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FALB, MARGULIES, NAUDÉ, PITTOLO, SCHAFFER, AND TENGOUR
2014 festival poets: round 3
June 20, 2014
At Poetry International’s recommendation, the Turkish poet Roni Margulies was writer in residence in Rotterdam South this year. With eyes and ears open, this nearly photographic observer will bring home his impressions of the city in wonderful poetry. Margulies is fascinated by the past. Themes of identity, migration, borders, language, and oppression also recur in his work. Subtle, and in clear language, he writes about major events through small observations. What strikes him about the port city? How will he write about it? His performance at the Poetry International Festival concluded his residency. It was a happy reunion, as he also attended the Festival in 2008.
Charl-Pierre Naudé (South Africa) is both a poet and a journalist. His very first collection, Die Nomadiese Oomblik received the Ingrid Jonker prize. For Naudé poetry is more than a purely personal and expressive affair. For him it has an important social component. Not surprisingly therefore he often alludes, in his poems, to the social and political realities of present-day South Africa. Naudé may not, however, be categorized as a writer/activist; his political references are always linked to personal experience.
The French poet Véronique Pittolo is a writer and art historian. Her poetry is prosaic and narrational. Pittolo does not allow herself to be restricted by form or genre. One of the questions that fascinates her is how one can relate to a world that is pervaded by references. She thus prefers to work with recognized fictitious elements like film, fairy tales and fantasy heroes, hoping in that way to evoke a new world full of déjà-vu sensations. By playing with what is drawn from common knowledge she is able to activate that which resides in the realms of collective consciousness and unconsciousness through her poetry. Her weird and wonderful worlds throw new light on existing issues.
What characterizes the poetry of Dutchman Alfred Schaffer is its simplicity, linguistic clarity, incidental nature, subtle humour and its ability to pinpoint absurdity. Time and again Schaffer tests the boundaries of the imagination. He opens up, as it were, the space behind reality as we know it. That was very much the case in his most recent collection Mens Dier Ding, in which the sediments of a myth, that of the illustrious Sjaka, are central. Schaffer creates for us a bizarre but simultaneously breathtaking universe in which temporary truths are invested with reality.
Habib Tengour grew up in eastern Algeria, where he developed a fascination for the storytellers encountered as a child in the bazaar. He has turned out to be one of the most forceful and visionary contemporary French-language voices in the poetry of the Maghreb, the north-western region of Africa. Tengour plays with different images and transports the reader with his magnificent verses about post-colonialism, nomadism and identity. Indeed, it is for good reason that he is sometimes also dubbed the ‘poète de la transe’. Tengour knows how to roll out sentences – which often glorify both the power and the limitations of language – like a landscape.
Last but not least we have Daniel Falb (Germany), a late addition to the festival roster. Falb was born in Kassel in 1977 and has made Berlin his home since 1998, when he also began writing. He is now one of the major voices in the younger generation of German poets. He became involved in the lauter niemand writers’ forum and began publishing in magazines and anthologies, including the important 2003 anthology Lyrik von JETZT (Poetry of NOW) published by DuMont. His debut collection, die räumung dieser parks (the clearance of these parks) in 2003 was also the first publication from kookbooks, a press that has since been highly praised and has won several awards. His second collection, BANCOR, was published by kookbooks in 2009.
Falb replaced Russian-American poet Philip Nikolayev, who couldn’t make it to the festival due to visa problems. You can still find a festival selection of Nikolayev’s poetry at his profile, though.
Read about all of this year’s poets at the festival home.
Were you unable to attend the festival in person this year, or do you wish you could re-live it?Clips of all our live streams (all listed on the programme) are now available on-demand. You can also curl up with a copy of our {piform id="22" title="festival anthology"}, containing poems by each of our festival poets in the original language and in translation. Rubber A and Z images via Shutterstock
June is festival month, where we feature all of our 2014 festival poets, A-Z. This year’s festival poets come from 13 different countries around the world, with 11 languages between them. The 2014 festival ran from 10-14 June.
This week we’re covering festival poets M-T (plus one Daniel Falb) in one final installment. Now with brand-new festival portraits by Tineke de Lange and Pieter van der Meer!At Poetry International’s recommendation, the Turkish poet Roni Margulies was writer in residence in Rotterdam South this year. With eyes and ears open, this nearly photographic observer will bring home his impressions of the city in wonderful poetry. Margulies is fascinated by the past. Themes of identity, migration, borders, language, and oppression also recur in his work. Subtle, and in clear language, he writes about major events through small observations. What strikes him about the port city? How will he write about it? His performance at the Poetry International Festival concluded his residency. It was a happy reunion, as he also attended the Festival in 2008.
Charl-Pierre Naudé (South Africa) is both a poet and a journalist. His very first collection, Die Nomadiese Oomblik received the Ingrid Jonker prize. For Naudé poetry is more than a purely personal and expressive affair. For him it has an important social component. Not surprisingly therefore he often alludes, in his poems, to the social and political realities of present-day South Africa. Naudé may not, however, be categorized as a writer/activist; his political references are always linked to personal experience.
The French poet Véronique Pittolo is a writer and art historian. Her poetry is prosaic and narrational. Pittolo does not allow herself to be restricted by form or genre. One of the questions that fascinates her is how one can relate to a world that is pervaded by references. She thus prefers to work with recognized fictitious elements like film, fairy tales and fantasy heroes, hoping in that way to evoke a new world full of déjà-vu sensations. By playing with what is drawn from common knowledge she is able to activate that which resides in the realms of collective consciousness and unconsciousness through her poetry. Her weird and wonderful worlds throw new light on existing issues.
What characterizes the poetry of Dutchman Alfred Schaffer is its simplicity, linguistic clarity, incidental nature, subtle humour and its ability to pinpoint absurdity. Time and again Schaffer tests the boundaries of the imagination. He opens up, as it were, the space behind reality as we know it. That was very much the case in his most recent collection Mens Dier Ding, in which the sediments of a myth, that of the illustrious Sjaka, are central. Schaffer creates for us a bizarre but simultaneously breathtaking universe in which temporary truths are invested with reality.
Habib Tengour grew up in eastern Algeria, where he developed a fascination for the storytellers encountered as a child in the bazaar. He has turned out to be one of the most forceful and visionary contemporary French-language voices in the poetry of the Maghreb, the north-western region of Africa. Tengour plays with different images and transports the reader with his magnificent verses about post-colonialism, nomadism and identity. Indeed, it is for good reason that he is sometimes also dubbed the ‘poète de la transe’. Tengour knows how to roll out sentences – which often glorify both the power and the limitations of language – like a landscape.
Last but not least we have Daniel Falb (Germany), a late addition to the festival roster. Falb was born in Kassel in 1977 and has made Berlin his home since 1998, when he also began writing. He is now one of the major voices in the younger generation of German poets. He became involved in the lauter niemand writers’ forum and began publishing in magazines and anthologies, including the important 2003 anthology Lyrik von JETZT (Poetry of NOW) published by DuMont. His debut collection, die räumung dieser parks (the clearance of these parks) in 2003 was also the first publication from kookbooks, a press that has since been highly praised and has won several awards. His second collection, BANCOR, was published by kookbooks in 2009.
Falb replaced Russian-American poet Philip Nikolayev, who couldn’t make it to the festival due to visa problems. You can still find a festival selection of Nikolayev’s poetry at his profile, though.
Read about all of this year’s poets at the festival home.
Were you unable to attend the festival in person this year, or do you wish you could re-live it?Clips of all our live streams (all listed on the programme) are now available on-demand. You can also curl up with a copy of our {piform id="22" title="festival anthology"}, containing poems by each of our festival poets in the original language and in translation. Rubber A and Z images via Shutterstock
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