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RMW 2015: A festival for groundbreaking literature, 1-3 October, Tolhuistuin, Amsterdam

Read My World, ‘write in your face’

HOAX Amsterdam
October 01, 2015
The third Read My World festival takes place this week in Amsterdam, in the Tolhuistuin along the Ij. From 1-3 October, festivalgoers will have the opportunity to attend poetry readings, concerts, panel discussions, film screenings and experimental performances by an expansive and electric group of international writers. In previous festivals, the focus has been on Arab and Caribbean literature – this year, Read My World invited two guest curators, writer Bernice Chauly (Malaysia) and blogger/translator Kadek Krishna Adidharma (Indonesia), to put the spotlight on South East Asia.
According to the festival’s website: ‘Read My World explores the boundaries between literature and journalism, between here and there – and draws attention to everything in between’. This is accomplished by bringing together Dutch writers with those from the spotlighted region – Malaysia, Indonesia, and Singapore – as well as emerging and noteworthy writers from around the world. (For the full list of writers, see here.)

Among these international writers are the poets Bernice Chauly (Malaysia), Kim Moore (United Kingdom) and Ricardo Domeneck (Brazil), whom we’ve been wanting to include in the Poetry International online archive for some time. Chauly is, of course, the guest curator of this year’s festival, in addition to being an acclaimed memoirist, filmmaker and photographer. Chauly will appear in the festival’s opening program, Thursday, 1 October, 21:00; showcase her selections as guest curator in Friday’s Literary Café, 2 October, 17:00-23:00; and discuss the life of Dutch-Malaysian adoptee Berta Hertogh with Elle van Rijn, Farish A. Noor and Rocky Tuhuteru on Friday, 20:00-21:00. 

Moore was previously in the Netherlands in August, for the Vlieland Poetry Festival, for which Willem Groenewegen translated the poems featured on her new Poetry International poet profile. At Read My World, Moore will perform with Dennis Gaens (Netherlands), The Venopian Solitude (Malaysia) and musician Zea (Friesland) in a poetry and music session called ‘Talkin’ ‘Bout Our Ge Ge Generation’, Friday, 22:00.

Also on Friday night, a new volume of Domeneck’s poems translated into Dutch by Bart Vonck, Het verzamelde lichaam (The collected body; Perdu 2015), will be presented during the festival’s Literary Café at 20:00. Domeneck will participate in a reading and conversation with Vonck and café host Frank Keizer, who also wrote Domeneck’s profile for our archive.

You can also see all three poets, alongside 27 other international poets – such as Anneke Brassinga, Laksmi Pamuntjak, Alfian Sa’at, Barney Agerbeek and Poetry International’s Netherlands editor Thomas Möhlmann – read during the epic Poetry Marathon, Saturday, 3 October, 20:00-23:00.
Check out the full Read My World program here.
© Mia You
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