அவ்ரீனா AVRINA (1992, Tamil Nadu) or (avrina and the invisible ones) are many poets, spirits and voices sharing one body. They write places, beings and times. Obsessed with memories that pervade and evade, often of childhood, avrina’s writing is an ebb and flow characteristic of their desire for the sea. avrina’s story won the Short Fiction / University of Essex International Short Story Prize 2021 and works have been nominated, among others, for the Indiana Review Fiction Prize, the Berlin Writing Prize, and the Desperate Literature Short Fiction Prize.
Their research on feminist media won them the Niedersachsen Wissenschaftspreis 2019 and the Gender Thesis Prize 2020. Years of poetic and academic experience have enabled avrina to create a devoted bardic practice keen on bringing poetic narratives to collective spaces through readings in collaboration with fellow poets, and through literary practices such as their work as Prose Editor for international journal 128Lit. avrina has read at/for Bangalore Literature Festival, Mathrubhumi International Festival of Letters Kerala, Prosanova Hildesheim, Academy of Arts Berlin, the LCB, Poesie Festival Berlin, Lovecrumbs Edinburgh, etc. apart from being published in Sinn und Form, The Bombay Literary Magazine, Stoff aus Luft, Kaalachuvadu, etc.
What brought you to Berlin? Love? World politics? Or was it a coincidence?
I was living in Göttingen for three years pursuing a Masters degree. In the third year, the town felt crowded and I found myself yearning for newer experiences. Several Black & Brown people, especially the queer & trans ones were moving to Berlin looking for their communities and affinities. I found a room in Hasenheide but the Hauptmieter ripped me off, so for a brief 2 months, I abandoned the idea of moving to Berlin and instead moved to Leipzig. During this time, I was shortlisted for the Berlin Writing Prize 2019 and invited for a reading at Lettretage in January 2020 by Reader Berlin. Some doors open on their own, and just like that, I found a room in a queer BPoC WG in Berlin. In January 2020, I arrived in Berlin with many superficial ideas of what I wanted this city to be for me, and what this "me" entails. Five years later, neither are the same as the first time we met.
What do you love about Berlin?
The river, the canals, the foxes that have no fear, the trees that save me, all the tree stumps that remind us who we truly are. All the people I may not have met in my hometown, the homes we've made here. Infrastructures for queer trans support services. My sibling poets, that one place where they make tea like home. The writers and teachers I met here.
The people who eagerly came to listen to my poetry and supported my work in the last 5 years.
What do you miss in Berlin?
Emotional expression, accountability, honesty! It is truly sad that people lack self-respect to such a point that their bar for respect for others is severely low.
A stable continuum--hmm, in private/chosen spheres, I experience such joy but public and administrative spheres are ones where I experience what can only be referred to as "dehumanisation". Hmm, miss being human?
What is your favorite spot in Berlin?
It used to be Lian’s Backufer, but unfortunately the landowner forced them to move. I loved dropping by for a Pecantasche and black tea. In spring, summer and autumn, I'm by the river or under a tree. Wedding has my heart always. The Ring Bahn is oddly comforting on lonely nights when there's just a handful of individuals and the wind is cool.
Would you say you are a different person in Berlin? A different translator? And if yes, in what way?
Definitely! This is a very personal question... I am closeted in many ways in my hometown and here, I feel myself cosplaying other images, crafting new masks. The poet remains the same and this is why I write perhaps -- in poetry, there is no need to be a different person other than the one I am and since poetry is so generous, she also opens a landscape for me to exist in the scattered hangings of my differences, all the different beings blending into my poetic rhythms to give fresh life. My poetry has made a new place for me and I am always there. Safe and sound. In the meantime, what one is in Berlin stays in Berlin!
Which existing literary work do you wish you had written?
Oh no, I have never thought this, though I’ve appreciated several works with my life. Toni Morrison was the only one who could have written Beloved or The Bluest Eye, just as only Kim Hyesoon could have written the Autobiography of Death. I wish to write the work only I can write.
• Resident Fellow 2025, Schloss Wiepersdorf, Germany
• Literature Fellow 2024 (Arbeitsstipendium), Senatsverwaltung für Kultur und Gesellschaftlichen Zusammenhalt, Berlin
• Nominee, CRAFT Short Fiction Prize 2024
• Honourable Mention, Berlin Writing Prize 2022
• Winner, Short Fiction / University of Essex International Short Story Prize 2021
• Artistic Fellow 2021, Asian Performing Artists Lab
• Nominee, Indiana Review Fiction Prize 2021
• Nominee, Desperate Literature Fiction Prize 2021
• Nominee, Radical Art Review Contest 2021
• Nominee, Berlin Writing Prize 2019
• Winner, Wissenschaftspreises Niedersachsen 2019 (Niedersächsische Ministerium für Wissenschaft und Kultur)
• Winner, Gender Thesis Prize 2020 (Göttingen Center for Gender Studies)
• British Council IELTS Scholarship 2013
