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the 40th Poetry International Festival: 13–20 June in the Rotterdam Schouwburg

Editorial: June 2009

27 mei 2009
This year the Poetry International Festival celebrated its 40th anniversary with an array of programmes and events including a digital poetry lab, film premieres, art installations, book launches, the Itinerant Poetry Librarian, music, contemporary dance, prize-givings, readings, discussions and workshops. Above all, there was an exciting line-up of international poets, whose work is featured in this June issue of PIW.
For more information about events and programmes at the festival, visit the festival page and the festival diary on this website, or www.poetry.nl. To watch Poetry Clips of the guest poets, made during the 2009 Poetry International Festival, click here. The Poetry Clips were sponsored by Eckhart Interior Design Group.

Five Dutch poets were in the spotlight at the festival this year. Succinct and observant, L.F. Rosen’s poems examine the world with both wit and melancholy. Gerrit Kouwenaar was first published in clandestine publications during the Second World War. His work, characterised by its emphasis on language rather than emotions, aims “to put silence to music/ but keep the name silent”. Arjen Duinker looks reality head on, eschewing abstractions, while Nachoem  M. Wijnberg’s poems are deceptively straightforward in their clear sparseness. Rutger Kopland’s 75th birthday will be celebrated in a special event on 18 June in which the poet will read his work to the accompaniment of saxophonist and clarinetist Martin Tervoort.

Many of the poets this year currently live, or have lived, in the USA, though originate from elsewhere. These include Bei Dao, who left China in 1989, and who writes in Chinese; Dunya Mikhail, an Arabic-speaking poet from Iraq, whose poems about war cut deep with their simplicity of expression and wry satire; young poet Valzhyna Mort, who hails originally from Belarus but lives in the USA and writes in her native Belarusian; Russian Vera Pavlova whose poetry reflects her musical training; and critically acclaimed Australian Luke Davies. Also from the USA, we have American Brian Turner, who writes about war from his unique perspective of both poet and soldier. He and Dunya Mikhail will discuss and perform their war work with Geert Buelens in an event entitled “The War Works Hard” (the title of one of Dunya Mikhail’s poems) on 17 June.

Kazuko Shiraishi was born in Canada, in Vancouver, but moved back to Japan with her parents just before the Second World War. She writes in Japanese, but her work has been translated into many languages, including English. The translations of her poems featured here are taken from My Floating Mother, City, which was published this year. Chinese poet Yang Lian has also lived and travelled in various countries. Born in Switzerland, he grew up in Beijing but left China in 1988 and has lived since then in exile in New Zealand and now London.

Palestinian poet Mourid Barghouti is also a poet in exile, having lived in Egypt, Lebanon, Jordan, Kuwait and Hungary. His poetry, unsurprisingly, is deeply bound up with exile and loss, expressed however without melodrama or rhetoric. The final poet from outside of Europe is South African Gert Vlok Nel, who gained fame and critical attention with his publication of his Afrikaans collection Om te lewe is onnatuurlijk (Living is Unnatural) in 1993.

The Europeans comprise renowned French poet Jacques Roubaud; Umberto Fiori (Italy), whose poems are often about city life; Tua Forsström, who hails from Finland and writes in Swedish; Henrik Nordbrandt, a Danish poet who has lived in Turkey, Greece and Italy, and whose poetry is saturated with the colours of the Mediterranean region; Polish poet and translator Piotr Sommer; and Sigitas Parulskis, one of the most popular writers in Lithuania, who also works as a translator, essayist and critic.

The English-language European poets are the British poet Maura Dooley, whose work voices both individual and collective experience. George Szirtes writes in English and resides in the UK, though he is originally from Hungary and is also renowned as a Hungarian translator. Matthew Sweeney, from Ireland, writes lyrical, narrative-driven poems.

All of the International Programme events were broadcast live from the festival on this website and will shortly be made available on the website for re-viewing. The live streaming was sponsored by Rotterdam Draadloos.
© Sarah Ream
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