Language is a Queer Thing
Notes from a poetry residency in Bradford
I'm writing to you from a hotel in Bradford,
body completely broken, mind exhausted, smiling because in the past 12 hours I co-wrote a ghazal with five other people. I'm here for 10 days as part of Language is a Queer Thing, a program run by The Queer Muslim Project. The tl;dr is that three queer writers from the UK and three queer writers from India come together to write poetry, publish it, and perform it.
I did this program once three years ago and it changed my life. Not only did I travel to India for the first time, I met my poetry twin flame, a.k.a. the person I actually learned how to write with. I know how to perform with people, I know how to edit for and with people, but no one ever really teaches you how to write alongside someone.
What is it about poetry, about the people who shape their lives around it? I think that people sometimes consider poetry frivolous, but when you write it, it feels like you're trying to chase after life itself. You're trying to capture a moment, to preserve it in a drop of amber. At least, I am. And when you read something, it's like unstopping a bottle of perfume, the memory of a time or a place or a person you didn't even know becoming real in front of you, right now, right under your nose.
And it surprises you all the time. You go all your life thinking ghazals are shit in English. Then someone pulls out a book of Agha Shahid Ali's poetry, and you read the first poem, The Veiled Suite, and feel the turn in the lock as something in the brain opens and spills out, crying.
There are so many arrows of conversation to share
with you from the last 36 hours alone that I cannot manage to make them all hit their mark. My dearest twin flame, the writer with whom I best understand the page, last night told me that attractiveness is not one of the axes upon which they measure themselves. In the moment, I raise my eyebrows, initially thinking that it comes from a place of insecurity, but now that I really think about it, I can see how wonderful that is. There are many more worthy axes upon which we can measure ourselves—kindness, competence, intelligence. Why is attractiveness one of the most important ones?
She lounges next to me on the bed and I show her emails between me and a former love, and we dissect them together. She tells me that she doesn’t trust when non-binary people have a string of exes who are beautiful femmes. She doesn’t trust anyone who has a type, actually, and we should interrogate that—why are we only attracted one kind of person? They show me photos of their exes and tell me that it’s funny to look at some of them, now, and think “what was I doing?” And then they are proud because it means they must have loved so much, so hard, that someone became beautiful to them.
Everyone is beautiful,
everyone is dear. I am learning things without knowing that I am learning them. There are glances over beds, someone is always sneaking a picture, banana chip packet and TimTams shared round, shoes in a jumble by the door. This is home.
I hold a new friend’s hand as we walk through the shopping mall. I notice people throwing glances at them, and stand a little straighter, make my face a little more stern. I want to strangle the baby gay who keeps singing, and in the same moment I want to hug him, tell them that regardless of whether his waist is snatched or not, he deserves to be loved.
On the stage, we cluster close to each other, drawing power from each other's bodies, drawing warmth. The premise is a bedroom kiki sesh. We cover sea creatures, grindr, protest, colonialism, Palestine, in the same conversation. We cry. We laugh. We marvel at each other's words, each other's wisdom. How can you hear the same poem rehearsed three times in a bedroom, and still find something new when it is said once more on stage?
I do believe that language is a queer thing.
It is slippery, tricky, subversive in the right hands, in the right mouth, between the right lips. We innuendo, rift, reinvent. Do you know how much power is in these mouths? They're the baseline of your favourite songs. Interwoven into the threads of the latest fashion. Our culture, our taste, our language is in your mouths. It amazes me that people don’t see, sometimes, how much of the world that we enjoy, that we take pleasure in, is built in the land of queerness.
I feel deeply devastated for the people who do not live in colour. I cannot imagine a world where I don't have this. Can't imagine the world without imagination. I am glad every day that God made me queer. I would not have had this family if I wasn't. I would not be as wise, my mind would not be as open, I would not be exposed so much, I would not be witty, my poetry would be duller, I could not see the world so beautifully without these eyes, without this lens.
I would not be so brave if I wasn't queer. I remember the first time I kissed queer in public. I remember, as our lips pressed together, the multitude and excitement of this kiss, their jawline so crisp, face beautiful and handsome all at once, their head angled up to meet mine, arms splayed behind me along the seat. I remember a thrill of fear, one that I would not feel when kissing a boy, wondering if someone would say something to us, whether it was a lewd comment from two men, or an angry word from anyone. And I remember also in that moment feeling the kernel of awareness pop – this is what it means to be brave. To know the risk, and do it anyway.
Generally, I am not an obvious queer,
not a colourful one, no dyed hair or undercut. I walk into the room with the other poets and they tell me my outfit is very serious – a white collared shirt and jeans. They are in their flamboyant, multicolour, multi pattern, big earring splendour. I am there in my Doc Martens, which is enough of a giveaway in my mind. The rest does not matter. A friend of mine told me that they see me as this liquid jumble of gender, both feminine and masculine, sometimes in order, sometimes at once. It’s how I feel, wearing boyish jeans, white tee, gold chain with a full beat, jhumke shining through my long hair. How I feel when I sit, one minute cross-legged, another with knees akimbo.
Boring, boring to explain these facets of gender that just don’t matter to me anymore. My gender does not matter. I say that in the privilege of family acceptance, of safety, but I mean this. I don’t want to write the essay (today) about how I look and how it’s passing to one person and obvious to another, something something femmes, something something bisexual angst. I’ve had these conversations over the years and feel over it now. If someone does or doesn’t see my queerness, that’s more about them and their eyes and their perception than it is about me.
Regardless of what they see, I wear what I want and I fuck who I want and everyone is beautiful to me. The whole world has its legs and its arms open. My exes all look different and I take comfort in that, that I must have seen something in their faces that others didn’t see. My queerness is on my tongue and in my pen and in my walk and in my docs and in my eyes and it’s not something anyone can take from me.
When I stopped to think about how much has changed in the past two years, I almost don't recognise myself. I don't recognise my life. Or maybe I do, and it's a déjà vu that is from the future. I don't know if I'm making sense, I'm so tired my eyes are barely open. But I wanted to write to you, like I promised I would, and tell you how beautiful it is to be a poet, to be queer. To be cackling in a room with five other people, and throw shade and talk dirty and reference poems and share words and trade knowing glances and feel like you completely belong. There are precious few spaces I feel I can be all of myself. I’m glad that I’m here, that I’m home.