Mardi Gras Q+A: Andy Quan
What is your event about?
This year’s Perverse Verse follows last year’s hugely successful gig. I don’t know if I’ve ever seen so many people out for a poetry reading. There will be lesbian, gay and queer poets reading traditional, experimental and performance poetry in a relaxed afternoon event. Lovers of words, come on out!
Why poetry?
Words are powerful. Voices are powerful. Listening to poetry can be sudden insight into someone else’s life, or your own life. It can be revelation and epiphany. Or a joke and a bit of fun. At its best, poetry is powerful, immediate, and touches you in an unexpected way.
What are you looking forward to seeing in the festival?
I like to use festival events as a way of catching up with friends so I’ll see what others are going to. However, I hear Penny Arcade and Pop Princess 2 are not to be missed.
What’s your favourite Mardi Gras memory?
Walking the parade route with the medical team. Reading erotic literature in a leather codpiece at Dirty Boys. Many individual flashes of memory from the RHI, Hordern, Dome -¦
What does Mardi Gras mean to you?
As a Canadian living in Sydney, Mardi Gras, at its best, is Sydney at its best: hot weather, friends and community, creativity and wit, hedonism, and beautiful and sexy people. It’s people pitching in to help wherever needed. It’s Aussies welcoming foreigners to a party. It’s acknowledgment and celebration of who we are and where we’ve come from as gay men and lesbians (and BTQI). It’s about pleasure.
Perverse Verse: Readings By Gay, Lesbian, Bi, Transgender, Queer Poets is on Saturday 5 February at 2pm at the NSW Writers’ Centre, Balmain Road, Rozelle -“ phone 9810 2666. Tickets are $10 at the door.
