The Beverly Rogers, Carol C. Harter Black Mountain Institute (BMI) will host a performance and reading by “trans, arab-american punk poet-performer cyborg” Andrea Abi-Karam at 7 p.m. on Thursday, March 21 in the Marjorie Barrick Museum of Art.

This program will be moderated by Harrison Nuzzo, an alumnus of the UNLV Creative Writing MFA program. The performance is free with RSVP and open to the public.

Abi-Karam is the author of EXTRATRANSMISSION (Kelsey Street Press, 2019) and with Kay Gabriel, they co-edited We Want It All: An Anthology of Radical Trans Poetics (Nightboat Books, 2020). Their second book, Villainy (Nightboat Books, Sept 2021) reimagines militant collectivity in the wake of the Ghost Ship Fire and the Muslim Ban. 

Abi-Karam discussed their work and upcoming UNLV visit with BMI.  

BMI: You are the co-editor of We Want it All: An Anthology of Radical Trans Poetics. What are some of the defining characteristics of radical trans poetics?

Andrea Abi-Karam: The sort of generational trans poetics that I'm really excited about is poetry that continues to resist academic and canonical poetry and forms. I usually try to avoid using the word “experimental” because it tends to be a very white category, so I’m thinking about work that trans writers do that is not typical.

Because I believe that writers and trans people exist in large communities and writing the poem is a singular act, it's connected to the social and political context in which we write. I think trans writers do this especially well, addressing the fact of social and political connectivity that we exist in, we live in, we write in, in the work itself, and what that can just look like: poems that don't look like poems or poems that break formal canonical rules. And we take joy breaking those rules.

BMI: What are some of the clichés of “trans lit” that you wanted to move past in this anthology?

Andrea Abi-Karam: Something that [Kay Gabriel, co-editor] and I noticed in the larger publishing world — thinking more mainstream, more Big 5 publishing universe — is that the types of trans works that were being allowed to enter that market were typically stories of trans pain. And that's something that feels gross to me in particular, because it's a capitalization on trans suffering.

So, we looked for work that is more encompassing in its complexity than only trans suffering. And also, we wanted to go beyond people or writers being defined solely by their transness. So, not wanting tons of poems about hormones. Yes, that's a fact of life for many trans people, but it's not the only part of our lives. We wanted to complicate the way that trans people choose to depict ourselves in literature.

BMI: You describe yourself as a “punk poet-performer cyborg” – can you break down each of those signifiers and how they manifest in your life and work?

Andrea Abi-Karam: Oh my god, one at a time? OK, well, let's see. 

“Punk”: I've played in several punk bands, and like to live my life embodying lots of punk ideals and punk practices. Things like mutual aid, things like sweaty punk shows, stuff like that. 

“Poet”: I think we know what “poet” means here. 

“Performer”: I am really interested in doing performative readings and doing performance work that’s based on language. I have a mix of performance styles, one of them being more performative readings, so things like throwing pages on the ground, playing with volume and intensity and register of voice, maybe having some sort of outfit element to add to the reading. And then performances that include more dramatic gestures. I’ve done a number of performances where I staple myself on stage while reading. I did a performance for World Aids Day in 2019, where I did some self-piercing on stage and a lot of my performances in the present incorporate use of projection and visuals. Language is the anchor for the performances. 

“Cyborg”: I stopped using the nonbinary category for myself; I more think of myself as a trans cyborg. I like a lot of technological makeup, using eyeliner to draw wires on my face, and things like that. I really enjoy people not being able to read me, and so I lean into that a lot in my daily life and also when I’m presenting myself on stage for a reading or performance.

BMI: How did you discover punk and performance in general?

Andrea Abi-Karam: I first discovered punk when I went to college in Boston. I was like, OK, I'm interested in DIY spaces and DIY shows, but the only things I'm seeing are “bro bands,” men screaming and holding instruments, and that was kind of it. Very bro-y place Boston, but the Bay Area is not; it has an amazing, huge queer punk scene. I had always wanted to be in a band and I was like, oh, I don't know if I can play the guitar well enough to be in a band, but the thing about punk is you don't really need to know how to play your instruments. 

One of my early poetry friends, Andrea Marina, we started a reading series called Words of Resistance, which was an open floor reading series for QTPOC people. We did monthly for five years, and it was always a fundraiser for local political prisoners’ commissary funds. We did that at various DIY spaces, or people's houses in Oakland, and every Valentine's Day we turned it into a punk show. One of those nights was the first time I played with my band FACEPLANT.

BMI: One of the themes in your poetry collection, Villainy, is collective desire. How do you see desire functioning between the poet, the book, and the reader?

Andrea Abi-Karam: When thinking about how a reader is involved in the experience of writing, or reading a book, or how the audience is involved in the experience of a performance, I do see it as a participatory experience, and I found my way to that thinking through being a huge fan of Cecilia Vicuña’s work and the way that she thinks about performances. That they can't exist without an audience, and as being very spontaneous, and how they build together.

Obviously, a book is a little bit of a different experience because it's a solid object. I think in Villainy especially, and for me in general, queer desire and trans desire is a very important element of my life and my writing. There’s a weird prudishness to people in the U.S. in general, or U.S. culture.

And so, in some ways, it's a resistance to that, for lack of a better term, hetero-patriarchal prudishness that we are plagued with in the U.S. Resistance, celebration, and revelry, which is something that is very present in Villainy, where queer desire serves as an antidote, or an attempted antidote at least, for grief and loss.

My hope is that maybe the reader is turned on and also disturbed and also thinks about how desire functions in their own life, and if they have enough of it. And if they don't, hopefully it inspires them to seek it out.

Oona Robertson, a graduate assistant in UNLV's Department of English, contributed to this article.

About Black Mountain Institute

Black Mountain Institute at UNLV champions writers and storytellers through programs, fellowships, and community engagement. From the brightest spot on the planet, BMI amplifies writing and artistic expression to connect us to each other in the Las Vegas Valley, the Southwest, and beyond. For more information, visit the BMI website.