LOGAN FEBRUARY »LARGE LANGUAGE: AN AFRO-QUEER HALLUCINATION«

Logan February, born in 1999 in Anambra, Nigeria, is a non-binary poet, essayist, singer, songwriter and LGBTQ activist and is currently something of a star of the post- and decolonial poetry scene. In addition to publications in literary journals, three chapbooks - "How to Cook a Ghost" (2017), "Painted Blue with Saltwater" (2018), "Garlands" (2019) - and the poetry collection "In the Nude" (2019) as well as the bilingual (English/German) "Mental Voodoo" (2024; German by Christian Filips) have been published to date, as well as translations into Spanish, Italian and Dutch. In 2020, Logan February was awarded the Future Awards Africa Prize for Literature. February was a fellow at the LCB, DAAD Artists-in-Residence Program, Humboldt Forum and Literaturhaus Wien, among others.

As the opening event of the conference Temporalities and Power: Oppression, Resistance, Justice at the University of Bonn, Logan February will give the lecture performance "Large Language: An Afro-Queer Hallucination" specially developed for the topic and then read poems from the volume "Mental Voodoo". In her poetic practice of mental voodoo, pre-colonial, gender-fluid West African traditions meet the queer discourses of our present and create completely new forms of analogy magic.

In cooperation with the DFG Graduate School of Contemporary Literature at the University of Bonn and the Bonn City Library.