Aside Archives

Extract from A Boy Dressed in a Girl’s Clothes – by Huw Arwystli 

The slender shapely gentle maid

prefers intimacy with her girlfriend than her boyfriend.                                  

The authority of her chastity;            

she’d rather have the love of a girl than a boy.                                     

Incomparably more would she love                                         

her niece, by half, than her nephew.                                

And for a boy who really desires a girl                                                 

it’s no use chatting up this one…       

“The upper part is a girl” says a suitor,                                           

the remaining part, nevertheless, is a man…

To find out more about what Mihangel Morgan calls cadi or queer poetry, read his chapter ‘From Huw Arwystli to Sion Eirian’ in The History, Politics and Culture of Queer Life in Wales, edited by Huw Osborne.

Extract from ‘Atgof’ (‘Memory’) by Edward Prosser Rees, 1924

Recesses of their Minds! We both believed,

You and I, that our Minds were squeaky clean

On that strange night when we slept together

The sacred song still ringing in our ears.

We slept…but one time we were half aroused

And found ourselves wrapped in a tight embrace.

And then Sex had its wicked way with us

Its bliss receding swiftly as before.

Fully awake at last – what have we done?

My mind spun like a tortuous whirlpool

Friendship once again trampled underfoot,

With the celebration of our passion.

I cried: Sex, get off my back and let me be.

I’m sick, I’m sick of wanting to Live.