The Return to Greenwood: Identifying the

Interactive Talk by author/poet Perry Brass. In “Maurice,” E. M. Forster sends his clandestine pair of gay lovers back to “the Greenwood,” the primal English forest, symbol of Arcadian freedom and closeness; the secret “gay space,” a site for nurturing intense feelings and belonging. The Greenwood is the “gay Canaan” and Jerusalem, a spiritual entity validating a yearning to return to one’s original nature. Brass reveals the Greenwood as a medium for covenants, bondings, and self-recognition; for creating and repeating rituals of desire, love, survival, and continuance. He sees it from Whitman’s waterfront and Manhattan groves to modern gay campgrounds, radical fairyism, Bears, leather rituals, and naturism; from early bars, baths, and bookstores to religious congregations and communities. The Greenwood is now under attack from both the Right wing and from American consumerism which banalize and stigmatize deeper self-contained private feelings. Brass shows that without a recognition of the Greenwood and our yearnings for it, any importance of queer identity other than as a readily usable tool of corporate consumerism is futile.

Brass says: “Using my own background as a Southern Jew who grew up in poverty in Savannah, GA, and came out at the age of 16 there, I’d like to draw upon examples in literature and my own work and experiences to identify the Greenwood in its myriad incarnations. I’d also like participants to see themselves within the Greenwood concept: strengthened, made insightful, magnified, glad!”

Poet/novelist Perry Brass lives in New York City and has published 13 books, including Sex-charge and The Lover of My Soul, collections of poetry; How To Survive Your Own Gay Life, a popular guide to a controversial subject; and his novels of speculative, suspense, or fantasy fiction, Mirage, Albert or The Book of Man, The Harvest, Angel Lust, and his newest novel, The Substance of God, A Spiritual Thriller. Currently, he is working on another novel entitled Carnal Sacraments. He has been a finalist 6 times for Lambda Literary Awards, and won an “Ippy” Award from Independent Publisher Magazine in 2001 for Warlock, A Novel of Possession. His work has also been included in over 20 anthologies, including The Columbia Book of Gay Literature, from Columbia University Press, and Bend Sinister, Death Comes Easy, and Serendipity  from Millivres-Prowler. He has taught writing workshops in New York, San Francisco, and Provincetown, and is a recognized spokesperson on gay and gender related topics.