Article
Great poetry from the festival archives
A well-travelled road
April 01, 2014
The Poetry International website has been around since 2002, but we’ve been doing this whole poetry thing for much longer. The first Poetry International festival was in 1970, and in the time between now and then (with a festival each and every year) we’ve built up a substantial archive of poets, poetry, and translations. We recently began a massive digitisation process, converting all the text, audio, and video that we’ve accumulated over the years into something we can share with you on our website.
Digitising all our old material was a big job – uploading and editing it all is an even bigger one. When you have a list full of greats to choose from, where do you start? We asked our 2014 festival poets to choose a poet from our archive who either influenced them personally, or made a serious impact in their home country. In the run-up to the festival (this year from 10-14 June) we’ll periodically bring you a new update from our archives, selected by our current festival poets.
This week our selection – comprising Dutch poet C.O. Jellema, US poet Jerome Rothenberg, and Surinamese poet Shrinivási – is brought to you by Julian Brolaski, Micha Hamel and antoine de kom.
Archive drawers image © Deyan Georgiev on Shutterstock
‘A man of my acquaintance once wrote a poem called "The Road Less Traveled” describing a journey he took through the woods along a path most travelers never used,’ writes novelist Daniel Handler under his pseudonym Lemony Snicket, in a tongue-in-cheek reference to American poet Robert Frost. ‘The poet found that the road less traveled was peaceful but quite lonely, and he was probably a bit nervous as he went along, because if anything happened on the road less traveled, the other travelers would be on the road more frequently traveled and so couldn't hear him as he cried for help. Sure enough, that poet is dead.’
A poet’s road may sometimes be a solitary one, but most poets don’t work in a vacuum. A poet, like any writer, is influenced by the people, places, and things he or she encounters. Whichever road you travel, it’s well worth noting what previous wanderers have left behind.The Poetry International website has been around since 2002, but we’ve been doing this whole poetry thing for much longer. The first Poetry International festival was in 1970, and in the time between now and then (with a festival each and every year) we’ve built up a substantial archive of poets, poetry, and translations. We recently began a massive digitisation process, converting all the text, audio, and video that we’ve accumulated over the years into something we can share with you on our website.
Digitising all our old material was a big job – uploading and editing it all is an even bigger one. When you have a list full of greats to choose from, where do you start? We asked our 2014 festival poets to choose a poet from our archive who either influenced them personally, or made a serious impact in their home country. In the run-up to the festival (this year from 10-14 June) we’ll periodically bring you a new update from our archives, selected by our current festival poets.
This week our selection – comprising Dutch poet C.O. Jellema, US poet Jerome Rothenberg, and Surinamese poet Shrinivási – is brought to you by Julian Brolaski, Micha Hamel and antoine de kom.
Archive drawers image © Deyan Georgiev on Shutterstock
© Megen Molé
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