Reading by Jonathan Blake
with Simon Maddrell
Q&A with Jonathan Blake
'I’ll live a lot longer than you think'
This verse memoir speaks in the voice of a man called Jonathan Blake.
Jonathan Blake was diagnosed so early in the UK AIDS epidemic that he was named Patient L1 at London Middlesex Hospital UK and is immortalised in the film Pride.
Born in 1949, he has lived through the high and lows of queer life for over seven decades. He also shared four of those decades with his life-partner, Nigel Young.
From a nineteen-fifties childhood to activism with Lesbians and Gays Support the Miners, via the very darkest days of the epidemic, Maddrell’s sparkling poems tell our ever-shifting queerstory in the most personal of ways. They are luscious, witty and heart-felt.
Neil Bartlett
Simon Maddrell is the author of six pamphlets including a finger in derek jarman's mouth (Polari Press, 2024); Isle of Sin (Polari Press, 2023); and joint-winner of the Rialto Open Pamphlet Competition 2020, Queerfella.
Wednesday 19th February, 7–8pm (Doors 6.45pm)
Lunch Positive
The Sanctuary
Dorset Gardens Methodist Church
Brighton, BN2 1RL
Free entry. All proceeds in aid of Lunch Positive.