On This Stretch of Queer Land
Here, Dale Booton bestows us with poems both dexterous and endearing, weaving together affinities into a tapestry of queer camaraderie — of nights becoming day, their introspection. Voices and bodies converge, enraptured or in longing to abandon / what came before’. In reading On This Stretch of Queerland, it is felt that, as Booton’s speaker puts it: ‘the weight of the words is in his soul’.
Peter Scalpello
Alert to the subtlest flavours of desire, these skilful poems probe ‘inattached silence’ and ‘the taste of your name’. In a century packed with ‘phantom vibrations’ and ‘passing meteorites’, their speakers urgently comb night clubs, phone screens, and bedroom conversations for a gate that leads to transcendence and makes the body a vessel of untapped weightlessness’.
John McCullough
On This Stretch of Queerland looks at queer relationships and friendships, connecting a cast of characters through the ups and downs of love. This is about the hedonism of dancing all night, matched with the safety net of your friends watching out for you during tough times.
There are poems about dating, Grindr, kissing on the dancefloor, heartbreak, late-night chip shop visits, sex, slut drops, self-loathing, and queer joy.
fourteen poems, 2024
Walking Contagions
In these stark and moving poems, Dale Booton looks intently at himself—in the mirror, in the eyes of others, and back over his shoulder, to his community—in fleeting moments and lingering connections, he maps out the ghosts and the memories of lovers who walk with him.
Andrew McMillan, poet
Booton’s verses deliver a critique of family (of origin) bonds, significant others and oneself in the face of collective trauma; they stand as a reminder of how we have built our sense of community through hedonism and safety in numbers. Of how fragile everything is. It is a reckoning of loss and resilience, and a testimony to how far we have come in the expression of our lived experiences. With powerful imagery and unflinching honesty, these poems offer a glimpse into a world that is often overlooked or forgotten.
Piero Toto, poet and translator
Beginning with a routine sexual health check-up before delving into the depths of the 1980s, Walking Contagions explores the emerging AIDS crisis and the subsequent fear and loneliness that accompanied it. With a reflection on community and activism, these poems emphasise the stigmas around HIV/AIDS while banishing the heteronormative expectations of adulthood and sexuality: Gay men are not old at thirty; even within a community, there can still be overwhelming isolation; Grindr is not the be-all of a gay man’s life. With a defining message of education and acceptance, Walking Contagions echoes the need to continue fighting HIV stigma and reinforcing the message: “Undetectable = Untransmittable”.
Polari Press, 2023
