Sappho

"Frankly I wish I were dead
When she left, she wept
a great deal; she said to me,
This parting must be
endured, Sappho. I go unwillingly.
while no voices chanted
choruses without ours,
no woodlot bloomed in spring without song..."
~Sappho~

The above poem is by Sappho the legendary poet from the isle of Lesbos. One of the first documented lesbian women in literary history. Taking cue from her name, we have the Kolkata based organisation Sappho for Equality where i have recently begun my second internship. Sappho primarily works with lesbian women while its other wing which is called SFE (where i am working) allows people irrespective of their gender and sexual preference to join and help in creating the Queer space and identity without the voice being isolated. Its a great space for opening up Queer dialogues with the general heteronormative crowd.

The issue of marginalised sexualities has been plaguing the South Asian diaspora especially India with recurring incidents of homophobia related atrocities in the recent times. Research and study in this field has started a synergistic relationship with the intellectual community. Taking this idea forward Sappho has organised an All India Queer Conference called 'Queer Thoughts'

Queer Thoughts is envisaged as a two-day conference divided into four sessions. Each session would have a distinct key theme and 2/3 papers on each theme will be presented in the sessions.

The four key themes are:

1. Defining queer (how to define the term queer, who is a queer, socio-political and gender-sexual understanding of queer)
2. Living queer (living as a queer in this country, queer experiences, triumph and turbulence of queer existence)
3. Expressing queer (queer as a theme expressed though literature, film, theater, painting, sculpture or any other art form)
4. Politicizing queer (emergence of queer politics, queer as a political identity, queer rights movement and its politics)

My first assignment with Sappho will helping them in the organisation of this Conference. At the moment we are looking at abstracts and scouting for venues. After attending so many conferences this will be the first time i will be behind the scenes and the work looks grueling and interesting. I will post more later. But for now if you are interested to submit an abstract for this seminar do mail it to sappho1999@rediffmail.com or sapphoqueerconference@gmail.com