The lucky guys listen while the beat goes on…
The beat was in Bremen for a week in May: Anne Waldman, one of the most famous female writers of the beat generation, found her way to the cosy hanseatic city to spread her lyrical rhythm. Movement is her central force, and so is the theme of this unusual festival poetry on the road.
Just with the same curiosity and restlessness as Jack Kerouac’s protagonist is On the road, the festival breaks with old boundaries every year – certainly not meaning any experiments with drugs but with new forms of combining lyrical readings with other artistic ways of expression.
It is Saturday morning, the sun is not shining and I am tired. Nevertheless, I had planned to go to this reading and my alarm clock terrorises me anyway. A short rainy walk and I am in a huge Art Nouveau building of a bank. Yet, the stage is tiny – two dozen people are sitting in front of their coffees waiting to be touched by wings called words.
Indeed poetry is not what it used to be – but: these new generation poets show that poetry is worth reading and listening to.
The Dutch performance-poet Tsead Bruinja starts, improvising without his flamenco dancer but rather a juggling artist with a tuba player as back-up instead. He tells the audience about his way of perceiving the world through the careful selection of words that make up a whole universe in Dutch, German and his regional dialect of Friesian.
darling no one knows about the previous lives/ in which we passed each other by or missed the bus/ one of us was on or you were my sister my mother/ and it was doomed between us because too many
years or a faith loomed up between us/ sometimes the distance must have been as solid/ as a continent with me for instance busy/ inventing fire while you and your lover/
were lighting candles on the other side of the ocean/ am I holding you too tight again I don’t want/ to crush you but I’m scared and glad at once that
nothing will ever come between us again beyond/ this universe where we can’t come together because/ it’s much too small for the sorrow of two becoming one
darling let time tear us apart as we die one by one/ we will fight back with bridges of words.
No matter whether you believe in reincarnation or not, the festival has been reborn for the 9th time and takes a step each year further along the stairs of international recognition.
The Sunday morning reading takes place in one of those cinemas that you feel at home in immediately because it’s not about the numbers of guests but about showing good films.
Seven artists are reading and performing for almost two hours. Apart from the rather boring reading by Norbert Hummelt, a local poet, I am easily persuaded to jump into another world by the Swiss author Beat Brechbühl and the French/German dancer, choreographer and writer Sabine Macher.
Macher gives us a short introduction about the connection between dance, theatre performance, reading and video art. And you immediately understand that in-between-ness does not mean a lack of belonging. Without needing to decide between an either-or, one understands her multifaceted passion for any kind of art best through her performance. Sabine Macher has a charming way of dissecting alleged boundaries of art forms as well as national belonging. She plays her role as a “French-German Ambassador” by showing the movie The girls of Rochefort and imitating Catherine Deneuve’s movements. She moves between serious and humourous ways of expression in translating her performance from French into German and English.
Beat Brechbühl, a writer and visual artist, invites the audience on a brief journey between fantasy and reality while looking at the nature of television, flies, philosophy, rock music, lost battles, and detective films. Brechbühl’s wittiness causes laughter which arises from cynical comments and sharp observations as well as from providing insights into human weakness that leave you smiling.
Hannelies Taschau, is another a famous German poet, who’s frame of thought and cleverness stand as the antonym to her petite stature.
Georgi Gospodinov reads his poems in Bulgarian so I listen to the melody of his voice and words. The different emphasis of vowels and sentence melodies between the original poem and its translated German version, leaves one thinking about the very essence and purpose of language itself.
The most important reason to come to a festival like poetry on the road is to understand the multilayered meaning of poetry. The author’s intention of his written work is not only analysed by readers on their own but, mediated by comments, accents and tone in a more distinct way.
If you are interested, please check out www.poetry-on-the-road.com for more details (there is an English version available), or come by next year on the 3rd weekend in May to let the beat go on…
