Reykjavík Grapevine - 02.08.2019, Qupperneq 42

42The Reykjavík Grapevine
Issue 13— 2019
The Books
Come Out
Reykjavík Pride’s QueeReads features
Elías Knörr and more
Words: a rawlings Photo: Art Bicnick
Literary Reading
QueeReads takes place at
Tjarnarbíó on August 9th at 17:00
“We just do this for the par-
t y , ” B j a r n d í s T ó m a s d ó t -
tir laughs. “That ’s a meme.”
Along with Elísabet Thoro-
ddsen, Bjarndís co-organizes
QueeReads, the annual literary
gem of Reykjavík Pride. The mood
is buoyant between the organis-
ers and author Elías Knörr as they
discuss their upcoming event.
“It’s important for queer people
to know what there is to see and
read,” explains Elísabet. “Often you
seek that when you are queer; you
want to mirror yourself. It’s very
important to have a queer event.”
Bjarndís concurs. “As a queer
person, when a l l the book s
come out, you always notice
the queer authors or queer ma-
terials, so you always remem-
ber those because it ref lects
your own reality a bit more.”
QueeReads will feature read-
ings by Anna Stína Gunnars-
dóttir, Ari B. Eggertsson, Elías
Knörr, Guðjón Ragnar Jónasson,
Ragnar Blöndal, and Þorsteinn
Vilhjálmsson. The band Ukulel-
lur will perform, and Samtökin
‘78 will present details of their
book club, which is open to all.
The return of Elías Knörr
The organisers agree on how
much they enjoy having Elías
Knörr as a recurring performer
at QueeReads. A fixture for more
than a decade on Iceland’s liter-
ary scene, Elías excels at queer-
ing the notion of both authorial
identity and what literature can
be through his work as an avant-
garde poet. He is also active as a
translator and plays with artifi-
cial languages. Over the next year,
he will participate with British,
Norwegian, Swedish, and Icelan-
dic LGBTQ+ writers and dancers
in the international project ‘To
write dance and to dance writing.’
For the upcoming QueeReads
appearance, Bjarndís encour-
ages Elías by saying, “There is
no pressure. You have charisma.”
“My charisma didn’t work
in Kópavog ur,” rebuts Elías.
“Yea h, but that ’s because
you had a gimp mask,” Bjarndís
laug h s. T hey a re refer r i n g
to a recent poetry contest in
which Elías won a prize, for
which he performed incognito.
“The idea was like I was the
text, so I didn’t have any face.
When you give the text a context,
it gets a voice.” For QueeReads,
Elías will wear the mask again.
“It’s either that or a garbage bag.
But I have to find a way to be more
comfortable in the garbage bag.”
Passport
“We don’t want to police what
people say or do,” says Bjarndís.
“It’s just the queerness that mat-
ters, either of the author or the
text. We don’t police that either,
you know. ‘Are you queer? Re-
ally? How many women have you
slept with?’ We don’t do that be-
cause that would be weird, right?”
Elísabet extends the joke, “Oh,
you didn’t pass the test,” and
Elías rapidly riffs, “Here, have
my queer passport with every
boundary crossed in society.”
On a serious note, Bjarndís
c o m m e n t s , “ T h e r e ’s a d i -
lemma where authors maybe
don’t want to be identified spe-
ci f ica l ly a s queer authors.”
Elísabet agrees: “Just as authors.”
“That’s a political conversation
that we should have,” Bjarndís
affirms. “But there are differ-
ent opinions on this, of course.”
Encouraging
new writers
The poetry competition affili-
ated with QueeReads—with an
August 1st submission dead-
line—started a couple of years
ago when the organisers noted
that it was harder than they
liked finding queer authors
to perform. “We k new
there had to be people
out there who needed
encou ragement or a
platform,” Bjarndís says.
Elías emphasises the
importance of experi-
menting with language in non-
conventional ways, especially Ice-
landic. “It’s important that when
you are a writer, you are creating
language. With an endangered
language community, like the
Icelandic one, it is people’s duty to
keep on creating language and get
to know their language a little bit
more. Translators and teenagers
are going to be the people to save
the language, if it is to be saved.”
How to be a human
through literature
“Not so many years ago, studies
were made with teenagers before
and after reading, for example,
Harry Potter,” Elías recalls, re-
flecting on the capacity of litera-
ture to grow empathy and toler-
ance in readers. “Their empathy
muscles stretched, and they be-
came more tolerant towards other
people after reading. The word
‘menning’ in Icelandic can be un-
derstood as ‘becoming a person.’
Culture and the act of becoming
a human being is very literal in
Icelandic—mennta, menna.”
Bjarndís also cites a connec-
tion between reading and be-
coming. “Elísabet and I are defi-
nitely both avid readers but for
me, at least, it’s the queer angle
that is super important. And
this is Iceland. We still under-
stand, I hope, the importance of
literature. You learn how to be
a human being by reading.” She
pauses. “That’s another meme.”
They erupt in laughter. The
part y has a lready beg un.
Elías Knörr chose his mask over a garbage bag
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