Alara Adilow
(1988) is a Dutch poet and writer of Somali origin. Her poetry collection Mythen en stoplichten (Myths and Traffic Lights, 2022) was one of the most striking debuts of recent years. 'A daunting debut' said the jury who awarded her collection with the Herman de Coninckprijs, the most important Flemish award for Dutch language poetry. "If the body doesn't fit the language, adapt the language - I see that simple and effective reversal in Myths and Traffic Lights," wrote Obe Alkema in the Dutch national newspaper NRC. She has published poetry in Dutch literary publications, was part of the NOORDWOORD Poetry Talent Programme, is a guest writer at nY and works on her first novel Kijk es naar al dit licht (Look at all this light), to be published in 2025.
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Trans, Writing, Joy
Challenge your perception of Femininity and Masculinity and join us! This program is a celebration of Gender, Literature and Creative Energy.
Alvina Chamberland and Alara Adilow will read from their work and speak with Alejandra Ortiz about in what way these concepts define their work and their lives. After the conversation the venue will be turned into a Room of Joy, with music, dance and celebration of everyone's uniqueness featuring poet and spoken word-artist Zaïre Krieger, performer Patri Roa Johansen and DJ Shari Jae. Feel free to dance along!
Alara Adilow is a Dutch poet and writer of Somali origin. Her poetry collection Mythen en stoplichten (Myths and Traffic Lights, 2022) was one of the most striking debuts of recent years. She has published poetry in Dutch literary publications, and works on her first novel Kijk es naar al dit licht (Look at all this light), to be published in 2025.
Alvina Chamberland is a Swedish-American author of predominantly literary autofiction novels, residing between Athens and Berlin. Through poetic prose, sharp social commentary and self-deprecating gallows humor her novel and English language debut Love the World or Get Killed Trying (2024) dives into the mind of Alvina, a trans woman on the eve of turning 30.
Zaïre Krieger is a poet, spoken word artist, activist, journalist and translator. Her performances are layered, rhythmic and sincere. She translated the poem The Hill We Climb recited by Amanda Gorman during Joe Biden's inauguration into Dutch. In 2025, Krieger's bilingual poetry collection Chameleon will be published, about creating your own place to feel at home and allowing yourself to be multidimensional.
Alejandra Ortiz is a trans woman refugee from Mexico who fled transphobia and violence. In The Netherlands she works toward a better life for trans persons, and especially for trans persons of colour -- with or without papers. Ortiz wrote the autobiographical De waarheid zal me bevrijden (The Truth Will Free Me, 2022) about her youth, her life as a transgender woman, and her quest for a safe place to be herself.
Patri Roa Johansen is a Colombian transman who grew up in Denmark and now lives in the Netherlands. He was a host of the weekly Latin T-Huis café in Amsterdam, now he still helps out occasionally when he has time. He is also part of Papaya Kuir, a collective of Trans/Queer Latinx asylum seekers and artists in the Netherlands. He is a great musician, or performs as Drag King and dj.
Shari Jae has been the driving force of the T-Huis (Transhuis) in Amsterdam, a safe space for trans people in Amsterdam's Red Light District, since its inception. In 2024, she took a festive leave as coordinator. She remains committed to the target group. As a baby, she arrived in the Netherlands in the late 1960s from Biafra (now Nigeria), where a civil war was raging at the time. Growing up with foster parents, she never saw the effects of polio as an obstacle. When she was in her 40s, she made her gender transition. She has been an ambassador for Pride Amsterdam since 2021.
Trans, Writing, Joy is curated for Writers Unlimited Festival 2025 by Alejandra Ortiz and Shantie Singh.
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De grondstof van het gedicht (The raw material of poems)
With: Alara Adilow, Asha Karami, Caro Derkx, Dean Bowen, Irina Baldini, Johan van Dijke, Maarten van der Graaff, Marieke Lucas Rijneveld, Martin Rombouts, Marwin Vos, Maxime Garcia Diaz, Mustafa Stitou, Willie Darktrousers
For the closing event of the 2023 Winternachten festival, poets and artists seeked out the raw material of poems. How do the violence of resource extraction, the destruction of lives and worlds, and the depletion of Earth become audible and palpable in language? What are poems made of: can they, too, plunder and harm?
De grondstof van het gedicht (The raw material of poems) was a Dutch-language event with familiar and new voices, unexpected performances, dance, music and images.
Anyone who opens a children's book about a farm does not see hyper-modern, destructive industry, but lovely scenes. This obfuscation of reality, according to British zoologist, author and activist George Monbiot, is due to persistent images about our dealings with animals and land, borrowed from poetry. "One of the greatest threats to life on Earth is poetry," he wrote provocatively.
Yet the plundering of Earth has indeed made its way into modern poetry. In the poem Sinaasappel, bitter je schil (Orange, bitter your peel) by Surinamese poet Michaël Slory, the minerals themselves bear witness to that history:
'Op Afobaka wil ik zijn
als de arbeiders staken,
de morgen zich boort
in de papaya,
het bauxiet woedend zingt
over zoveel misbruik,
zoveel leugens
zoveel misleiding.'("On Afobaka I want to be
when the workers strike,
the morning drills itself
into the papaya,
the bauxite sings furiously
about so much abuse,
so many lies
so much deception.")Bookstore De Vries van Stockum will be present in the lobby with a stand offering books by participating authors of this programme, among others — including signing opportunities!
De grondstof van het gedicht was curated by poet and writer Maarten van der Graaff.
