and bile, where tame lice hooked up to rickshaws patrolled narrow streets. These cities, lit by energy powered from the dying brain waves and rigor mortis, were dangerous places. They were glorified slums for criminals, ruled by cults and tyrants. Brothels full of succubae and catamites festered like infections in their alleys.