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Poets and Myth of Europe - an evaluation

Discussion on grounds of old school of Kamilari    Photo: Elena Sheehan 1994

In 1994, prior to the Fifth Seminar, Cultural Actions for Europe, Hatto Fischer arranged that 30 poets would gather first in Kamilari, Crete to discuss poetry in conjunction to myths and mythology.

There was a lot of tension in the group due to other force fields tending to go into different directions. The writer Colin Wagner played a subversive role, as did Eugene van Itterbeek. Also Poly Kasda had her own agenda related to a mystic way to retain memories of the earth.

A major disappointment was that the poets did not seem to understand what was ahead of them: the Fifth Seminar. It consisted of 100 delegates sub divided into ten different work shops. The poets should join these different workshops to ensure that the cultural dimension would be taken into consideration.

Unfortunately only few traces have been left of the time the poets spend in Kamilari and at Phaistos. Only some of them retained a practical tension to this effort to enrich knowledge about the cultures of Europe through poetry.

Brendan Kennelly would later put it one year later in no uncertain terms. After he had experienced the 'Myth of the City' conference in which poets discussed with planners, architects and others about living conditions in cities, and therefore were not only amongst themselves, it prompted him to say in future he would no longer attend poetry festivals. He went on to write an anti-poetry festival book called 'Poetry, my Arse!'. He saw poets like others risk to become specialists and then isolate themselves in their own field of speciality. They would no longer wonder about anything else but were merely concerned whether or not they could find a publisher for their poetry and when they would appear at which next festival. Their interest was focused on public relation efforts regardless which of their poems were still being read, never mind worked with and appreciated for making a difference in daily life.

One major outcome of the Fifth Seminar was, however, the recording Savina Yannatou made with the voices of poets reading their own poems. She took the recordings of the poets reading their own poems and added both instrumental sound and two different tracks to record her voice. One picked up some words the poets would say like 'anthropos'; the other track would record her gutteral sounds or what the voice by itself could articulate in vibrating sounds. Often it appeared as the poets were being heard within the corridors of a monastery.

At the Fifth Seminar, Cultural Actions for Europe, the idea was to relate the cultural dimension to the various disciplines categorized according to ten workshops out of which emerged the ten finger research orientation.

 

 Source: Cultural actions for Europe 1994

While poets were smuggled into all ten workshops to ensure the cultural dimension would be taken into consideration more seriously, the major focal points for the poets was nevertheless workshop 8 on 'language, identity and discourse'.

 

Poetry becomes interesting once interlaced with other activities. Needless to say, the poetic realm itself is a philosophical dimension. It is articulated by someone like Katerina Anghelaki Rooke. Yet even she did not grasp fully what the Fifth Seminar was all about.

One reason why so many poets going astray is that they feel often misunderstood or not recognized enough, while the link to scientific knowledge and political discourse is not their 'cup of tea'. Frankly speaking, some of them are deeply resigned to the fact that they have through their work no impact at all. 

Quite different is a poet like Brendan Kennelly who would go beyond poetry by giving practical advise. Thus he advanced the notion of cities and rural places having become one and the same as 'rururb' spaces at the 'Myth of the City' in 1995 and recommended later on for the CIED project the objective 'learn to use, but not abuse culture'.

             Poetry Festival in Aegina 1994   Photo: Elena Sheehan 1994

But to come back to that interaction with poets in 1994, after having stayed in Kamilari, Crete and then in Athens where Savina Yannatou made a presentation of her voice interacting with that of the poets, the poets went together with all participants of the Fifth Seminar to Aegina where a poetry festival had been planned, but most of the participants could not listen since they were so hungry. It is after all a matter of organisation what should have first priority.

Hatto Fischer

Athens 1994/ updated 1995

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