Artikel
Tuesday June 11th – Day One
12 juni 2013
It is brilliant but nippy in Amsterdam, and the ride into Rotterdam is filled with lively conversation. A hip-looking Rotterdam native of Indonesian extract (named Arthur) is my host, and even as we have lively far-ranging conversation about bicycles, museums, art, the rigid commitment to organization in the Netherlands, euro economic policies (he is an economist and an arts afficionado), wartime bombing, rail travel, the strong thighs of Netherlanders because of their cycling tradition, the pleasures of poetry, exile and home, I have the sense that I am going to forget the details of these conversations, or at least I will remember only as one remembers dreams.
He asks me what I plan to do while in Rotterdam.
I tell him I only started to think of Rotterdam a day ago. Before that, I was thinking about Lincoln, about our new dog Bella, about three stories I have to decide about, about deadlines I am missing, about the Miami Heat and the Spurs. I should be a better poet.
I commit to a day of dozing, thick misty webs around my thoughts and vision, uncertain disorientation just when I am meeting new people, learning a schedule and trying to make sense of the peculiar cult of poetry festivals. I have this anxiety about the circuit. It has a bad reputation: the international traveling circus of hustling poets. I do not want to be recognized and yet I so long to be noticed.
On my first day in Rotterdam, this will be the record of it I will remember. I am promised a whole week devoted to poetry and I know that this should fill me with glee, but mostly it fills me with dread, the inevitable disquiet of having to be on all the time, of having the language with which to bevy on with poets from around the world.
There is water – something like a canal – there are orange tiled roofs, there are boats, and there are white flags – banners really, perhaps thirty of them, twenty with snippets of poems in Dutch. I find my banner – it is away from the crowd of other banners, set apart I suppose. I do not know what it says. I can decipher “I” and “shadow” and then I am rescued when a volunteer who translates for me. The quote is from ‘Inheritance’. It is gratifying to see people thinking about my poems independent of me. I raise my banner. It is a solitary affair. Then the group pictures.
A French poet has decided that for her performance she will take pictures of the hands of poets signing. She says her English is bad, and her Chinese better.
And on the night of the opening, the vaunted efficiency and tidiness of the planning of everything here is demonstrated. We read what we are told to read, we read briefly, and we just read. No one has to say so, but there is a brevity of instruction and behaviour – an economy that is contagious. My saying "Good evening" to the audience is a departure. Twenty poets, a few on video, a sense of selectivity, and smoothly and thoughtfully designed program, a mayor on screen offering his regrets for not being present, letting us know that he is in China at the moment “selling” he says (with finger quotes) Rotterdam – “one of his jobs”. An unfortunate term among poets. “Shipping containers and poetry” he muses – there is a moment in which one has the sense that he is about to embark on a remarkably genius conceit between these two things, but he falters, “they can go together”, he observes, and leaves it at that.
The poetry emblazoned on the massive screen in this exceptionally well-outfitted theatre, with its impeccable sound system, is varied, carefully and thoughtfully curated, and decidedly international. One feels honored, selected, picked. I suppose we must enjoy such moments as poets.
I hurry trough the large foyer of folks drinking and laughing. I am tired now. I had wanted to read ‘African Postman’ and not ‘Impossible Flying’ – a fragment: the Kingston part of the poem. But it goes down well, as these things go. I have never seen Ilya Kaminsky read his poems. He reads on a video, sitting in a corner with the camera looking down on him, a poem for Joseph Brodsky. The poem is footed with Dutch translations. He is supposedly reading in English. Ilya reads with an operatic force – he sings, moans, groans, grunts, and I can only make out snippets of English – it is a beautiful thing, a sound thing. I know it is completely intentional, and it is memorable.
This is what I am thinking about when I crash. That and my fear that tomorrow I will learn that the Heat lost to the Spurs.
Featured poet Kwame Dawes writes a daily blog post about his experiences at the 44th Poetry International Festival in Rotterdam.
The flight from Lincoln to Minneapolis is uneventful although I have this nagging sense that I am forgetting something. The layover in Minneapolis is not much of a layover. I have to sprint from Terminal C to G, and I arrive just in time to join the line boarding the flight to Amsterdam. It is sunny – the quick sprint through the airport feels energizing and Minneapolis feels oddly warm. At last I have an aisle seat. Instead of sleeping, I watch three films. The last is that new film about the rock mega band Journey and their contracting of a gifted Filipino singer as their lead. It is clear that I am tired – I tear up thinking about him, and I keep waiting for the tragic turn – for him to admit on camera that he is back on drugs. Nothing of the sort. It is brilliant but nippy in Amsterdam, and the ride into Rotterdam is filled with lively conversation. A hip-looking Rotterdam native of Indonesian extract (named Arthur) is my host, and even as we have lively far-ranging conversation about bicycles, museums, art, the rigid commitment to organization in the Netherlands, euro economic policies (he is an economist and an arts afficionado), wartime bombing, rail travel, the strong thighs of Netherlanders because of their cycling tradition, the pleasures of poetry, exile and home, I have the sense that I am going to forget the details of these conversations, or at least I will remember only as one remembers dreams.
He asks me what I plan to do while in Rotterdam.
I tell him I only started to think of Rotterdam a day ago. Before that, I was thinking about Lincoln, about our new dog Bella, about three stories I have to decide about, about deadlines I am missing, about the Miami Heat and the Spurs. I should be a better poet.
I commit to a day of dozing, thick misty webs around my thoughts and vision, uncertain disorientation just when I am meeting new people, learning a schedule and trying to make sense of the peculiar cult of poetry festivals. I have this anxiety about the circuit. It has a bad reputation: the international traveling circus of hustling poets. I do not want to be recognized and yet I so long to be noticed.
On my first day in Rotterdam, this will be the record of it I will remember. I am promised a whole week devoted to poetry and I know that this should fill me with glee, but mostly it fills me with dread, the inevitable disquiet of having to be on all the time, of having the language with which to bevy on with poets from around the world.
There is water – something like a canal – there are orange tiled roofs, there are boats, and there are white flags – banners really, perhaps thirty of them, twenty with snippets of poems in Dutch. I find my banner – it is away from the crowd of other banners, set apart I suppose. I do not know what it says. I can decipher “I” and “shadow” and then I am rescued when a volunteer who translates for me. The quote is from ‘Inheritance’. It is gratifying to see people thinking about my poems independent of me. I raise my banner. It is a solitary affair. Then the group pictures.
A French poet has decided that for her performance she will take pictures of the hands of poets signing. She says her English is bad, and her Chinese better.
And on the night of the opening, the vaunted efficiency and tidiness of the planning of everything here is demonstrated. We read what we are told to read, we read briefly, and we just read. No one has to say so, but there is a brevity of instruction and behaviour – an economy that is contagious. My saying "Good evening" to the audience is a departure. Twenty poets, a few on video, a sense of selectivity, and smoothly and thoughtfully designed program, a mayor on screen offering his regrets for not being present, letting us know that he is in China at the moment “selling” he says (with finger quotes) Rotterdam – “one of his jobs”. An unfortunate term among poets. “Shipping containers and poetry” he muses – there is a moment in which one has the sense that he is about to embark on a remarkably genius conceit between these two things, but he falters, “they can go together”, he observes, and leaves it at that.
The poetry emblazoned on the massive screen in this exceptionally well-outfitted theatre, with its impeccable sound system, is varied, carefully and thoughtfully curated, and decidedly international. One feels honored, selected, picked. I suppose we must enjoy such moments as poets.
I hurry trough the large foyer of folks drinking and laughing. I am tired now. I had wanted to read ‘African Postman’ and not ‘Impossible Flying’ – a fragment: the Kingston part of the poem. But it goes down well, as these things go. I have never seen Ilya Kaminsky read his poems. He reads on a video, sitting in a corner with the camera looking down on him, a poem for Joseph Brodsky. The poem is footed with Dutch translations. He is supposedly reading in English. Ilya reads with an operatic force – he sings, moans, groans, grunts, and I can only make out snippets of English – it is a beautiful thing, a sound thing. I know it is completely intentional, and it is memorable.
This is what I am thinking about when I crash. That and my fear that tomorrow I will learn that the Heat lost to the Spurs.
© Kwame Dawes
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