POESIEGESPRÄCH: HARRY JOSEPHINE GILES – Addressing My Transsexuality To The Bird

In the organizer's words:

Studio space

Harry Josephine Giles (born 1986 on Orkney) is a poet, performer and slam champion. In her award-winning work, she transcends genre boundaries and mixes genres. In doing so, she deconstructs ancient myths or, following in the footsteps of Ursula K. Le Guin, renews sci-fi narrative conventions through a gender-fluid character, most recently in the verse novel Deep Wheel Orcadia (Picador 2021), which she wrote in Orkney dialect. A sensual experience that is initially only accessible through sound: "The chime o the tannoy is whit taks her back, / fer hid isno chenged, nae more as the wirds / summoan her tae the airlock: her wirds / at sheu isno heard fer eyght geud year."

Critics praised the book. Author Matthew Fitt wrote: "A symphony of giants, miniature suns and longships to Mars: in Deep Wheel Orcadia, Harry Josephine Giles holds the stars in his hand and creates new worlds in Scottish."

In her latest poetry collection Them! (Picardo 2024), Giles writes about the lives of trans* people through the lens of work, technology and ecology. In the poems she reads during the poetry talk, which have been specially translated into German for the event, she poses fundamental, highly political questions that deal with gender and identity: "Why do we not everywhere see innumerable transitional forms? Why is not all nature in confusion?"

Harry Josephine Giles in conversation with Luca Mael Milsch

The event will be interpreted into English and German. With the kind support of ECHOO Konferenzdolmetschen.

Project management: Alexander Gumz and Nadine Tenbieg

Supported by:

British Council. The poesiefestival berlin is a project of the Haus für Poesie in cooperation with silent green Kulturquartier and the Akademie der Künste and is funded by the Hauptstadtkulturfonds.