I echo Frank's perspective here; what always surprises me about sexual
statements is that I have to choose at all. I feel I'm being pushed into a
camp (if you pardon the pun). I believe that we're just sexual creatures.
Gender, heavens, even species, isn't really that important. I find inanimate
objects sexual too.
Sexuality plays a significant part in my poetry, whether it matters or makes
for diversity isn't for me to say, though the question is a bit like saying
does one's religious beliefs, or political beliefs matter. They can matter I
guess. Some poets write about gay experience and in that case it might
matter. They may think that *choosing* a sexuality is important. They may
feel disenfranchised. Programmatic writing, political writing, is often
about visibility of the kind Liz eloquently describes.
Which might be like me writing poems about shopping in Tesco's Supermarket,
which matters to me, and is deeply political. And perhaps a little sexual
for me too. Consumerism is sexy.
It's a little off target to think that picking up different lifestyles may
make one matter. Mattering comes from poetic impact upon language, not from
lifestyle choices or genetic predisposition. Diversity is a red herring I
think, like those poets who roam the earth to write about marrow farming in
East Lacashire and diamond mining in South America, and pepper their poems
with references to their deep political commitment to these communities of
oppressed peoples. It's a kind of privileged journalism driven by false
consciousness about middle class engagement with globalisation. Sexuality
often appears in poems in this way, kind of like a poet laureate writing
about rimming on the boulevard.
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