Event: June 2019
Mon
17/6/19
07:30 PM
Queer Poets. Queer Voices – 50 Years on from Stonewall
Lection & Talk
With the writers Angélica Freitas (Brazil) | Lee Mokobe (South Africa) | Urayoán Noel (Puerto Rico & USA) | Eugeniusz Tkaczyszyn-Dycki (Poland)
Presenter: Matthias Frings (Germany) journalist and author
50 years ago, on the night of 27 June 1969, they’d had enough. The denizens of the scene bar the Stonewall Inn in New York’s Christopher Street put up a fight against the arbitrary raids of the police. The subsequent two days of rioting marked the beginning of the gay rights movement and has since been celebrated every year in Christopher Street Day parades far beyond the borders of the USA. But equal rights and social acceptance of lesbians, gays, bisexuals and transgender people (LGBT) is not a matter of course everywhere. Discrimination, exclusion and anti-gay violence are on the increase again.
How do poets in various countries experience the situation of the LGBT community? How does their poetry reflect the changes and deal with love, sexuality and identity?
The young South African Slam Poetry Star Lee Mokobe reflects in heart-rending performances on finding his identity as a transgender person. Angélica Freitas has experienced how homophobia has become raison d’état in Brazil under President Jair Bolsonaro.
As the child of Puerto Rican immigrants, queer identity also means for Urayoán Noel the possibility of moving freely between languages as a writer. And Eugeniusz Tkaczyszyn-Dycki, one of the great unmistakeable voices of European poetry, calls up in his poetry the memory of lovers and dead friends and the traumas of being an outsider in so many ways.
English-German interpreting will be available for the event. The texts are available in German translation.
Project leaders: Matthias Kniep | Axel Schock
The event Queer Poets. Queer Voices– 50 Years on from Stonewall is presented by SIEGESSÄULE with the kind support of the Friedrich Ebert Foundation and ECHOO Konferenzdolmetschen.
Akademie der Künste
Kleines Parkett
Hanseatenweg 10, 10557 Berlin
Entrance fee:
10/7 €
Tickets online