"I’m as far from being a drag queen as a hamster is from being Bernard Manning..."

Described by the Times as “so filthy it verges on the educational”, by the Independent as a “prize fighter” and by the Gay Times as “a massive star of enormous talent”, Chloe Poems is one of the most prodigiously gifted and accessible poets alive today.

Drag queens parody a particular, exaggerated vision of femininity, one which very few women aspire to – are you limiting a vision of femininity?

No and yes. Every day as a child I was told I was like a girl, not in a nice way. Chloe is the girl I was always told I would be, and I wanted to give that girl a big powerful voice. I don’t think people expect that fusion of girl/boy, because when most drag queens go on stage they have no idea – they rip the shit out of women and make themselves look ridiculous.

So, don’t you think of yourself as a drag queen?

Drag queens bully. I’ll never forget a drag queen saying to a woman “you’re so ugly a rapist would run away from you”. What drag queens are doing is incredibly masculine – booming down a mic and insulting you. Because Chloe doesn’t look sexualised but will talk honestly about her/my sexual preferences, activities and observations, it’s the antithesis of drag. I’m as far from being a drag queen as a hamster is from being Bernard Manning.

How does using the Chloe character heighten the political message?

Politics is, on the surface, boring and people are bombarded with political information, and their lives are so difficult it can’t get through. I think the effeminacy of Chloe allows me to get away with things I could never get away with saying in a pair of jeans and a T-shirt, and I think the funny image helps decorate the savagery of the language.

How far are you willing to compromise to get people to listen?

I think it’s essential for the message to get out there. I’ve chosen not to do gigs where I’ve been asked not to do particular poems. During a gig if I feel that antagonising the audience might work I’ll throw something in that might do that, not because I think the gig is going badly but because I think they need that. If it gets cosy I feel I’m failing.

Do you feel then that all art should be challenging?

Absolutely, yes. It has to create debate. Some live art and the theatre, it’s just sit-com. It’s Terry and June. Some stand-up now is tedious in the extreme. Observational comedy has to stop. What used to be subversive has now just become dull. We’ve done that now, let’s do something else.

What are you saying about gay masculinities?

If you were and effeminate child, or if they knew you were queer, there’s the mental abuse, the emasculation. Actually, it’s physical abuse, because it’s about your body. So I think gay men are weird about the masculine shape. I understand it. I understand they want to be the men they were told they could never be, and that they are trying to look like the men who abused them, but they look so punished. They look like your mum’s got the brasso out and put them on the mantelpiece. So it reinforced the feminacy in reverse. If you look at it en masse it just looks daft. I makes me sad.

What do you feel about gay pride?

You can sloganise anything. You can say “pride – it’s yours”, but it’s not. It can’t be done by marching or by being in a club – it’s a long hard struggle. But people will pretend to have it and wave this flag that they have no relationship with. I think pride is a difficult word and hurts people without knowing it because they think they’ve got it.

You were attacked at Gay Pride in Manchester whilst performing “The Queen sucks Nazi cock”, what happened?

He battled his way and jumped over the security fence and said “you’re talking shit mate” and went to punch me, but the security grabbed him. The audience were fantastic. There were roars when they pulled him away. The audience were really supportive, but the press lied and they city council got involved and said my material was inappropriate and ruined the festival.

You’re often critical of the gay scene, what do you think has gone wrong?

It’s been engulfed by capitalism. Thatcher, who was probably the most anti-feminist woman in the world, allowed us in and said: “here’s the power you’ve always wanted. Now come in and buy our loft style accommodation and our AIDS ribbons made out of rubies and be amazing and powerful.” But it’s just manipulation. At the moment it’s like your not gay unless you’re in £150,000 worth of debt and it’s tragic. At the moment capitalism is putting everyone in debt and people are mentally ill because of this and I think there will be some sort of conscious melt down. When this happens, people like myself have to be really vocal. No-one was this rich in the last recession, no-one was this much in debt.

You’re working class in a scene that can be a bit high pomp, how do you deal with it?

There has to be room for pomp because some people are shits. I think what the more working class poets – or the less university-based or anti-education poets do – is to make simple language interesting as opposed to making simple language sound complicated , which is what I think the posh poets do.

Harvard is embedded in the whole ultra-conservative WASP ethos and yet you were invited to perform a lecture there earlier this year! How and why did that come about and how did you find it?

There’s an intellectual backlash against Chloe so it was two fingers up to that, but also it was to infiltrate that very place. The reaction was amazing. What they loved about it was the lyricism, the pregnancy and the pugnacity of it, and someone fighting back. They were amazed that I didn’t read. I haven’t read a book since I was 14, but I think it’s because I don’t read that I can do what I do. I don’t feel bullied by another book or intimidated by another writer.

How do you feel about the differing reactions in the UK and in the USA?

Most of America’s shit, but in the more leftfield states the country’s young, whereas in the UK it’s staid. America’s like Zebadee in the Magic Roundabout, all excited, and England’s like a dusty old librarian. America’s willing to take a chance with literature, but Britain still thinks its poetry belongs in a maze of libraries.

Interview: Jackie Hagan