The Litteraturhuset in Oslo has a total of two queer events on Wednesday 3 April. First, the British poet Andrew McMillan will give a lecture. Then there will be a conversation between McMillan and the award-winning Danish author and psychologist Glenn Bech, led by Kristofer Folkhammar.
The conversation has been titled “Gender, class and betrayal”, and will, among other things, be about poverty, class and toxic gender roles.
Glenn Bech was born into a working-class family in the small town of Horsens in East Jutland in 1991. 30 years later, he published his debut novel “Farskibet”, which is about class, masculinity and his father’s suicide, among other things.
” Queer doesn’t talk about class
Glenn Bech wants to destroy the mood of the queer, urban middle class. – The problem is that we don’t talk about class. At some point an idea arose that we were all in the same boat, and then we pretended it was true.
The following year, the manifesto “I no longer recognize your authority” was published in the home country. This winter, both books came out in Norwegian translation.
In the manifesto, he comes out hard against both the homophobia he experienced growing up, and privileged attitudes in his new environment of left-wing radical queers from the middle class. When Blikk met him last year, he said, among other things, that:
“The hope is that class consciousness can mobilize across identities, skin colour, gender, all that. See that there is actually a common struggle out there.”
Andrew McMillan is considered one of Britain’s leading poets. The debut “Physical”, (re-poemed by Torgeir Schjerven with the title “fysisk”), from 2015, received several awards.
Sverre Breivik, better known as the artist Metteson, created a stage version of this and the subsequent poetry collection “Playtime” (2018) at Den Nasjonale Scene in Bergen in 2021.
Breivik told Blikk that he was completely blown away, moved and absorbed when he first read the collections: “I had come out of the bookstore with two diaries that I had written myself. The diaries have indeed been proofread by McMillan and showered with his life wisdom, but there are still thoughts, experiences and worries that I have had myself.”
In the personal lecture “100 queer poems”, McMillan will reflect on the category of “queer poetry” and the process and challenges of creating a new canon. He will also highlight some of the poets in the anthology, and talk about what their poetry means to him.
While, in conversation with Bech, he deals with class. His recent novel “Pity” (published in Norwegian with the title “Synd”) is about male sexuality and identity in the English working-class town of Yorkshire.
Both authors write tenderly about the working class. Together they will talk about homosexuality and masculinity from a class perspective and in what ways one is exposed as both queer and poor.
The lecture “100 queer poems” takes place at 18 at Litteraturhuset in Oslo, 3 April. The panel discussion “Gender, class and betrayal” begins at 19.30, same place.
