Writers Read: Logan February in conversation with Miriam Stoney

00:00:01: Okay, let's go.

00:00:06: Hi!

00:00:07: I'm Tobias Harbourkorn and you're listening to A Billion Review.

00:00:14: One of the first stories our magazine ever published was an essay by Logan February a Nigerian poet, essayist & songwriter.

00:00:22: Logan is author of The Nude Imperative and Mental Voodoo And their writing explores

00:00:29: exile,

00:00:30: grief,

00:00:30: queerness,

00:00:31: faith... ...and what it means stand outside something even when you belong.

00:00:37: In the essay, Logan reflects on a walk in Salsa Seapark in Potsdam one weekend while living in Berlin.

00:00:48: During that same year in Berlin, Logan had an unusual opportunity to give his sermon on pride during a mass at The Berliner Dorm An experience that threads through the essay's reflection of language belonging morality and poetic license.

00:01:06: In this episode, you'll hear Logan read the opening of the essay.

00:01:10: The rest can be found online at blnreview.de.

00:01:15: And after reading, Logan is joined by writer and translator Miriam Stoney.

00:01:20: They talk about the limits of translation Ghostliness Loneliness as

00:01:24: a luxury

00:01:25: And why searching for contradictions in voids Can one of most revealing parts Of writing process.

00:01:32: But first

00:01:33: He's Logan February Reading from

00:01:35: Sans Sussis Saint-Soussi.

00:01:43: On holy Saturday, the sun closes early leaving a phantom of warmth for tourists and visitors.

00:01:51: The gray light on this doorway over day between death and living again turns us into some species of ghost wandering in pairs or groups of beloveds through the Saint-soussi park in Potsdam.

00:02:05: Grecian nude stand guard looking out from marble eyes.

00:02:10: Three ducks float along an immense fountain.

00:02:13: In the style of exiled ones, we have entered through the back way—the lover and

00:02:19: I.".

00:02:20: I am only half listening as he starts to talk about Frederick the Great.

00:02:25: upon whose demand these palaces Finding the right angle for photographs that will fully display The tiered staircase beneath the main Sonsuccee Palace, Complete with rows of vine waiting to bear their summer fruit.

00:02:45: And nearby three young men ride on bicycles.

00:02:49: Their rhythm harmonious and elegant On-the-eye past a sign which forbids bicycle riding in the park.

00:02:57: What is forbidden verboten?

00:03:03: upon it, a bind of absented possibility.

00:03:08: What is forbidden for me—a young exile from West African homosexual repression—is all I can dwell

00:03:15: on.".

00:03:16: My German national visa, Valid For The Meantime offers not an enumeration.

00:03:33: Yet I am freer in important ways than In the country where was born, Where law delimits The nature of my sexuality and love itself.

00:03:42: I'm thinking Of banished possibilities As i roam this great exterior.

00:03:47: Three million square meters Of German aristocratic land And architecture Dwarved by three thousand fruit trees Still getting dressed for springtime!

00:03:58: The lover has the charms of a history book.

00:04:05: He is often clever and at times concise.

00:04:09: What he does not know, he smilingly speculates.

00:04:12: For instance A popular and convincing hypothesis Of the homosexuality of Frederick the Great Whose effeminacy Is better documented.

00:04:22: This king was a lover of poetry And philosophy & art A player of the flute.

00:04:28: His palace of Saint-Sussis In its French Rococo styling was conceived as a getaway, A place where his wife of arranged marriage Elizabeth Christine Was seldom invited and Where he could retreat from the monarchical bureaucracies Of Berlin to relax in His preferred company of male esthetes And intellectuals.

00:04:49: No doubt He was man who was familiar with and knew his way around.

00:04:53: The forbidden story goes that his father Frederick Willem of Prussia Entirely disapproving of the young Frederick's deficit and masculinity, would beat him in public whenever he behaved to his father's distaste.

00:05:07: And according biographer Wolfgang Burgdorf called air-to-his-throne a sodomite and effeminate As an adolescent prince, Frederick is said have attempted fleeing together with friend or lover.

00:05:22: from those royal and patriarchal pressures Frederick Willems punishment was exacting.

00:05:28: After sentencing both young men to prison, the king decided on a finality and ordered their accomplice or friend or lovers beheading while making Frederick watch the whole scene through a palace window.

00:05:41: In this story The Young Frederick's Possibility of Romance & Escape suffers total obliteration.

00:05:49: yet I imagine it as kind of possibility which the mind must immortalize.

00:05:54: But his father's project to harden and make a man out of Frederick ultimately yielded good results.

00:06:00: To earn the title of The Great, Frederick in time established himself by remarkable military campaigns against Austria and other powers invading Saxony and seizing Silesia.

00:06:13: under his reign Prussia grew one of the great European states.

00:06:17: Frederick made that name for himself beyond the standard king in Prussia as the first king of Prussia, in all the glory its territorial increase by seventeen seventy-two.

00:06:30: The legacy his greatness is extraordinary.

00:06:33: I find it boring.

00:06:35: most of all i feel lonely being told these things by lover.

00:06:39: he revels on history's land knowing little country left behind.

00:06:46: understanding even less of that cannot bring him into body.

00:06:51: my experience The body whose spine shivers, faced with the extravagant architecture of this storied empire.

00:06:58: What language or lyric explains the wound of coming from a land that is shaped and named by European possession?

00:07:06: Coming From & Being Afraid to Return.

00:07:09: Coming from & Pleading To Enter.

00:07:11: To Pass Through.

00:07:13: Coming From And Longing To Stay Because staying Is Prohibited Possibility An Absent Path.

00:07:19: Thus The Great Desire.

00:07:21: and because where next is there to go?

00:07:25: I am alone in this body, In the awe of this dreamlike expanse of space.

00:07:30: There's a romance in the smallness & aloneness...I think every queer person at some point imagines a utopia of quiet retreat A place to be private & untouched..a sight of near disappearance but still remaining....A Place To Simply Be In Nigeria together with friends.

00:07:50: These places, alternate worlds are made out of nothing.

00:07:54: Voids we know as home Against the queerphobic vestiges Of religious colonization.

00:08:00: We reinforce our castle walls with resilience Horticulture our grounds With colors of hope But have no sense to see.

00:08:09: No vast fountains No tranquil tree lines To overlook without worry.

00:08:14: And I have floated farther Out now Unpalest but not Without privilege.

00:08:20: Freer to love, To face remoteness.

00:08:24: I cannot quite translate to the lover this worry A language of The ghost i am.

00:08:30: Thank you

00:08:30: Logan so much.

00:08:37: So actually

00:08:38: just wanted to start by addressing something that I suppose is a personal interest Of mine.

00:08:45: We talked about the idea and perhaps problem of translation which Is how the extract you read ends.

00:08:53: And I suppose what you're addressing also in this somewhat clumsy interaction with the lover is also a problem of, What other processes are there rather than translation?

00:09:09: Perhaps to recognise difference or finding mutual understanding.

00:09:20: And sometimes it is just not possible, and that's part of the process.

00:09:29: The attempt to translation is a failure.

00:09:31: but when you ask for any other potential I think also what i read was about the body experience which isn't something that can really be articulated.

00:09:46: in order to share this question then where is the body?

00:09:52: and is it possible then to be in the same place, not necessarily embodying the same emotion but to being an equal presence?

00:10:02: To be with someone.

00:10:03: Not only inexperience but understanding.

00:10:09: I am curious about other ways of inviting somebody into a psychic space And sometimes speech apparently fails.

00:10:18: Yeah, and I think you actually very effectively achieve in a lot of your writing one Of the pleasures.

00:10:23: I've had him preparing for this talk has been reading not only The text for the Berlin review but also the sermons And nude imperative for example Which kind of brings me on to another point?

00:10:34: And i wanted To talk to you specifically Formally about the way that you write because it was Actually as soon As I started to notice the kind of knots and bolts of how You piece these texts together and especially How do through poetic play with things like prepositions or homonym, making transitive verbs intransitive and vice versa.

00:10:56: And what you kind of evoke in that is not only a shift in perspective but also change the dimension.

00:11:03: placement displacement orientation.

00:11:07: I wanted to ask about how do relate with structure material language articulate something like displacement, like emptiness.

00:11:17: Like negativity which in and of itself is perhaps antithetical to the articulation

00:11:23: that an essay would perhaps expect?

00:11:25: I'm not sure i feel like.

00:11:26: for me The mode Of The Essay Is similar To The Mode Of The Poem.

00:11:29: In A Way It Is Going Into That Place Of The Unknown.

00:11:32: it Is a Thinking Process Not The Point Of The Arrival.

00:11:37: And in order to achieve that, you talk about displacement and orientation.

00:11:41: There's so much possibility of what direction it could go in.

00:11:45: but there is also the idea that there is no fixed loyalty to one direction when you choose it.

00:11:51: That to really understand The complexity ,the nuance .The truth Of something Is sometimes to embrace the contradictions.

00:11:59: Init I think that embracing contradiction can seem negative and seems like tension, but it also is a sense of abundance to truly see that the full dimensions are something with an idea or experience.

00:12:13: In thinking about preposition for instance its not conscious choice to work in this way or other ways again discovering what's being articulated you find first preposition say within then think there is some thing else aspect thats outside and then to add that there's also the aspect that is beyond.

00:12:36: And I think when you layer these upon each other, There are meanings not just for yourself but a potentiality of whoever might be reading... The metaphor in Ghosts is very present In this essay especially on the first section because the visitor sounds to see occurred at the middle of Easter weekend.

00:12:56: So i was thinking about being in between between life and death, in that sense not being fixed or limited.

00:13:08: When I think of colonialism or colonization it's something that starts a long time before you but its shadow lingers even though your outside is also inside of it.

00:13:21: But also have this radical idea and self-liberation to be beyond and all of those are happening at the same time, so I think it's also a sense of collapse.

00:13:33: And as much as language tries to clarify an pinpoint something in order to use language for truth sometimes you have to... I don't know sounds like a bad word but destroy the pin point and actually embrace avoid.

00:13:47: instead.

00:13:49: It also opens up through that destruction.

00:13:52: It also makes it possible for forms of identification, which are not based on self sameness and which as Birta and Tobias were talking about earlier like the idea of mid-Gofuren empathy is perhaps not a kind of ethical groundwork.

00:14:04: we need to be working but actually making parallels or not paralleles but accounting for difference.

00:14:11: so thank you for this.

00:14:12: And thinking about empathy again there's dubiousness in what knowledge out of the body, what the body feels and then mind again has to translate but at end day it's one body.

00:14:30: different experiences just like is reflected in conversation or non-conversation with lover as an interlocutor.

00:14:36: that same space differences.

00:14:39: bodies are decoding different kinds knowledge.

00:14:43: The idea we can only come a positive understanding if have singular knowledges.

00:14:47: maybe it's a kind of ideal that will ultimately lead to disappointment.

00:14:54: It is like the fantasy of unison, whereas chaos and cacophony sometimes are where... I don't know just where this truth is.

00:15:05: when you write something like this part of your process is to excise from yourself not really integrated further into yourself but actually to release it.

00:15:15: and in that process then I think becomes something the power of the eye also in a lyric.

00:15:20: It represents speaker, when this speech is delivered on left-to-the other than layers my way seeing your experience and see my experience in you're experience multiplicity.

00:15:35: i don't know if its answer certainly more exciting me telling you how it is.

00:15:43: Yeah,

00:15:44: which I think also kind of... I mean we're talking today about licenses and what's permitted And what certain bodies or certain people have omitted?

00:15:53: You talk about the lover being their country.

00:15:57: They are talking about history in their own country.

00:16:00: In contradistinction to that We have the narrator Yu with their visa Which was only delineated by Faubourton.

00:16:09: And I wanted to put the question of how you perceive poetic license within this and actually poetry, not only in poetry writing as a form itself but also we talked about the sermons on pride that you gave at the Berliner Dorm.

00:16:25: So i wanted ask you maybe not poetry but poetics sit into your experience of morality with life different places?

00:16:38: crux of it for many aspects of my thinking.

00:16:41: The idea that there is a set of rules and way reading this holy text, right?

00:16:46: And then as someone who has been kind banished from inclusion do you have to let go entirely?

00:16:53: or can you read through your own lens what can bring into it?

00:16:58: also not really again tear down but add new meaning encoded in it, but also is already there again because its about who's reading.

00:17:09: And I think for me this was the challenge that i found.

00:17:11: and we said what is forbidden right?

00:17:15: you get a visa and it has a start date, an end date.

00:17:17: And I started my fellowship with the DAD really early in the year.

00:17:22: so My Visa is literally from January first to December thirtieth which was kind of...I don't know almost poetic anyway but inside that's where the possibility to speak at The Berlinadome comes up.

00:17:35: That not listed among the limits actually everything else rather than the limit open for possibilities.

00:17:44: So I think it's important then to embrace the spaces where you can transgress what has existed as a limit.

00:17:50: For me, faith is something like... A big part of the essay is also the outcome of colonization in that dimension of religion and edgier at where i grew up.

00:18:01: And so to find yourself in a place Where You Can Then Contradict That I Think Is A Rich Space.

00:18:08: But The Wealth Of That Is In Questioning The Morality, Questioning What is it to be good?

00:18:14: what does It To Be on the right side of things.

00:18:17: I think with Poetics in general, it expands The idea that...it goes from point A through Point B to C and follows a narrative.

00:18:30: rather than That it actually Is like creating a new shape..to name something or Actually leave Something unnamed but to draw a line around it And say Like everything In here is devoid.

00:18:43: but now we've sort of mapped the outside of it.

00:18:47: And then you know when can cross a line to enter into it, and don't what happens if you do not know where the line is up to your to know went across that should be pushed over the line or feel limited.

00:19:02: stay behind because also question who draws the line?

00:19:07: I think this part was hoping for with sermons is to cross the line somehow, but with an ethos of love and trying to say that there's more on this outskirts of morality.

00:19:27: And it's not just fire or brimstone you know?

00:19:30: That there are more to it... There're love for it.. There' logic in it.

00:19:34: again The same kind of phrasing I use at the Belinda Dome It depends who For some people Going beyond

00:19:43: the fence.

00:19:44: I suppose that kind of brings me to another question That we talked about earlier today and which i've been trying To hone into a proper question as opposed to a kind of rambling set Of thoughts.

00:19:52: so one other things, that you also talk About In this text

00:19:55: is

00:19:56: i mean The line i think Is just feel lonely.

00:19:59: And i Think We Also Talked About The Kind of Structural Material Conditions?

00:20:09: And I wondered, what is this loneliness that you're describing and how does it actually manifest as a condition for your writing?

00:20:15: Uh...I think its fundamentally A new way of experiencing the world which is away from The land i know.

00:20:23: The community i know.

00:20:24: It's not currently so new but still.

00:20:27: I lived in Egera For twenty one years before ever left Then went to US then came to Berlin.

00:20:34: So there was always a lot leaving behind including leaving yourself behind, and that is lonely.

00:20:42: And then you have situations like this where the rest of your self-you carry with you... ...and try to show someone else.

00:20:51: how could they really understand?

00:20:53: You also need some grace to accept it's not fully legible but I think there was a luxury in that because Potential for a self is relatively infinite.

00:21:06: If you lose aspects of yourself, there's possibility to make new aspects of yourself.

00:21:11: probably gets bit more challenging the older You get and the more concrete or fixed Your sense of Self might be.

00:21:19: but at The end Of the day I think that's part of the luxury in it.

00:21:23: Is this space To find A New Dimension Find A New Language For Yourself.

00:21:30: Relating this specifically to writing a lot of the poems in mental voodoo are written when I lived in Nigeria.

00:21:36: They were very much written from The inside of the predicament that i describe Of being A queer person In Nigeria trying again To articulate This experience, too Anyone who may not share That or for anyone Who might have it but Not Have.

00:21:50: The language Or the space.

00:21:51: to say that out loud But then going Out beyond that Space And Then get into Experience.

00:21:57: What is diaspora?

00:21:59: what Is race, which is quite different depending on where you come from.

00:22:04: Yeah so I would say that in writing and movement and seeing different places...I was studying the US but a lot of newt imperative came when i first traveled to Europe for my research also.

00:22:15: So it's also the complexities.

00:22:17: You can hear about certain experiences or receive consensus what your experience is But then really move through each space at every moment stimuli and to have new questions, new uncertainties about the world is actually useful for me... ...to stay interested.

00:22:37: To have a nude imperative

00:22:39: to follow you know?

00:22:40: And the way in which I kind of understood your writing to be in The Imperative Of It as well.

00:22:44: it's also about listening perhaps also too-the resounding echoes that are Perhaps maybe not as audible as they could be should be but which you also amplify through your writing.

00:22:55: I wondered whether we didn't actually talk about this before, so i'm going to throw out something new.

00:22:59: Okay?

00:23:00: And just wondering how you also interact with other voices within poetry or in writing and whether you see this kind of space there's emptiness that we've been talking a lot as the place where you can come into contact with kind of preceding voices or other existing voices... ...and how that interaction shapes your writing.

00:23:17: I think there is always that interaction!

00:23:19: As a writer I would point too for Sholin comes up From a quote that Benedictus avoid, she's talking about the African art pieces That are currently being for instance stored at The Humboldt Forum and She says that relating the lostness of them to the root Of sound is an idea because they're not where They come from.

00:23:41: No longer produce an echo no longer have something that they resound.

00:23:45: I think this also plays back into the question of directionality And orientation that it's possible, the loss of missing objects is actually resounding something or loses its ability to resound.

00:23:59: And I think also in SAI cited Iranian-American poet Soma Sharif and she talks about the idea of architected privacy To give yourself a privilege for looking on land which doesn't look back.

00:24:13: i'm very fascinated by this idea of the inanimate thing perceive you just as you perceive it

00:24:22: or something like this.

00:24:24: Which is also interesting in the way that you describe loneliness, there's something luxurious.

00:24:28: It's almost as if In a way some people have the means and capacity to build themselves a palace Like actually The emptiness that you described Is kind of huge hall This resounding Hall That grows exponentially As you wish it too And becomes its own Refuge.

00:24:44: I'm aware that we're talking very abstractly about this emptiness, but i

00:24:52: think There's so much that already been pre written for you.

00:25:01: They're so much in language That you just inherit.

00:25:03: but as a poet your instinct is to use language But also remake language, right?

00:25:08: And I feel like you need that empty space.

00:25:11: You need that undefined.

00:25:12: you need to find that little crack where you can say okay iIcan pry this open and see something Not new because that may be an egocentric idea that you are somehow discovering Something like.

00:25:28: if that's not in the general mythos, or what is seen then it's important to also bring that light.

00:25:37: If this can come from so many different forms of art-thoughts language music or just interactions with people but I think you never really.

00:26:03: That

00:26:30: was Miriam Stoney in conversation with Logan February.

00:26:33: You can read the rest of Logan's essay songs to see

00:26:37: at BLNReview.de.

00:26:39: If you enjoyed this conversation please consider subscribing to Berlin Review.

00:26:45: Subscriptions start at just five euros a month at blnreview.de.

00:26:49: slash subscribe.

00:26:52: Our audio producer is Kate and Roberts.

00:26:55: My name's Tobias Halberkorn, editor of Berlin Review.

00:26:58: Thanks for listening.