Haus für Poesie

Lection & Talk

In continuation of our Writing Identities series, this event brings together four outstanding voices from the contemporary English poetry scene. 

Andrew McMillan came to sudden prominence with his famous debut physical (Jonathan Cape 2015), now available in German translation by Mazlum Nergiz and Richard Stoiber (März Verlag). His poems tell of anonymous sex and encounters at urinals and in locker rooms. They celebrate the male body and same-sex desire, exploring “the possibilities of transformation and of disappointment borne in every touch" (Mark Doty). 

Poet, scholar, and activist Nat Raha’s writing and research engage queer Marxism and radical transfeminism. Three volumes have been published so far, most recently Of Sirens, Body & Faultlines (Boiler House Press 2018), a collection of poems praised by critics as having a "frightening rapidity." Nat Raha is co-author of Trans Femme Futures: An Ethics for Transfeminist Worlds, and co-editor of Imagining Queer Europe Then and Now and Radical Transfeminism.

Richard Scott's debut Soho appeared three years after McMillan's physical with Faber & Faber and is just as spectacular. Some of the poems were published in German translation in the volume Le jardin secret (hochroth Verlag). Critics describe Soho as "a passionate, sometimes furious love letter to the LGBTQ+ community and its checkered history." The poems deal with public toilets in Regent's Park, porn magazine coverboys, and "the vulnerability of queer bodies" exemplified by a torso of the deity Apollo.

Verity Spott is a poet, blogger, musician, and publisher of the independent publishing house Iodine Press. In her manifestos, which have been published since 2011, she problematizes the cisnormative narrative of transition imposed on the trans* community and argues for self-confident resistance. According to American poet Anne Boyer, Spott's poems (most recently published in the volumes 70 Sonnets and Hopelessness), gather their energy, as a storm does, until ordinary acts assume extraordinary proportions. They are a spell for no less than the total transformation of the world.

The event will be interpreted English-German.
With kind support by the British Council and ECHOO Konferenzdolmetschen

In reading and conversation: Andrew McMillan | Nat Raha | Richard Scott | Verity Spott

Host: Lisa Jeschke

Location:
Haus für Poesie
Kulturbrauerei

Knaackstr. 97, 10435 Berlin

Entrance fee:
6/4 €

Tickets online