Nat Raha’s poetry explores transfeminist abolitionist ethics towards a better world. It rejects traditional forms and syntaxes in every way – embracing a vocal language made up of breath and pauses shown as punctuation on the page.
from [9×9]
[5]
grrrl // if we are citizens
of nowhere, a threat to the tone &
image;;composed / lace cute
we divine femmes no here to dissect
your impositions >> bark organs
so late in the day, directions
on casual violence: if your pleasure
excruciate living / &
the beauty about our eyelines
I found her lecture really inspiring. As a trans-feminine person, it was very inspiring to see an academic talk about transfemme experiences, transfeminist poetics and what it means to explore existing in a marginalised body through art. The way in which Nat works with sound was very inspiring to my own practice, particularly the piece I was making at the time about trans feminine voice/noise for the Audio Fundamentals unit.
With a soundtrack of Bikini Kill and Sonic Youth, Nat Raha’s poetry feels like red lipstick stained on teeth. Her work explored not only trans-feminine liberation, but all forms of justice, as they are interconnected. It is also an example of a partially sound-based practice which is not necessarily sound-realised, and may happen on the page or in the form of live performance which uses audio technology like live looping.
Nat’s work and way with words just resonates very strongly, and inspire me to weave in my ideas of resistance and radical politics within my art. To refuse to be read, refuse to be categorised, refuse legibility and perform a different score: a queer score, one that is messy and bone-tired, full of love and error. Imagining a new world free from genocide and mass-violence, pushing toward a paradigm shift and a new, radical transfemme reality.