• 2024-07-18, 4:00 PM
Atelierraum | 7/5 € Tickets
Harry Josephine Giles (born 1986 in Orkney) is a poet, performer, and slam champion. In her widely acclaimed work, she transcends genre demarcations and blends them. In doing such, she deconstructs ancient myths or, following in the footsteps of Ursula K. Le Guin, she updates the narrative conventions of science fiction with a gender-fluid cast, most recently in the verse novel Deep Wheel Orcadia (Picador Poetry 2021), which she wrote in Orkney dialect. It’s a sensual experience that is only accessible through sound at first: “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.”
The book has been praised by critics. Writer Matthew Fitt writes: “a symphony of giants, miniature suns and longships to Mars, in Deep Wheel Orcadia, Harry Josephine Giles holds the stars in the palm of their hand, terraforming new worlds in Scots.”
In her latest poetry collection Them! (Picador Poetry 2024), Giles writes about the lives of trans people from the perspective of work, technology, and ecology. In the poems she will read, which have been translated into German exclusively for this poetry talk, she poses fundamental, highly political questions about 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. Kindly supported by ECHOO Konferenzdolmetschen.
Project management: Alexander Gumz and Nadine Tenbieg
British Council. poesiefestival berlin is a project of Haus für Poesie in cooperation with silent green Kulturquartier and Akademie der Künste and is funded by Hauptstadtkulturfonds.