Poetry Breakfast

Fresh Lavs (Written in Polari)

Let’s fake fresh lavs
to go there with your actual dawning,
to dish the dirt on savvying and
nantoise-savvying, to clutch
your pearls for cheats and bencoves
that carked it along the cruise,
and this ajax fakement,
the scarpering for your after nine,
the journosparkle brought out
of that other medzerdom,
and its actual munge.

Let’s fake fresh lavs
to palaver your bar biography, to fatcha
your actual flavour, to hell-spark
the toots and schonks of polari,
until fresh lavs ȝooȝ the bod
you can but only clock when nanti frock,
if mother is to cackle you lattyward
with your remoulded name, total.

Neologisms (English Translation)

Let’s make new words,
to speak of your dawning, to declare
your self-knowing and unknowing, to keen
laments for that and those lost along your way,
and this too: the freedom of your witching hour,
the aurora on that other hemisphere,
and its unique darkness.

Let’s make new words
to name your life, to mould
the syllables and rhythms of language,
to delineate your own difference,
until neologisms clothe the body you can
but only countenance naked, if I am
to call you home, with your new name, whole.

Photo by Rachel Bolton

About the Author:

Makar of the Federation of Writers (Scotland), Gaelic Editor of Northwords Now, Marcas Mac an Tuairneir writes in Scottish Gaelic, Irish, English and Polari. His third and fourth collections Dùileach and Polaris were shortlisted for Comhairle nan Leabhraichean’s Duaisean Litreachais respectively in 2022 and 2023, and the latter Saltire Society’s 2022 Scottish Poetry Book of the Year award. Having won multiple awards for poetry and songwriting at the Royal National Mòd, and the Wigtown Gaelic Poetry prize at the 2017, in 2023 he received a Scottish Gaelic Award for Gaelic Arts and Culture. ‘An Leabhar II’ was one of the SPL’s ‘Best Scottish Poems’ in 2021. www.marcasmac.scot