Queerness in language

Six diverse and multicultural poets from India and the UK collaborate to explore how language may more accurately express queer identities without falling into the heteronormative traps, writes Neha Kirpal

‘Language is a Queer Thing’ is the culmination of a poetry exchange between India and the UK, exploring the relationship between language and queerness. Supported by the British Council as part of the India/UK Together Season of Culture and in partnership with The Queer Muslim Project (India) and Verve Poetry Festival (UK), it brought together six diverse and multicultural poets from India and the UK through residencies in both countries. The six talented poets featured in the project include Amani Saeed, Ife Grillo and Sanah Ahsan (from the UK) and Megha Harish, Anil Pradhan and Garfield Dsouza from India.

India/UK Together, a Season of Culture aims to establish a global network of Indian and British artistes to create a more diverse, inclusive and sustainable creative sector and to give emerging Indian artistes opportunities through global exposure.

The group, recently performed at the Tata Literature Live! The Mumbai International Litfest 2022, and also premièred their acclaimed collaborative work at BBC Contains Strong Language in Birmingham, in September 2022.

‘Language is a Queer Thing’ will not only celebrate the relationships that are formed among the poets but will serve as a lasting legacy through the publication of their work and sharing of it with audiences at literature festivals from the BBC’s Contains Strong Language in Birmingham to Tata Lit Live in Mumbai and beyond,”, said Jonathan Kennedy, Director Arts, British Council India. Further, The Queer Muslim Project (TQMP) began as a response to the dearth of positive and diverse stories and representations of queer and Muslim communities in India. Today, it has grown into South Asia’s largest virtual network of queer, Muslim and allied individuals, with a global community of over 40,000 people. Its mission is to build a creative pipeline of queer artistes, writers and community organisers from marginalised Indian communities to take up transformative leadership roles and create a more diverse and representative cultural sector. “We use digital media, storytelling and artistic production to challenge harmful stereotypes and norms, build power and visibility of under-served LGBTQIA+ individuals, and enable them to shape their own narratives,” explains Rafiul Alom Rahman, Founder & Director, The Queer Muslim Project. Kolkata-based Anil Pradhan was born in a small cantonment town called Salua to parents who themselves had left for and made new homes in other places. His ongoing doctoral research at the Department of English, Jadavpur University, Kolkata, focuses on the intersectional politics of sexuality, home, traversal and memory in the context of contemporary Indian queer diasporic and immigrant literature and cultures. His first book of poems, Flitting Oddments (2020), is about how finding home and coming to terms with and celebrating one’s queerness can be synonymous, especially for multiple marginalised folx. In his poems, Pradhan often queers the way meaning is interpreted by way of a fluidity that seeps through the syntax.

He also uses non-capitalised words and no punctuation marks at the end of the lines, to highlight the unstructured way in which both the mind thinks and in which poetry is conceived. “I do it also to induce a sense of casualness that both eases into free interpretation and causes unease at the same time, towards reconsidering how we think of the norm(ative) in both writing and living,” he explains. Award-winning writer, producer, performer and educator Ife Grillo believes that the reason language is so powerful is that it’s entirely made up. “As time has gone on, we’ve assigned meanings to sounds and words but ultimately, it’s not real, which makes language an exciting place to explore queerness. Whether it’s in Polari or Yoruba, queer people have always found ways to bend and sculpt language so it works better for them,” he says. In 2020, Grillo created a poetry piece as one of BBC New Creatives and BBC Introducing Arts that looked at why love goes wrong. “To queer language is to play with it, break it down and rebuild it into something that fits. It’s about not following the rules and finding ways to talk about queerness as love, home, family, betrayal, politics and joy without falling into the heteronormative traps. In the worlds our project creates, we find ways to make queerness broader than the sky and as specific as a grain of sand,” he says. Garfield Francisco Dsouza has worked as a writer, editor, instructional designer and English teacher for more than two decades. Recently, he forayed into podcasting and has completed a season of About What You Say, a podcast about words, their origins, usage and makeover. Bengaluru-based queer writer of poetry and prose Megha Harish largely writes poetry in free verse but also enjoys working with shape and wordplay forms.

Megha is also a big fan of haiku and is always keen to learn new forms. In her work, she tries to use language as simple as possible and accessible images from life to convey emotions.