Homoerotic Poetry - European Poetry

European Poetry

The first modern European gay anthology was in German compiled by Elisar von Kupffer (1900); it was followed by the poetry and prose anthology Iolaus compiled by the homosexual British socialist Edward Carpenter, which has remained in print almost continuously until today. The 1978 anthology French gay anthology with much poetry and excellent illustrations, Lamoure bleu (French for "blue love", that is, forbidden love) has been translated into German and English and remains in print.

Italian has Michelangelo, the painter and sculptor, who wrote gay love sonnets while Sandro Penna is a later poet. The Venetian gay poet Mario Stefani died in still unexplained circumstances in the early 21st century. Renzo Paris is a notable contemporary poet.

In French there is Rimbaud and Verlaine, who were lovers; some of Verlaine's poems published in the early 1890s were the first open modern French gay poems and influenced Oscar Wilde. Jean Cocteau wrote in the twentieth century where Jean Genet also wrote some gay poems.

In German Adolf Brand wrote gay poetry in the early part of the twentieth century as well as producing the major gay periodical Der Eigene (The Special; 1898–1931), which published gay poetry. The Swiss gay magazine Der Kreis (The circle) carried the flame of gay poetry in the second world war when the Nazi regime in Germany imprisoned many homosexuals, leading to their deaths. Nils Hallbeck was a Swedish gay poet and in the opinion of Anthony Reid, his English translator, one of the finest gay poets ever. Danish and Dutch have also produced fine gay poets.

Spain produced García Lorca, who was shot in the Spanish civil war, and many others. For South American poets, see the bilingual anthology Now the Volcano (San Francisco, 1979). Antonio Botto is the best known Portuguese poet to write open gay poems; he later lived in Brazil where he died. In Brazil, a gay anthology was produced in 1978 called Poemas do amor mandate (Poems of doomed love).