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21st of March - Day of Poetry



Day of Poetry: 21 March 2009

Introducing the Day - Hatto Fischer

 

THE VERTICAL

What have I done?

An innocent question requests to be heard.

It is the question of a confounded soul

not silenced by strong winds

or trucks rushing by,

but by her withdrawing

to create windstill pages.

Now I wait in the shadow

for another sign,

a whisper, a kiss or her nose

after pressing down my face

on pages sent with the snail post

to cross rivers, mountains, plains

till they arrive at the desk

underneath the trees

on Lycabettou hill

overlooking the city of Athens

with streets winding past corners

made rounder

by rubbish cans, parked motorcycles

and pedestrians rooted there

to be like trees

as if in resistance against those

who want to brush away

scepticism

or else wishes that kick like horses

back at negative perspectives

as if every one is like the youth

without future.

 

THE HORIZONTAL

Pretense was never poetry's alignment with death as a way to hide things, something said about Christa Wolf's discovery where often state promoted logics tend to hide the real secrets about life. That puts everyone on a wrong path of undoing what was done before and makes one generation feel the following one is ungrateful. Poetry is then like the paper used to fill the gaps and in between time zones of understanding just a way to imitate wind stillness. That is a way of saying people take on finally character as if they are too opportunistic, bend to serve the wind no matter from which direction he comes from, but here in Greece during the hot summer months everyone welcomes the cooling one coming from the North and not necessarily going on to the South.

But certainly Katerina Anghelaki Rooke has made her mark in poetry and recently she said that everyone should use poetry as a tool to dig deeper into the self. That reminds of Brendan Kennelly showing to his audience greater courage than all by going deep inside and questioning what he saw or came across. Between these two poets there are many other linkages as experienced during the 'Myth of the City' conference organised by me and Anna Arvanitaki to bring poets into a dialogue with planners back then in Crete 1995. There were amongst the poets as well Anne Born, Paula Meehan, Theo Dorgan, Bruno Kartheuser, Maja Panajotova, Sophia Yannatou, Liana Sakelliou-Schultz, Emer Ronan, Pedro Mateo, Reina L. Palazon, but also many others who participated from the distance such as Voula Mega with her poems about cities and their problems to link their images with sustainability.

In Berlin there just ended 'printemps des poetes' organised by Catherine Launay. Among the many events there was a special one organised by Ariadne Ghabel at the Savignyplatz. She had ten actors perform the poem "Permission" by Nahid Kabiri. With such actions, including posting poems at traffic lights with people able to tear off the page in order to take the poem with them, it was a sure sign for poetry to enter and to link up with everyday life. In a time of the global crisis, the human self understanding between people is ever more important to be upheld by poems which weigh as little as a feather, hence can tickle or sail through the air, but also stand as symbol or metaphor for writing in the air we breathe. Here Ariadne Ghabel has shown paths of breathing to give new life a wonderful chance.

 

Contributions from all over the world

India

SRAVAN by Anjan San

The sky shivers with the swing of rains

the rain drip-dropdrenching the visionary world

O grace. O thunderous gracequench the cosmic thirst

In the rice field, the festival song is on

In the roots the swing of the rains

Towards their rock the pilgrims move

Their shoulders heavy with the sacrosanct water

Pouring water - Sravan takes a shower

Once again the song of desire for grain

The rock has been washed by many monsoons.

 

translated from Bengali by Amlan Dasgupta

and send by Asit Poddar, artist and member of Kids' Guernica in Kolkata, India

 

Germany

 

WAHL - KARRIERE von Rosemarie Lang-Barke

Steigst du auf,/ steigst du auch ab

Steigst du ab,/auch wieder auf!

Willst du das / und weisst darum,/ findest du dein Publikum.

Hast du Erfolg,/ wirst du bald seh'n,/ nicht jeder laesst es dir gescheh'n.

Manch einer schaut nach dir sich um,/ laechelt dir zu/ und bleibt gern stumm.

Da ploetzlich kommt er her zu dir,/ ueberrascht dich/ und schreit brausend:/ Hier / ist ein Verseh'n gescheh'n.

Ihr schaut verkehrt,/ lasst den nur steh'n!

Die richtige Person ist da!/ Ich bin's / das ist doch jedem klar!

Und man schaut hier/ und man schaut da, / als wenn es selbstverstaendlich war.

Bis jeder denkt: / Es ist zu dumm!/ Wir drehn uns nach dem Falschen um.

Sie waehlen nun, / den keiner wollte.- / Ganz selbstverstaendlich!

Ob's / immer so sein sollte...?

 

CHOICE - CAREER

Do you climb up, / Then you climb down as well.

Do you climb down, / Then you climb also up.

If you want that,/ And know about it,/ Then you will find your audience.

When you have success,/ You will soon see/ Not everyone lets you enjoy that success.

Some of them turn around to look at you / Smile at you / And remain preferably silent.

There he comes suddenly towards you,/ Surprises you/ And shouts at the top of his lungs / Here / Someting happened which should not have.

You look at them perplexed / Let them stand there.

The right person is here! / I am the one, / That is hopefully to everyone quite clear.

And one looks here / And there, / As if it was self understood.

Until everyone thinks: / This is too stupid! / We end up turning to the wrong one.

They select only the one / No one wanted to have - / As if self understood.

If / That should always be the case?

translated from German by Hatto Fischer

 

21.March 2008

Many voices were heard in Athens. It included a public reading of 40 poets at the French Institute. The previous day poems made into politische songs were performed at the megaron. Alexia Amvrasi at FM 104,4 the Municipal Radio Station of Athens invited Sofia Yannatou and Hatto Fischer to discuss the difference, if there is any, between poetry and prose.

Poetry day should really be dedicated to Norb Blei:

In the United States, Norb Blei continues to send his poetry dispatches and allows for more discoveries of poets till then unheard. In the introduction to his most recent publication, an anthology under the title "Other Voices" published by Cross + Roads Press, he expresses his belief in poetry as follows:

"Writers and artists spend their entire lives seeking confirmation. They need to know they are being taken seriously, for their own good, for the satisfaction of others (friends, loved ones, parents), many of whom fail to understand how a person can turn away from everything and lead an isolated life of work and dedication with no gurantee of success or financial gain. 'You want to do what? Go find a job.'  It's all about money of course, given our culture."

Recently Norb Blei drew attention to the Palestinian poet Taha Mohammed Ali who wrote a poem under the title 'Where':

Poetry hides

Somewhere

behind the night of words

behind the clouds of hearing,

across the dark of sight

and beyond the dusk of music

that's hidden and revealed

But where is it concealed?

And how could I

possibily know

when I am

barely able,

by the light of the day,

to find my pencil.

(from 'So What', New Selected Poems 1971 - 2005, Copper Canyon Press)

As to the topic 'poetry and prose', Sam Hamill thinks there is a difference:

"The poem says what cannot be said in prose. Perhaps verse requires of its maker a struggle to open the heart, a vulnerability, a belief that words – at least it has been for me – mean exactly what they say, simply and clearly."

 

Sam Hamill, (1998) „Bidding Farewell to My Stepson“ in Gratitude, Rochester N.Y.: Boa Edition, p. 93 - 95

George Crane, on the other hand, can hardly distinguish anymore the difference between poetry and prose; to him prose is horizontal poetry.

Resume of the Day of Poetry:

Always we should appreciate poetry in what Elytis said has to be done in praise of life. We should also do so by adding the refrains of the Blues. What characterizes the Blues still today is the amazing gift to 'save rhythms well' (Louis Armstrong) while admitting 'you love me no mo', there is a chance for love to bloom again like flowers in the next spring. Jean Paul Sartre explained why the Blues touch so many people for in its lyric universal pain is being expressed.

The restraints of the Blues

 

What are restraints when walls wail like electrical guitars

Gone wild with the boys in jail or close to a fight

whenever they are afraid of death

so take the beats and the rhythms

cool it, man, cool it,

if only you could find an escape from such ugly fights

leaving lips bleeding and the nose in tatters

with even an ear damaged unvoluntarily when the ugly voice

screams and screams over and again,

so don't be afraid, man, or a fool, man,

the sockets in the wall are not meant for you

unless you wish to hip hop over the edges and stretch your muscles

till no one budges, till no one budges

due to everyone smoking a joint at the bar

except for those who escape,

and set the stage to sing the Blues

'you don't love me no mo!'

Listen to how the wolves howl

at midnight to the moon,

listen to the silence of the plains

across which sweeps the moon light.

Yes, I see you standing there

to make sure this earth is no magic place,

but still a home where you can hear your own voice

gone over to the other side of the moon

to spin another tale

about white and green cheeses

because you left them for too long in the cupboard,

and like your soul

they are forgotten by now, never touched again,

except by fragments of light setting off chemistry,

so let me fire you up again to sing

some rhythms saved well by Louis Armstrong,

for that one poem you have tucked away

in your pocket and like all forgotten loves

can remind you what you never knew it was there all along,

and now awaits to be heard,

so step into the public light and sing the refrain

about the Blues heard so well with your voice listening

to a never stopping or ending whistle blow by the train

moving slowly out of the station with you on board as if a last journey.

No wonder, you've got the Blues, man, so jump off before the train

moves faster and faster into the twilight zones of your dreams.

I reckon you need a beer and some music to read your poem,

to let her know that you survive despite her loving you no mo.

Yah man, you are at risk that the steam goes cold

as if no mo fire heats up the engine

while the folk goes home beset by endless dreams

to drift later on with the clouds

past the blue moon now casting shadows of my sailing ship

so wait till dawn, till sunlight, till the Blues

give you a gift of life, o man, a gift of love like the Blues.

 

Hatto Fischer

Athens March 21, 2008

 

 

Day of Poetry: 21.March 2005

 

Dip into that material
called substance of life
and behold that hand
which touches like a child
to let dreams go free
if only to glide with the winds
out over the sea with horizons stretched

to remember days
when rhythms became tunes
sung by our mothers and fathers
while we were still innocent,
indeed brave enough to look everyone
in the eyes and laugh!

Hatto Fischer

Athens

 

Poems are written, sung, uttered, murmured and many often forgotten even before they could be written down.
The music that goes with the poem is the intertwining of voice and thought.
What is language without pronunciation, what is a river without a silver tongue of water gliding over rocks and past hushed banks when the mist lifts early in the morning?
Yes, sounds painted in words may be one metaphorical description of poems that last centuries.
There is a Homer telling narrative poem about a man who left and came back twenty-two years later. James Joyce picks that up and lets his hero walk through Dublin in 24 hours. At the final stage his hero walks underneath a train bridge. It is one of those long, endless tunnels with water dripping down and only the footsteps to be heard as they rickashade off the barren walls. James Joyce writes that passage without any punctuation. The reader has to know by then the rhythm, when to stop, when to add an imaginary coma as symbol of the kind of speech that makes sense because of the rhythm and tunes.
Indeed, poetry means much more than just recreating the physical world as it appears in our senses. The Ancient Greeks had wondered about this difference between what we perceive to be the outer world and what we use to make up in our minds what image fits to the object we wish to identify. Is that a chair? Is that a dolphin swimming beside the boat? What is the difference between a river and the open sea, if not for the form that brings about such existence? Since we don’t know the answers, poems dig deeper and find often nothing but their own exasperation but also joy of life.
So poetry is a compound or even a mix of reactions to the possibilities of what we perceive through our senses and what then takes us further than what images can suggest just by themselves.

A visual artist may be orientated along what Wittgenstein says. He may come to the conclusion it is better “to observe rather than to think”, since he believes truth is not possible, only approximation. However neither half truths or onesided stories can be true. Nor does a poet accept such distortion of truth for the sake of a lie.

Poetry is really about the logos of feelings and emotions that come into existence when we confront the death of a friend, hear the outcry of a man selling flowers in the street and strain our eyes when the clouds darken on the horizon as the ship leaves the harbor. Time and images coincide to bring about a landscape known to our senses. We feel touched and touch like a blind man attempting to identify what exists out there. He can do it by trusting what he senses through his fingertips.

It is said that the sense of touch brings about sober truth (Ernst Bloch), provided, as Louis Armstrong would attest, ‘the lesson of materialism is learned well’. Louis Armstrong means ‘lesson learned well’ in a very specific sense for then the rhythms are saved and songs go out for a ride like children with their parents in a rowing boat.

Yes, poems begin with confusion, a mix of awe and sadness, but they come out well if they save the rhythm to be felt when the very last word lets you remember what was said at the beginning and so the poem can complete the journey on its own.

Immediately upon arrival there is the question what has been conveyed, developed, said, narrated, and stated? So many questions, would the Greek poetess Katerina Anghelaki Rooke reply, but so few answers. Or another answer she could give, is that half true questions would but confuse the issue of perception and understanding of poetry even further. Hence she prefers like so many other poets ‘silence’: the art of listening to the voice inside of us.


If anything is true to our nature, Katerina would continue in her argument, then not to complicate things any further but to simplify. “We are not stupid human beings, we have a brain to think”, she would add emphatically. Especially in her case ‘Logos of poetry’ entails philosophical thoughts. It is the wisdom that goes with listening to our voices.

Tell me more, is the demand of a child of the grandfather. Generations upon generations murmur and tell stories. The rhythm of life continues, provided poetry saves these rhythms well. It is a thought that may return to the child when itself much older and thinking back to those times when it set its dreams to set sail and to depart from imaginary harbors to venture into the world.

The philosopher Kant said we can set sail only once we have sounded out human understanding for then we can charter through unknown seas and unknown lands.

Once poetry sets sail to our dreams then not to leave behind those waving along the shores as the ship disappears on the horizon because there is expressed right from the beginning the certainty of coming back. Once self confidence has been bestowed upon the people as done by Homer, they can face the changes. It is up to modern poets to continue giving that self confidence to face the fresh winds of change. Important is that no one looses orientation as to where we shall find our own Ithaca.

Hatto Fischer
Athens 21.3.2005

 

Midwinter England - Oxleas Woods
January 2nd 2005

by Alan Dix

The usual low northern sun spills from the sky
And streams through leafless dormant trees
To make bright puddles that blind the eye

Sharp edges dissolve into a foam of white and gold
A fallen limb sinks into the dark mud
Disturbed birds lift themselves into the cold

The bark of a hidden dog threads through oak and beech
A bright red hat bobs across the path
My compass is gone my maps have drifted out of reach

There is death on the wind I can hear it in the high branches
Swirling and tossing the bodies of leaves
The roaring sea rears up with open mouth and advances

This is the time when everything stops
This is the last time the sun’s light will ignite your mind
This is the time when everything stops

This is the time when everything is lost
When the slow clock of the future slips a cog
And pain covers everything like a baked salt frost

This is the time when the living wish they were dead
When vast grief obliterates the tin shacks of certainty
When wisdom and knowledge and hope have all fled.

Tsunami: a visitor has come and gone
With the force of ten thousand
Hydrogen bombs.

A vast shudder has passed across the world
But there are no messages from god in the sky today
A tragic flag has been slowly unfurled
And our brief tenancy is on display.

Alan Dix
07973 483 055
020 8316 8064

www.509arts.co.uk

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