By Patrick Dobyns, Editor
The last day of March marked the International Transgender Day of Visibility. So, to celebrate this event and kick off National Poetry Month, English Professor Deborah Bernhardt organized a small poetry read/lunch event on Hardin Valley campus. Or, at least, she would have, if the day had not also been the first day of the spring rain.
Let’s try that again, shall we?
On the second of April, Professor Bernhardt hosted a small event to celebrate a belated Trans Day of Visibility and kick off National Poetry Month. With no advertisement save for a notice that was sent out to staff, we managed to find our way there easily enough.
I walked up to members of the Pride Club hanging up a few Transgender flags from the trees at the Bagwell Building’s Patio, and an IKEA Blåhaj resting on a table. Two books were also provided for those who didn’t have any poetry to read themselves: We Want it All, an Anthology of Radical Trans Poetics, edited by Andrea Abi-Karam and Kay Gabriel, and Troubling the Line, Trans and Genderqueer Poetry and Poetics, edited by T.C. Tolbert and Trace Peterson.
There wasn’t much to mark the event’s beginning at eleven, aside from a few people showing up, including one person that brought a sandwich bag filled with free stickers for almost every LGBTQ+ group, which I happily grabbed from. A few minutes later, Prof. Bernhardt opened a laptop and played a pre-recorded video of a transgender poetry reading; this event was largely a social gathering more than anything else—small and simple.
Some miscellaneous noteworthy occurrences included a debate on where exactly to place the Blåhaj, the hanging of a Curaçao flag leftover from another event, and a stiff breeze scattering the aforementioned stickers that were laid out.
While it might seem a shame that the event had not been more thoroughly advertised, I think that it ultimately benefited from the small attendance; it felt more intimate and lighthearted than most larger events, and the overall vibe was one of relaxation. Even more importantly, it exposed myself and others to the wealth of trans literature that exists, which often gets overlooked; I will definitely be picking up those books again.
