Friday, September 23, 2011

The Festival

Last Saturday was the day filled with beauty and warmth, words whispered and shouted, poets of the page and great performers. We worked in 4 languages and the audience got it. We had a great crowd, appreciative and warm. We found help for letting people in, for the bar, for a bookstand of the authors. There was a table  of the writers in prison comittee and a Free Leonard Peltier flag. The poets who were featured alone read well and the groups that created a performance created a ballance that ballanced and lead to enjoyment and thoughtfulness. The anti war and pro peace section was an imposing statement in its beauty and strength.

The next day two of our invited  poets- devorah major and Olivier Cousin- were invited to another literature festival. They didn't think about the translation, so we had to pick up the slack of others, which we gladly did for our two poet friends. And then  on monday night there was a small Barbershop reading which probably will evolve into something bigger. Devorah enjoyed the old countryside hotel, near the Rhine and we filmed her speaking, performing some poems. Then  The next day we dropped her of  at the airport and she is now in Sarajevo at a Festival.
You'll find the slideshow and many more items at world-internet-books.com

Now the administative stuff has to be taken care of and the books with the great poetry in several languages have to be produced.

Susan Birkeland was honored end remembered... Her poem was read by Fred Schywek and myself in 
German and Dutch.