Poetry Debate

During this program, we invite poets to tell us how they really feel. We put five of our festival poets to the test and present them with sweeping statements about poetry. Is end rhyme something that deserves greater appreciation? And what about prose poetry? During the poetry debate, the poets will defend their positions regarding the statements.

Sigbjørn Skåden is a Sámi writer, translator, editor, cultural worker and poet residing in Tromsø. 
He writes within the Sámi tradition and concerns himself with the preservation and the description of the Sámi culture, as the Sámi people have been pressured to assimilate to Norwegian culture for a long time. He wittily handles this topic in his sometimes timeless but inevitably modern epics. He writes in Sámi and Norwegian, sometimes making use of other languages, such as French and German. 
Skåden’s debut poetry collection and first publication Skuovvadeddjiid gonagas (2004) was nominated for the Nordic Council Literature Prize and was translated into English (The King of Shoemakers). His latest novel Fugl (2019) has been called the first Sámi science fiction novel and has been described by the author himself as his most Sámi work yet. Furthermore, Skåden has received the Havmann Award and has been nominated for the Norwegian Broadcasting Listeners’ Award. Skåden has been the Young Artist Of the Year at Riddu Riđđu indigenous festival and the prologue writer for the Arctic Arts Festival. He also writes children’s books, as well as scripts for the stage and art installation projects. 

Iva Damjanovski is a Macedonian poet and musician. 
Her poetry is written with surgical precision. Every sound and every silence are well-calculated, giving every meticulously chosen word a dense richness of meaning. In Damjanovski’s poems, one can sense anger at and disappointment in the world and its injustices, as well as a certain helplessness in regard to bringing about change. Nonetheless, she strives to withstand the chaos with subtle humor, sour-sweet irony and a discreet smile. 
Having graduated from the Piano Performance program at the Ss. Cyril and Methodius University of Skopje, Damjanovski continues to study at the Master’s of Musicology Program of the Free University of Bolzano. As a musician, she has appeared on international stages, among which are several festivals in Italy and the Macedonian Philharmonic concert program. She performs as a solo pianist and thereminist as well as part of the experimental duo Alembic. Additionally, she composes music for film and theater.
She has written three poetry books. Her first book, Тие (2017) won the Igor Isakovski Award for best debut poetry book by a young author. She was awarded the prestigious Brothers Miladinovci Award for her second poetry book Двоумење (2020). Her poetry has been translated into many languages, some of which are English, Serbian, Irish and Bengali. 

One of the most talented poets of his generation writing in Dutch, Alfred Schaffer debuted in 2000 with the collection Zijn opkomst in de voorstad (His Rise in the Suburbs). His second book, Dwaalgasten (Vagrants; 2002) was nominated for the VSB prize. After that came Geen hand voor ogen (No Hands Before Your Eyes), Schuim (Foam; 2006) and Kooi (Cage; 2008), Mens dier ding (2014) en Postuum. Een lofzang (2016). After winning the Jo Peters poetry prize for his first collection, he was nominated for the C.Buddingh prize and went on to win the Hugues C. Pernath prize, the Ida Gerhardt poetry prize and the Jan Campert prize. Alfred Schaffer has been awarded the Herman de Coninckprijs for his collection Wie was ik, strafregels and the prestigious P.C. Hooft Prize 2021 for his poetry oeuvre.

Samira Negrouche was born in 1980 in Algiers, where she still lives. She is a poet, editor and translator – from Arabic to French –  who trained as a doctor, but who has chosen her writing and literary projects over the practice of medicine for several years. She has frequently collaborated with visual artists and musicians.  Her books include: A l’ombre de Grenade (2003), Le Jazz des oliviers (2010) and Six arbres de fortune autour de ma baignoire (2017) and Quai 2/1 : Partition à trois axes (2019) that grew from a performance with a violinist and a theorbist. There is great variety in Samira’s work, from the lyrical to the narrative, wry analyses of human interaction juxtaposed with the painterly, and ekphrastic, with the temptation of abstraction.
'Six Arbres de fortune autour de ma baignoire' (Six makeshift trees around my bathtub) is the title poem of a book consisting of seven sequences, often poems that reflect or obliquely reference sculptural and pictorial installations, or musical compositions, as well as the landscape that continually renews her imagination. The sequence here depends on images, juxtaposes and eludes them: cartoons, Orthodox icons, rock paintings in the Hoggar mountains of Algeria, astronomy, a contemporary cityscape – and exemplifies the verbal legerdemain with which she observes and presents her world to us.

Francis Broekhuijsen (Oosterbeek, 1970) is a presenter, program maker, actor and voice-over specializing in music, literature, art and culture. After studying at the Toneelschool Amsterdam, he performed in productions by Het Toneel Speelt, Toneelgroep Amsterdam, RO Theater and De Trust, among others, and is a member of the permanent ensemble of the Nationale Toneel. Francis has been a presenter at AT5, editor-in-chief of Cultuurpodium.nl and a radio producer at KRO on NPO Radio 1, RedBull Music Academy and 40Up Radio, among others. Chosen as a media personality in De Kleurrijke Top 100 in 2014, he voices audiobooks. For example, his version of Grand Hotel Europa by Ilja Leonard Pfeijffer made it to the shortlist of the 2019 Storytel Award for Best Audiobook.   
He works as editor, programmer and presenter for the international literature festival Writers Unlimited in The Hague and Meet Me At The Lighthouse on Schiermonnikoog. Until last year he presented on the national radio station Sublime, among other things, the daily Sublime Morning show Sublime Sunrise, the Instagram poetry program Sublime Smooth and the most relaxed evening show in the Netherlands The Sublime Experience. With pleasure, he is again a presenter and moderator during Poetry International to connect poets and visitors, with his characteristic cheerful uplifting and deepening method.