KUIR #5 queer poetry reading

"I find myself constantly thinking about what it means to be queer and unraveling its meanings and non-meanings to myself. By non-meaning, I want to express how for those from the post-colonies, queer really means nothing. I have come to terms with it as a kind of comma rather than a full-stop in my identity. I have no idea who I would be if my 'queer' ancestors had not been systematically eradicated in India. 'Queer-as-Comma' means to me that the story (personal, political, collective) always goes on. One of the fundamental colonial tools has been forcing that full-stop: whether through categories, through various colonial languages, and very bluntly, through genocide. What post-colonial queers have to do is invent our own language, invent our own ways of being in the world, and inhabit agency in a queer life without history." (Keeyaa Chaurey, KUIR fanzine's editorial # 5)etween commas and non-meanings, is our poetry to cope with "the queer" at all? what mechanisms of our history is our language (un)intentionally naturalizing//destroying through this "foreign word" -- or through its derivations? what does a migrant poetry unravel in its contemporary approach to queer? which traces from the colonized, racialized and marginalized status of our existences are being signified in poety today? 
KUIR is (finally!) back in town and in our 5th edition (taking place at a new, community cozy place and outside of the expat buble, our welcoming be'kech) we're happy to appoach these-and-those issues having as starting point the poetics & voices of three poets, from three different cities and in three different languages
ranslations will be simultaneously projected this time!
Marios Chatziprokopiou (EL)
is a poet, performer, and researcher based in Athens, Greece. His first poetry book Local Tropics ('Topikoi Tropikoi') (Antipodes 2019) investigates issues of queer mourning and desire in relation to folk poetic traditions. He translates Clarice Lispector from Portuguese to Greek, and works as a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Thessaly.
Sailesh Naidu (EN)
is a poet, performance artist, and comedian based in Berlin, Germany. Born in the United States by way of India Sailesh’s work delves into the ideas of gender, sexuality, decolonization, and the body. A former German Chancellor’s Fellow they have worked in the field of migration, education, gender for over a decade with their projects winning the acclaim of the New York Times and PBS News Hour. Sailesh is currently working on their first poetry book “Territory.”
Tatiana Nascimento Dos Santos(PT)
"palavreira": singer, songwriter, writer, publisher at padê editorial. PhD in translation studies. founder/co-founder of 'slam das minas in DF', the first exclusive slam for women/lesbians in Brazil; co-founder of "palavra preta" (black word) - a national exhibition of black women writers; creator of "quanta!" (how much!), LBT exhibition, of "afrokuír" - black LGBTQI+ fuss, of "semilla" - a book fair to women publishers. aquarian. poetry books: outline (2016), lundu, (2016), nineteen94 (2018), 07 notes on the apocalypse, or poems for the end of the world (2019). essays: literary cuirlombism: black poetry LGBTQI overcoming the paradigm of pain (2019), a breath of life in the midst of death (2019). IG / FB: @tatiananascivento
WHERE
@ BE'KECH
Exerzierstraße 14
13357 Berlin
(8 minutes walking from Pankstrasse U-8)
/WHEN
in two fridays// in ten days
15.11, 20h
FREE ENTRANCE, FANZINES & DONATIONS
our event is free for everyone.
we will be accepting donations at the doors. our suggested price is 5 euros. the collected money will be divided equally among the performers.
other than that, we will be selling our KUIR FANZINE at the doors. as you know, it contains a sample of the performed poems, in original language + translations to EN and DE.
furthermore, this edition's will present the powerful & gorgeous illustrations (just like the banner's of this event) of Thaís Curvelo Illustration and a co-written editorial, by Keeyaa Chaurey and me, Jô Osbórnia, in which we investigate the limits of coping with queer nowadays.
we will charge a symbolic price for the fanzine, allowing to pay our backstage team as well.
WHO's KUIR
KUIR is a collaborative, independent project that aims at promoting the poetry of queer poets in berlin and abroad, creating a non-normative, safe and creative space of resistance, where we can exchange and mingle. more infos and content from previous editions here: https://kuirpoetry.wordpress.com