Dorothea Schlegel Artist in Residence

Research Area 4: "Literary Currencies"

December 2024

Queer & Trans Times: Collectivities in Poetry

The project explores queerness in relation to temporality with reference to grammatical distinctions (e.g. conjugation, declension, honorification versus genus and tense, or anti-passive and ergative structures) as well as natural and sociopolitical planes. Subjective perceptions of time in literary forms may take into account the chronobiological cycle of java/sleep, neurodiverse perceptions, discontinuous, processual identities, connectivity through affinity, not consanguinity, the construction of matrilineality as a counter to narrative patrilineal power structures. Subjective temporality would imply a multidimensional topography of subjectivity in which the self is subjected to constant processes of construction and imperfectly stitched together in order to retain the ability to connect with others, to co-vision without usurping stationary beings. This constitutes the postmodern practice of imagining a world on the warp of a fragmented memory, thus arguably a world without beginning, though perhaps also without end. This postmodern formation would represent an anti-aesthetic of fractured, perplexing, perpetually receding and deferred subsets of knowledge and practice, including signs, organisms, systems, selves and cultures. At these points of contact, poetry invites the counterparts of a living language that produces literary value. This author is also intrigued by how the ambiguous notion of dirt can correlate with time, identity, transience, collectivity, relationships/relationality and cultural presence or exclusion.

Łęko Zygmuntówne (Łukasz Kaźmierczak/Łucja Kuttig) is the author of Kokosty (2018, the main prize in the J. Bierezin Poetry Competition), Agresty (2019, winner of the Klemens Janicki Poetry Competition), Orzechnia. Orzechnini – Orzechnica – Orzechniczka (2021, published thanks to support from the Adam Włodek Prize) and Hiobby (2023). The texts verbalise observations and visions of a world in which the boundaries between the sexes, intimate and public life, own and foreign identity, consciousness and unconsciousness of one’s own existence are blurred. The content of the texts is reflected in the linguistic means, they meander, feature exotic terminology, move between science and social experience, and detect supposed similarities between phenomena. Further publications of Łęko Zygmuntówne’s works can be found in magazines (e.g. »Zadra«, »Silne«), zines (e.g. »Poczytałosie«, »Queerowe ekologie«) and anthologies (most recently »X-Philes archiwum queerowej poezji«, »Równo z prawej. Antologia polskiego poematu prozą«, and »Dezorientacje. Antologia polskiej literatury queer«). They have been translated into Bulgarian, English, German and Slovakian.