Interculturalism made easy and fun thanks to poetry

Fatena Al Ghorra is a star. She writes well and performs well and binds people to her across cultural differences. So she organized a well attended evening in the Stadsmagazijn. People read in Arabic with translation, read in English and in Dutch. Current PEN-Flanders president Joke Van Leeuwen read from her book Four ways of waiting. A lot of people from the cultural scene were present, mainly those working with learning the language and showing newly arrived refugees the way through the long corridors of the institutions, helping to get their papers in order. The poetry was great and so was the music. The sitar player choose popular tunes which all the Arab speaking crowd joining in and singing along.The amount of food was spectacular, three women had cooked all day, thinking about dishes that were vegetarian, nice salads, rice with chicken. All that with the specific spices of North Africa. It all was tasty and cozy. Cake and falafel, home made hummus, it was all there to be tasted.

Her book 'Gods Bedrog' is a bilingual edition: Arabic and Dutch, published by Uitgeverij P.

Sequenza: afterthoughts

With a book title like Sequenza it was to be expected that the presentation would equal a musical orgy for the crowd of lovers of Marleen de Crée's poetry. Of course we had the symbolic empty chair for Liu Xiaobo, Nobel laureate for Literature still in a Chinese jail. Such a symbolic gesture is something we try to do for different writers when they are in prison for using their freedom of expression. The surprise for me was Vlad Weverbergh in the moving, masterly way he performed Sequenza IXa by Berio. Not easy music, but listening made easy by the clarinetist. Marleen and I read her formidable poetry: she in Dutch and I in English. Frank De Vos, our den Hopsack troubadour, offered a moving new song: Waving at 12b, conceived in the room his mother was slowly leaving this world in. The friends and fans of Marleen were a great audience, listened very attentively and afterwards even spoke about the differences between languages, loyalty to the original, rhythms... And then the party started and a good time was had by all. Yesterday the first poem of the book, today the last in both languages:

over de bruggen schuift
de schaduw voor ons uit.
wij kunnen hem niet horen.
hij snijdt tot op het been.
we slaan de armen om het kind.
het hinkelt in de sterren
als waren wij nog niet geboren.
we leggen onze stemmen neer
voor het licht de ogen sluit.
onder de bruggen stroomt het lied,
slingert het in zachte plooien,
zingt, huivert en fluistert weer
in schaduwen die ons niet
toebehoren. daar zijn we samen
daar gingen we heen.
* 

over  the bridges glides

the shadow before us.

we cannot hear it.

it cuts to the bone.

we put our arms around the child.

it plays hopscotch in the stars

as if we hadn’t been born yet.

we lay down our voices

before the light closes the eyes.

under bridges flows the song,

meanders in soft folds,

sings, shivers and whispers again

in shadows which don’t belong

to us. there we are together

that is where we were going.

poetry in translation and life - Live

During the last week I have been translating poetry by Rose Vandewalle., by Sinzo Aanza., proofreading a Dutch - German translation by Annie Reniers, so keeping  up the blog was on the back burner. Too many words, too many languages, all the layers of meaning and the possibilities.... Yet tomorrow in Brussels I will be closing a European poetry reading. The theme is multi-linguism. All poets will be reading in their own language and some will also read translations. Since in Traces/Sporen, produced by world-internet-books. I wrote part of the poetry in Dutch and part in English the organizer wanted to talk about about writing in two languages. The interview at the start will be in French, she will read the Dutch poems she has chosen from the book and I will read in English. It is exciting and I look forward to this evening. I am curious about the other poets, the other languages and how the atmosphere will be. The reading starts at 7 30 pm: Oudergemlaan 63, 1040 Brussels (Bureau de Liaison Europe-Brussels, Belgium).  May be we'll meet there.