Article
Politics, poetry and the personal
El Estético?
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June 15, 2012
Freedom of speech is a key point the festival addresses each year. Much is made of poets visiting from oppressive regimes. This year’s Mexican poet was unable to attend because of an asylum application – it made the news. As long as I’ve been attending (and further back in the festival’s history as well) there has been a balance of political and ‘aesthetic’ poetry at the festival.
This year there’s a Palestine poet who writes about freedom of movement and identity, there are poets of mixed origin like the Pakistani/British Sascha Aurora Ahktar (a citizen of the world) or Tunisian/French Hédi Kaddour, and there are poets writing from the margins: Mauritius, Galicia, Slovenia and Armenia are all represented. Politics is there lurking in the background whatever the cultural tradition the poet writes within.
As counter-argument, Bas offered up the Western equivalent. In the words of Gerrit Komrij, “Political poetry is always bad poetry, good poetry is always political.” I’m not sure I agree. I’d like to argue that poetry is always personal, the degree of political engagement depending on the cards life has dealt you.
According to director Bas Kwakman, the Colombians that PIF work with as part of the newly formed World Poetry Movement have nicknamed the festival ‘el estético’. The intended insult is presumably a joke but it points to a radical difference in outlook. Colombian poetry is almost always political (when it isn’t erotic) and the same goes for much of the poetry I have read from developing countries. Apolitical poetry is a Western luxury some might say. Westerners have time to sit around watching the rain, the sea, the hills, the birds.
Poetry becomes political when the political becomes personal. If you live with war, violence, terrorism, rape, a lack of human rights on a daily basis it is bound to enter your writing. You need a voice, a conduit, a means of expression. And you need to get political.Freedom of speech is a key point the festival addresses each year. Much is made of poets visiting from oppressive regimes. This year’s Mexican poet was unable to attend because of an asylum application – it made the news. As long as I’ve been attending (and further back in the festival’s history as well) there has been a balance of political and ‘aesthetic’ poetry at the festival.
This year there’s a Palestine poet who writes about freedom of movement and identity, there are poets of mixed origin like the Pakistani/British Sascha Aurora Ahktar (a citizen of the world) or Tunisian/French Hédi Kaddour, and there are poets writing from the margins: Mauritius, Galicia, Slovenia and Armenia are all represented. Politics is there lurking in the background whatever the cultural tradition the poet writes within.
As counter-argument, Bas offered up the Western equivalent. In the words of Gerrit Komrij, “Political poetry is always bad poetry, good poetry is always political.” I’m not sure I agree. I’d like to argue that poetry is always personal, the degree of political engagement depending on the cards life has dealt you.
© Michele Hutchison
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