Invisible History: The Collected Poems of Walta Borawski

Rebel Satori Press is proud to launch a new imprint, The Library of Homosexual Congress, curated by Tom Cardamone and Sven Davisson, dedicated to preserving and promoting provocative works of gay literature, with a focus on the AIDS crisis. Our inaugural title, Invisible History: The Collected Poems of Walta Borawski, edited by Philip Clark and Michael Bronski, will be published on World AIDS Day, December 1^st 2022. Invisible History marks the return of a singular gay poet, Walta Borawski (1947 – 1994), for new generations to discover.

Walta Borawski was a well-known and widely published poet active in the Boston and national poetry scenes during the post-Stonewall era. He worked with radical political newspapers and collectives such as Fag Rag and Gay Community News. His first collection of poetry, Sexually Dangerous Poet (1984), was published by the Good Gay Poets collective, while his second, Lingering in a Silk Shirt (1994), appeared from Fag Rag Books.

Posthumously, his work has appeared in multiple publications, including The James White Review, which included a feature on Borawski in its Summer 2001 issue and Persistent Voices: Poetry by Writers Lost to AIDS (2009), edited by Philip Clark and David Groff.

Borawski’s poems range from searing political commentary concerning the history and social status of gay men to sharp, witty and steadfastly defiant work on love and death during the height of the AIDS epidemic. Allen Ginsberg on Borawski’s work at the time of the release of Sexually Dangerous Poet: “The poems are truthful, snappy, plenty of low life & local detail, sparky mind of the young poet sassing & observing his environment, gay & grim, still romantic. Who doesn’t love romance? Lots of intelligence in the line, mindful measure of spoken speech music.”

Walta Borawski met his partner, Michael Bronski in 1975 and they were together until he died on February 9^th, 1994 from AIDS-related complications.

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Philip Clark is the co-editor of Persistent Voices: Poetry by Writers Lost to AIDS and In the Empire of the Air: The Poems of Donald Britton. The recipient of a MacDowell Fellowship, he is currently completing a biography of 1960s gay publisher H. Lynn Womack. He lives near Washington, D.C.

Michael Bronski is an independent scholar, journalist, and activist who is the author of numerous books including Pulp Friction: The Golden Age of Gay Male Pulps and A Queer History of the United States. He is Professor of the Practice in Activism and Media in the Studies of Women, Gender and Sexuality at Harvard University.

Cover Photo: Robert Giard