My Smutty Valentine and the Poetics of Smut with Anchoress Syndicate

Arts

Feb 24

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Only a couple days after Valentine’s Day, over one hundred art enthusiasts and queer lovers gathered on a Zoom call and strapped in for an evening of performance, poetry, original music, and smut at the fourth annual ‘My Smutty Valentine’.

The virtual event was created and curated by Anchoress Syndicate, who describes themselves as

PLATONIC AMOROUS THROUPLE ISO:

HOT & MEANINGFUL CONNECTIONS IN THE DEPTHS OF CYBERSPACE

RAW UNFILTERED RAUNCH

VIRTUAL PLEASURE PALACES

EROTIC TRANSVALUATIONS

SMUT FOR THE REDISTRIBUTION OF CARE BEYOND THE NUCLEAR FAMILY

NETWORKS OF QUEER KINSHIP IN THE FACE OF HETERNORMATIVE HEGEMONIES

It was in this spirit that I tuned into a joyous night of queer liberation, communal experience, and hot digital content created by all-queer writers and performers. Among the virtual work included this year was an ASMR video spoken to houseplants that was the stuff wet dreams are made of. There was a clairvoyant gloryhole witch with the voice of a hypnotic nightclub crooner. Sound artists mapped the body through touch and virtual stimulation. Ice cream was put in mouth-watering and compromising places.

This was the poetry of sexual deviance, the crafted voices of dirty sex. It was an evening spent in debauchery and splendor. The Zoom chat was alive with praises and playful flirtation. Cruising was encouraged. We were allowed to be horny art viewers in a safe and fun environment. It was the kind of performance art show that makes you crave a cigarette afterward.

‘My Smutty Valentine’ erased, for a moment, the hetero-normative lens that sees our community’s sex as perversion. In the judging eyes of the patriarchy, what our bodies do is not art. Our bodies themselves are demonized, their gaze deems our holding hands as not family-friendly, touching each other in public as an act against common decency.

Here is the importance of Anchoress Syndicate’s mission. When queer sex is removed from the realm of the wicked, it becomes an act of raw expression, our wild spirits in motion. Anchoress Syndicate curated an evening free of shame, a world where the word taboo has no power. We observe what it looks like for our desires to get untidy, wild, a muddy pet off its leash.

“Our cruising is citational--what are the histories of touch, care, and intimate encounter that serve as hauntological guides for innumerable undergrounds, back alleys, and bathhouses?

Our cruising is also against precedent--how do we imagine other ways of being with and together, without requisite reliance on already institutionalized forms that we know fail us, that we know we cannot delight in? How do we begin to rearticulate the contours of our desires, intimacies, and sexual publics and perversions?”

Anchoress Syndicate’s events celebrate queer sex as much as it opens up critical dialogue for overlooked sexual expression in art. Engagement with the idea of queer sex on this level feels crucial for queer people to see themselves and their sexual lives as meaningful.

Anchoress Syndicate continues the conversation of how to talk about queer sex in art through their program Dis/Course 1: My Smutty Valentine: Queer Kinships and the Poetics of Smut with Anchoress Syndicate. Hosted virtually by The Poetry Project, Anchoress Syndicate will use this platform to create an educational syllabus of critical writing, performance and poetry on the subject of queer smut, porn, and erotics across genres.

“Together we will talk and write into the messy, the transgressive, and the smutty by exploring the techniques, experimentations, and legacies of artists such as Samuel Delany, Kay Gabriel, Cheryl Dunye, Sam Ace, Essex Hemphill, r. erica doyle, Lou Sullivan, Jean Genet, David Wojnarowicz, Dennis Cooper, Lucas di Lima, José Muñoz, and Pat Califia.”

This talk and its wealth of educational resources will be a primer for queer thinkers and artists into the rich world of language and performance surrounding sex. As an art-consumer, as an advocate for sex-positive practices, this is a must-watch program. Take a peak, indulge yourself, and feel free to get aroused.

For more information and to register for Dis/Course 1: My Smutty Valentine: Queer Kinships and the Poetics of Smut with Anchoress Syndicate, click here.

Each Dis/Course meeting is free and open and meets virtually on Zoom. Participants are invited to RSVP in advance to receive a packet of readings and other material to begin the conversation. Reading in advance, however, is not required, nor is any particular education background or expertise. Come, talk about poetry and possibility, teach, learn, share, and connect more deeply with The Poetry Project community.

The Anchoress Syndicate is a queer poetry and performance collective comprised of Gia Gonzales, Kamikaze Jones, and Becca Teich. They are the curators and hosts of events such as the annual My Smutty Valentine, a smut xxxtravaganza; Pink Noise, a series of experimental sound art concerts; and, with Nightboat Books, a marathon reading of The Faggots and Their Friends Between Revolutions.

Their debauched and unblushing events incorporate text, performance, and installations that foreground the transgressive, the excessive, and the obscene, while honoring underground queer histories, cultivating DIY community, and prioritizing mutual aid.

Cruise them on Instagram at @anchoress.syndicate and Twitter at @anchoress_syndi

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Nicholas Goodly is an Atlanta-based poet and the writing editor of Wussy Magazine.

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