Reflections of the XVI European Poetry Festival by Hatto Fischer

Introduction

Sometimes festival take on their own shape. No one knows why, but it is so. Are these circumstances, are these the living processes within the 'Europe of Cultures'? Given the thematic questions in this workshop, it is certainly important to reflect more upon what 'cultural actions' involve and imply. After all, the European Union itself can undertake such 'cultural actions' only under special circumstances. At the same time, they mean always a new learning process. The phases are quite distinct. From developing the idea or perceiving one to implementation, it is a long way. There is the application for funds, the waiting time till some clear signal is given, 'yes, it can be done'. Inbetween lies the constant question, should one continue or let it be if there is no money. Especially in applications to Kaleidoscope, a programme which does not cover the full costs, additional sources of money must be found. This involves other agencies, sponsors and the National Ministry of Culture which in turn has a say through its delegates to the Kaleidoscope programme how funds are distributed nationally. Not to have a direct say in this sense, that is also one point of contention by the government of the Flemish government in Belgium; everything has to go through the federal level of Belgium since there is no direct access. Then, there is the selection of participants and under what conditions they may or may not participate. Again, this depends upon both the concept, the good will of the organiser(s) and finally upon the dynamic effect both the concept and the people invited so far have upon others. There are, of course, major differences if intended to be only a translation workshop or a public event from being a 'cultural action' itself, that is, aimed at specific interactions, as in this case not only with one leading artist who had the orginal idea, but also with the Fifth Seminar itself. Then there was even resistance on the part of some poets in having to write not only poems, but their own reflections on the relationship between 'poetry and mythology'. Some claimed to be only poets, not prose writers. In the end, everyone complied or almost all did, but there was especially resistance among some of the Greek poets participating. If this is not all, things had to be organised practically, in this case in three different locations: Kamilari, Crete; Athens and Aegina. That meant going there to even look a places for accommodation, to talk to the mayor and in general to prepare 'morally' the grounds for the events. Nothing ever goes without spontaneous support by the people directly and indirectly involved by such activities. Many things are touched upon. The main question being always the same: what does it bring us and is there any chance of a continuity? Once things take place, everything is almost over before it had began. The 'afterwards' is then the true test: had it been worthwhile to engage oneself in the first place in that direction, what are the consequences and what can be learned from it aside from the very fact, that it did take place. This then is both a matter of evaluation and of learning to understand more fully all what is involved in a 'cultural action'.

A side glance at Kamilari, Crete

There are old prejudices, while even traditional villages in Crete face the problem of conversion: half of the houses have been sold to foreigners, the communication between the different populations of the village is no longer functioning. What cement, exploitation, fires, and other disasterous decision making process does not destroy, looses in value the moment there is no money to keep up the premise, i.e. the old school building. Depreciation of values while different reactions for future needs set the level of comparision: here the traditional Cretian apartments of Manolis, vis a vis the neutral, hospital like single rooms that can exist anywhere and yet are part of the locality. It is not a give and take, but a response to tourism requiring in turn different strategies for what is desired cannot usually be paid for. The financial resources are limited. To make a poetry festival within such a village requires, therefore, many considerations, especially since the prime questions of the local people is plainly this: will there be a continuity, or is it just a short term or occasional affair with nothing but transitory impacts. That is after all finally the main concern: how to institutionalize the idea of a festival. It can be considered to be a reason for gaining support before something takes shape. Naturally, even a village in Crete is interested in long term perspectives, including models to show to the youth that it is worthwhile to stay in the village, rather than to depart. That touches upon many questions, including those of the many types of mutilations going on in the countryside, and yet which is closely linked to the dilemmas of European cities, waves of tourism, certain catering businesses and not at all certain that this will leave for the future liveable proofs that this generation lived as the Ancients did in Phaistos or just humbly in some mountain village. Illusion and reality, these two poles make hardly the real difficulties accessible. There is too much ugliness in the world and something partially left intact will be immediately occupied by those feeling here they can still experience something authentic. So strong is this feeling and need, that the touristic flows are like rivers overstepping their shores and flooding the entire region. It leaves no one to whistle or to keep the herd in the shade of the olive trees. Instead someone builds another house up on the hill. The large window through which the valley below can be overlooked is like the myth of the view. It touches upon the fact why do people with money locate themselves outside the mainstream of society, why do they create the pre-urbanisation trends even in villages like Kamilari in Crete. Mankind spreads out, that could be one saying. Another is the longing for peace and a grandious view since the search for horizon is what preoccupies most people. They seek and gain, they file and they regain, or else they stumble if they are not careful to observe mechanisms of powers prevailing even in remote villages. There is no longer the dexterity, but the sell out, and thus the aercheological society of Kamilari begged the poet Olympia Karayiourga to speak to the people of the village during a poetry reading, not to sell their houses, but to retain their independence and character as a village of Crete and not as a colony of Germany. Still, the cynicism of money breds its own destructive forms. They begin to exist side by side, while the reaching out for some authentic elements makes it all the more important not to doubt or mistrust the wishes of these people, even if they have done wrong. As long as there is remorse, there is also a different way of dealing with the problem. Naturally, that is embedded within the common grounds of agreement or disagreement, simple because the mayor of Kamilari would be able to point out quite direct that people argue more easily about which streets should be asphalted than what is the cultural value of their village. An outside artist would say that these people do no remember anymore the myth of the place, or as the performance artist Poly Kasda would say, 'the memory of the earth has gone astray', but so have the artists if they do not relate to the immediate surroundings, since impulses come and go freely like guests, as long as there is a spirit of common interests: a quest of values to restore the place its dignity. It is like the woman who having been raped, must restore inside of herself a moment of reconciliation. Her own experience is traumatic enough and she may never overcome it completely, thus to think how often the earth has been raped, abused and abandoned, then there might be a possibilitity that such festivals bring about again a consciousness of the suffrage of the earth.

Poetic Manifest for Aegina

There are often no needs, when it comes to take in the sight of a breathless landscape, mountains running down like children to the sea.

There is the valley of the many churches, as many as days in a year.

Time.

Explosions. Building exploitations. Lifelihood. Dilemmas.

Some theatre group plays. A man cries out. Someone falls in love with the actor and no justice is done.

People are shown as searchers to understand.

In the bus or metro only some take off their boots when others want to sit on the bench vis-a-vis. That is not confrontation, nor manipulation, but survival. Passive resistance. Poets never liked resignation.

What is needed for Aegina:

The theme for the Aegina event ought to relate to the fifth seminar to be held beforehand. It is called "Culture, Building Stone for Europe 2002" with Athens University and the 'College of Europe' acting as co-hosts. The seminar gives importance to 'culture' in terms of action programmes to be proposed to the Council of Regions and hence the European Commission. Right now, within the European Union the only possibility to act is with regards to cultural heritage. There is a need, however, to look into the future, so that in Aegina that becomes the question can the delegates interact with artists in such a way, as to address the issues of culture in a much more diverse way?

I say this thinking about what Aegina offers. Beautiful landscape, but also deep philosophical thoughts about an urban environment that existed long before Athens.

Urban environment means diversity, means a form of freedom not elsewhere to be experienced. However, lately there seems to be a loss of freedom coupled with an absence of a real need for freedom, that regulates more and more life. The postmodern philosophers went already against modernity, then came the violence in Jugoslavia and now the election results in Italy. At the same time, many European members recoil into simple nationalistic artefacts, in order to overcome 'disturbances of identities'. In recollection of what happened prior to First World War, and even more so since then until 1945, there is a danger of a negative coalition between fear and death repeating itself. Erich Fromm described it as a fake absolute: fear of life transformed into love of death.

Mankind shows attempts to avoid walking through that gate before the time is up, and not everyone succeeds.

In daily life people take taxis, climb stairs, sell all sort of things and some food near Omonia. There is kitsch, useless commodities overflowing like lava the streets. Cynicism breeds on abuse of life chances. And then there are the politicians in parliament talking about some political morality while newspaper repeat the same phrases everyone says.

Nevertheless, it does exist: morality. It is important. Without it, there can be no love for life. But who can prove the validity of these arguments, when people have grown afraid to become political, while nevertheless they transport daily their illusions about life into the city, as if nothing has happened. Stability itself leads to an illusion without any end. Only dexterity, a kind of caution, will tell what the circumstances are about.

Hence there is a need for another kind of argumentation, in order to convince life is worth living. There is yearning and there is intensity. Robert Frost could express it, Neruda in another way and Ritsos saw it even behind bars while looking at rocks.

Materials transformed into scriptures. The air is filled with songs. Water. Children laughing. An old man smiling while he sees them run ahead.

Thus, Aegina can become for the delegates of the fifth seminar a meaningful experience and an encounter with poets participating in the 16th EUROPEAN POETRY FESTIVAL. There will be many voices, different languages and contrasts between thoughts, eye movements and contemplation. Someone will bring the guitar and play for the poets, for there is one truth: without poetry in life, there is no living together. Poetry creates distance through language being close to people. Brendan Kennelly says, 'poetry is the language of the heart'.

One must look more closely at Aegina, an island vis-a-vis Piraeus and Athens. There is time to find out the difference between distant closeness and no distance at all. The latter would mean the break-down of language, forces encroaching completely upon life and no more space to breathe in. It can all happen at once. Without warning. As Conlin Wagner would say, 'but we cannot let that happen'. Reality. Poetic landscape. Inspiration. Intuitive thoughts. Feelings gliding with the fishes through the sea. Earth born again with the islands jumping out of the water like dolphins before splashing back into the water again. Again and again. The motions of the earth never stop. Nor does the heart. Some are high, some are low, but all belong to this earth. Feet on the ground, eyes up to the sky. See and understand. See and laugh. See and think. Balzac like strides through the alleys where your friends and neighbours live. A masterly network woven daily with smiles and seeing, not blind eyes. Doors open. Drinks are shared. There is time for a chat. Come inside and listen.

'"The world needs artists, but the artists people who can listen" (Brigitte Fischer)

Afterwards

The weakness of a poet group called 'Touch Stone' was exposed once outside forces can begin to disrupt rather than contribute towards the continuity of a group. This is known in literary history, but still it comes always as a surprise and as a shock. The main point was that acknowledgements were not given where due and follow-ups had the signs of excluding systematically authentic moments going beyond a mere political concept which was upheld by Eugene van Itterbeek and the Poetry House in Leuven as if compliance to the regionalisation of European culture as wished for by the present government of the Flemish Community in Belgium would guruantee future financial support for the Poetry House. Poets invited because they come from Lombardi or Catalonia, or criticism that poets from Scandinavian countries were not among the participants, as expressed by Kris Rogiers from the Flemish government in his evaluation of the Fifth Seminar (see report), let individual artistic personalities disappear. This is in contradiction to wishing to bring out and to hear the different voices in European Poetry.

After this 'cultural action' involving many people, it is important to resume the discussion at a more serious level, there where poetry belongs. The poetic voice is an adherence to an authentic 'I'. It includes the imaginative process by which the ego is questioned (Brendan Kennelly). If poetic foresight belongs to the realm of reality, then stretches of the imagination do not. That is always the feeling of being out of place. Many know this of being out of time. They have not kept up the rhythms. In the industrial age they were pounded by the steel foundaries, by the iron fists of the steam engines, all reminding of the man beating the drum while the Roman ships were rowed by slaves towards the save harbour. Hermann Broch in his marvellous book 'The Death of Vergil' describes such a scene: manifestations of helplessness overcome the poet Vergil when lying on his death bed and listening to a boy reading out aloud the 'Aneis', for the laughter of drunkards down below, in the courtyard, interrupt the listening. The laughter as a symbol of intervention for the one who takes too serious his own words while not prepared to listen to voices of others, that may be an interesting component of cultural reflections unable to distinguish between humour and laughter at the expense of the other. Adorno would say, 'culture is killed through seekers of comfort' and he recommended that one should throw oneself out of comfort, in order to adhere to the principle of life as being always outside, there where the winds blow in the face and the acceptance of the 'rules of the game' are not equal to what one wants to communicate quite carefully, in order to restore the delicate balance a poem nearly has and yet misses out everytime such interventions interrupt the murmuring voices. Seized upon by opportunistic forces, there follows often an illusion of authentic inspiration in what is really an upsurge of the 'human cry'. One does not need to go deep into philosophy nor into the expressionistic movement, in order to understand that circumstances alone do not explain why certain things did not work out, why they are repeated, why all of a sudden such cynical themes like 'do poets still make sense' (as the case of the XVth European Poetry Festival) can be but inside a black theatre in Brussels with no contact to the outside, just a black box as if an imitation of photography in need of shuting out all the light that might come into the discussion with a revealing question. That one is not what a poet is per definition, a discussion easily misleading due to always catering to victimised subjects who feel not understood and yet who wish to be free of any political responsibility, but a morbid morality which allows everything and nothing. These then are man created circumstances. They bid for time and they loose time. They know and they do not know. A stone throw away there is the poster on the wall of the Poetry House in Leuven proclaiming which car is the fastest and hence as desirable as the legs of the woman shown beside it. Again these are circumstances of the times, as much as the signs of the park vis-a-vis. The park is not like a green carpet, but rather a mythical entity of some urban planning in the past and hence relegated to be some sort of oasis of fresh air and even silence. However, the Poetry House in Leuven is too busy with its own affairs as that it could pay attention to winds outside. The potentialities once there are lost to the winds even before they could have been translated into some real and positive meaning of the word 'poetry': a song out of love in life.

Instead of a title: Poetry and Mythology - this year's theme of the XVIth European Poetry Festival

Down midday, over the hills, the burdens of time, rocks not standing still - or is it the cement that blocs th view? But there are still breath taking valleys close to Phaistos, and the village Kamilari in Crete with an incredible canyon of the 'Holy Church' nearby, that is, not within walking distance but within 'distance' of the seeing eye. There, in the midst of contradictions between the new and the old, poets came together to discuss papers and poems they had written on the theme 'myth and poetry'. As Ancient Greeks would say it, everything is a gift of the Gods and man takes while abiding to the laws or not, for there are many Gods, not just one and human as well. That meant they did well or were mischievous, cheaters and able to throw at each rocks out of jealousy. At least, some story tellers resorted to such real accounts, for what other explanation could they give for a rock just standing in the fields, unexplainable on how it got there. Thus dipping into the unknown had a reason. As Katerine Anghelaki-Rooke would say, poetry is not "theoretical or logical, but empirical".

The poets gathered in Kamilari, Crete due to an idea of Poly Kasda, performance artist, to seek in the 'memory of the land' the mythical paths by becoming aware of 'energy flows' that can be read through symbols enshrined in rocks and nature's own multiform of languages. She felt Crete was the lace for the poets to 'energise' themselves, to feel the power of the land, in order to find the 'soul' that many may have lost in due course of time, like ancient travels having been away from home for too long a time.

Hence there came the poets Maja Patajotova, Bruno Kartheuser, Donatella Bisutti, Beatrice Diener, Andriette Stathi, Jose L. Reina Palazon, Katerine Anghelaki-Rooke, Liana Sakelliou-Schultz, Olympia Karayiorga, Sophia Yannatou, Emer Rondas, Myrsini Lambraki, Hatto Fischer along with the writer Conlin Wagner, Galetea Psonis from New York, Eugene van Itterbeek from the Poetry House in Leuven, the son of Poly Kasda, Angela Spoerl, the photographer Elena Sheehan from San Francisco and students from Belgium visiting Crete to make an assessment of cultural activities on that island.

The poets' texts, works of art discussed outside an abandoned school building in the shade of the trees whose tune still sounded in the ears once the wind had died down (Bruno Kartheuser) followed at the same time a deeper purpose: the clarification of the concept 'myth' and the role it plays still nowadays in poetry. Explain, explain, breathe a sign of life and draw your dreams as if telling a story of truth without wishing to hurt anyone - that may be a poet's dream if stuck to the inside of the outside to life. There was a need for a kind of clarification difficult to come by. Most of the Greek poets even resisted at first the idea of not writing poems, but essays in which they had to explain their position with regards to 'myth'.

The most important position was made explicit by Bruno Kartheuser in his poetic manifestation stating, that 'poets should not allow themselves to be misused for purpose of symbolic power'. He added, nor should they forget Ritsos in this experience of an 'undefeatable summer', for poetry must like Ritsos did give back to people the human substance they have lost in due course of history's grinding mill stones. This goes without 'translation': human substance recognising itself what it is: just there to restore human dignity.

Jose L. Reina Palazon emphasised the same point when talking at Phaistos with all the poets having in front of them an unforgetable beauty of a valley stretching towards the mountains where Zeus is said to have been born when the light sweeps the mountain tops. He said that poems can only then be created when no power is wanted, even the power over oneself. Thus, myth and poetry become empirical when the unbelievable beauty of 'this life' (Katerine Anghelaki-Rooke) is matched by the 'voice' coming out of silence, in order to make the place become alive again.

It is said that honesty in poetic voices defines the very substance by which we learn to unlearn our hatreds, more often transformed into not only prejudices, but convictions which make everything look insulting, if challenging the established belief-system (Brendan Kennelly). This is said because the background of that discussion in Crete was not only formed by a beautiful landscape, but also by the many problems of Europe hindering integration. As their contribution, poets are at the forefront in trying to understand the different languages, while making possible translations and experiences of differences. It is their voices which is needed in a world loosing rapidly the ability to live together, or as Eugene van Itterbeek would say, 'the silence of intellectuals' stems from the fact that many are no longer engaged in any project worthy to be spoken about - a sort of random evaluation of what has value. That silence is most problematic, for as a result of indifference and loss of values, it leaves 'the silence of nature' unanswered or the mythical part in everyday language untold. It is then just another silence. But that should not be the case, for silence is also the beginning of children wishing to hear authentic voices telling them mythical stories and hearing none so that their imagination remains without a counterpart, but only realigned with the ideological forces of time. As Michel Foucault would say, 'we have to find the places of silence, before the lyrical protest covers them up'. In other words, poetry must not succumb to some symbolic action, if it is to avoid the real violence inflicted daily upon poets and the fabric of poetry, namely human life.

The people of Kamilari expressed through their mayor that the poets made but a beginning in their coming. They were eager to know about plans of continuity. When the poetry reading took place in the village Wednesday evening, June 1, 1994, the people of the village felt to be connected to Europe through hearing the different voices of European poetry. They were honoured by the presence of so many poets and showed their Cretian hospitality. It was a unique experience for everyone.

The event was organised by Touch Stone, an international group of poets in Athens. The Poetry House in Leuven had asked that these activities be called the XVIth European Poetry Festival. There will follow in many European languages a small edition of what are some of the most important ideas as discussed at this festival about 'myth and poetry'.

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Reflections of the XVI European Poetry Festival by Hatto Fischer