![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/09\/Barton-John-credit-Holly-Pattison.jpg\" "\\"\\"")
<\/a>\u201cGood poetry makes us want to expend the effort to pass through the looking glass toward insight, toward insights that we as readers come to on our own, not simply those that the poet wants us to find,\u201d says Barton. \u201cIt\u2019s the ability of poetry to allow readers to draw their own conclusions that permits it to challenge societal norms. For example, if reading a poem about two men who love each other causes readers to see that love is love \u2018no matter how the bodies join\u2019\u0143to quote one of my own poems\u0143then a norm has been effectively overturned.\u201d<\/p>\n
In Barton\u2019s work, societal norms get torn apart, tossed aside, and thrown out. His work deals with the complexities of being gay, how the culture of fear\u0143and, by extension, courage\u0143that surrounds AIDS changes the quest for (and acquirement of) intimacy, and the reinvention of family in today\u2019s world.<\/p>\n
\u201cIn the past, I\u2019ve always said that being gay in a straight, hetero-normative world, where the nuclear family is defined by intimacies arising from mixed genders, made me imagine it otherwise and without apology,\u201d says Barton. \u201cFor gay men and lesbians of my generation, who were raised by unsuspecting parents of opposite sexes, we had to claim this space\u0143this non-nuclear-family space\u0143for ourselves.\u201d<\/p>\n
Camosun College Student Society pride director Daphne Shaed agrees that the typical notion of family is becoming antiquated and that traditional family ideology is flawed. Shaed says that art is one way to get these ideas across to the public.<\/p>\n
\u201cArt is an important part of the discourse arising from the queer community to help others understand current issues, influence social concepts, and generate change within the greater social landscape,\u201d says Shaed. \u201cI applaud Barton for addressing the issues in such a creative way.\u201d<\/p>\n
Barton says that his work documents the claiming of this new family space, warts and all\u0143courage, homophobia, hopes realized and unrealized, and, in his words, \u201cthe hazards of a previously unknown country.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI pose this space as a hypothesis to be proved,\u201d he says, adding that he no longer sees his experience as marginal or wholly crucial to every family.<\/p>\n
\u201cI now see what I have lived through\u0143and what I have written about\u0143as one piece of the puzzle in the reinvention of the family,\u201d he says, \u201ca reinvention through which all differences are both respectable and respected.\u201d<\/p>\n
Take that, freeze-dried foodstuffs.<\/p>\n
John Barton Poetry is reflective; poetry is concentrated; poetry can slow down time. Poetry is also like freeze-dried foodstuffs. At least it is according to local poet John Barton. Barton, who\u2019s about to launch For the Boy with the Eyes of the Virgin: Selected Poems, his latest collection of poems, says that poetry, when done powerfully, can […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":4114,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,11,80],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4113","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-arts","category-issue","category-september-19-2012"],"aioseo_notices":[],"aioseo_head":"\n\t\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t
\n<\/em>7pm Thursday, September 27, free
\nCadboro Bay Book Company
\n<\/em>cadborobaybooks.com<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"