Translate anger, then, write joy

Some literatures do not seek to please, just to survive. They write from the margins, the bodies, the working classes, the dissident sexualities, the chosen families. To tell of the violence, but also the desire, the humor, the tenderness, and this obstinate joy, which becomes a way of resisting. For this evening, the Poetry Middays and Les Halles de Schaerbeek invite Noémie Grunenwald, translator, author, publisher, and founder of the publishing house Hystériques & AssociéEs, whose work has contributed for years to circulating feminist, queer, and deeply political texts in the French-speaking space. Translator notably of Dorothy Allison, Noémie thinks of translation as a political gesture: to translate is to choose which voices cross borders, which stories continue to live, which imaginaries become accessible. In dialogue with Manon Didierjean, author and researcher, they will return to the links between literature, representations, domination of bodies, feminist legacies, and queer cultures, but also to the power of writing as a space of emancipation. Because these texts do not only ask to be read but also to be written, the evening will begin with a writing workshop inspired by the proposals of Dorothy Allison, co-organized with Les Midis poetry. To close the evening, we will host an open mic dedicated to the voices that continue to accompany us: those of the lesbian, queer, trans, and feminist poets, novelists, activists, and revolutionaries who have changed our ways of telling the world. An evening to celebrate the legacies that refuse to disappear.