Harmony is death! Astrid Lampe talks to Nia Davies

It’s now well over a month since the second North Wales International Poetry Festival ended and I’ve been reflecting on how the experience has shifted my view of poetry. Encountering so many new poetic approaches was a multidirectional but pleasurable linguistic confusion! One particular approach that has altered my way of thinking about poetry is Astrid Lampe’s poetry and her words ‘harmony is death’. Like many of the other poets at the festival her approach opened up a space for me to think in new ways about what poetry is, what it can be and what working with text as a medium means. I asked Astrid to expand upon what she meant by these memorable words. Here is her reply:

‘People think that the best poem is a perfect performance. But to me that is death. People stick to death by worshipping monuments. They stick to death by adoring great poems and their perpetual value. Established beauty, I find, especially in the long run, quite boring. To me poetry is a handy tool within reach for everyday surviving. By being adorers, we rely even more on the great poets who wrote all the amazing stuff than we rely on our own verbalization, our own reading skills. Language, thought and ideas are moving all the time. It is not a fountain - it doesn’t spurt up in one go. The adventure is in the process - poetry is an open space not a narrative. Every new poem is, as well as an artistic contribution, a fresh definition of what poetry is or can be. 

I don’t even like the idea of a poem. I prefer ‘poetry’ because there is no final pinning down of language, it is about decisions, choices. It is about media, particularly the new media, and it’s all changing all the time. It is very good to have a strong idea but the moment you adore your idea you will be a slave to it. Poetry is not a programme. I like to move through poetry as I move through space.’

And here is one of Astrid's poems with translations into Welsh by Eurig Salisbury and into English by Dianne Butterman. 

POËTICA 

(OOK ALS IK GEEN LICHAMEN IK)

al mijn werk is lichamelijk 
ook als ik geen lichamen ik

ook als ik geen -  
ben ik een verpersoonlijking van deze poëzie
ik kan me niet beter uitdrukken dan in mijn werken 
mijn ik is er tot in de intiemste aard in verwerkt

ook als ik geen lichamen ik

wat ik me voorneem is helder 
maar mijn uitwerking wil daar altijd aan voorbij 
wat ik me voorneem is helder 
maar mijn voornemen wil altijd oplossen 

niets liever dan dat 

(oplossen oplossen) 

er op los in dit werk dat ik niet ken

veelal pakt het zo uit dat het verdomd lijkt - ‘verdomd…’
of ik met dit werk een taboe had willen slechten 

maar ik zou niet weten wat voor taboe (laat staan óf het een taboe)
deze waterende vrouw 

ik portretteerde haar zoals ik zelf water

ik laat het gelukzalig lopen

BARDDONEG

(HYD YN OED OS WYF NID CYRFF WYF)

corfforol yw fy ngwaith
hyd yn oed os wyf nid cyrff wyf

hyd yn oed os wyf nid –
y farddoniaeth hon wedi’i phersonoli wyf i
nid wyf yn medru mynegi fy hun yn well nac ar gerdd
yr hyn wyf yn y modd mwyaf personol

hyd yn oed os wyf nid cyrff wyf

mae’r hyn yr wyf yn ei gynllunio ar fy nghyfer yn eglur
ond mae f’ymhelaethu â’i fryd bob tro ar fynd ymhellach
mae’r hyn yr wyf yn ei gynllunio ar fy nghyfer yn eglur
ond mae fy nghynlluniau â’u bryd bob tro ar ddod i fwcwl

dim mwy na hynny

(i fwcwl, i fwcwl)

dod â’r peth i fwcwl yn y gerdd ddieithr hon

daw’n aml i’r amlwg ei bod yn edrych o beth diawl – ‘i’r diawl ag e …’
fel pe bawn i’n ben set yn y gerdd hon ar dorri tabŵ

ond wn i ddim sut fath o dabŵ (os tabŵ wedi’r cwbl)
y fenyw hon sy’n piso

mae’n piso’n union fel yr wyf i’n piso

yr wyf yn gadael iddo lifo’n braf

Cyfieithwyd gan Eurig Salisbury



POETICS

(ALSO IF I NO BODIES I)

all my work is bodily
also if I no bodies I

also if I no –
I am a personification of this poetry
I cannot express myself better than in my works
my I is integrated into that in the most intimate way
also if I no bodies I

what I plan for myself is clear
but my elaboration always wants to go beyond that
what I plan for myself is clear
but my plans always want to resolve

nothing better than that

(resolve resolve)

to resolve it in this work that I do not know

often it works out that it damned well looks – ‘damn it…’
as though through this work I wanted to break a taboo

but I don’t know what kind of taboo (let alone if a taboo)
this pissing woman

I portrayed her the way I pass water

I allow it to blissfully flow

Translated by Diane Butterman

You can read another poem 'Hollands Diep' by Astrid Lampe in English and Welsh translation on the festival website: http://www.northwalesinternationalpoetryfestival.org 

Eiríkur Örn Norðdahl - a brief interview

Eiríkur Örn Norðdahl is an Icelandic poet, translator and author of four novels. His most recent novel Illska (Evil, 2012), was awarded the Icelandic Literary Prize and the Icelandic Book Merchants' Prize. Sometimes Eiríkur makes (award-winning!) animated poetry and quite often he performs (mind-blowing!) sound poetry at festivals of art, music and poetry. He has also published a book of poetics, Booby, Be Quiet! (2010, poEsia).  His forthcoming book of poems is Hnefi eða vitstola orð. 

You can read one of his poems in English and Welsh translation on the festival website.

Ahead of his performances in North Wales this weekend, Eiríkur spoke to poet and festival blogger Nia Davies.

Nia: I saw you perform earlier this year at StAnza in Scotland. I found your performance exhilarating and warm - a celebratory subversion of the medium of language and sound. It seems that experiment is central to your writing processes. And you’ve hinted elsewhere that your route into poetry was one of a fight with boredom.  Would you agree with that? In other words, how does restless figure in your practice?

Eiríkur: I used to be really nervous when reading on stage. I would tremble horribly and read too fast – people were always complaining they didn't catch what I was saying, asking me to slow down, which would make me even more nervous, so my feet would start trembling and when I'd clench my legs to stop them my hands would start shaking, so much that I'd not be able to read the text I was holding, and when I clenched my arms I'd start stuttering and fumbling with my words. At some point, a little over ten years ago, I realized that if I went in the opposite direction and spoke louder and faster I could get rid of all that nervous energy, or at least put it too some use. I guess that's not really restlessness but it's a related matter – living is mostly a question of what to do with the energy, how to preserve it and how to spend it. I do like dicking around, fiddling and playing around – with paper, word, Word, flash, sound, whatever's around to be played with. 

I used to live in Finland and I'd speak Icelandic to my then wife and she'd answer in Swedish, and our son would jumble everything together, while our friends spoke mostly Czech, French, Mandarin, German, Portuguese, Spanish and Finnish – and being immersed in languages like that is like fumbling around in the dark, feeling your way around, trying to pair things together more or less blindly, so you start seeing etymological strands everywhere (like noticing that the word for draft beer in Finnish is "tuoppi" and in Brazil it's "chopp" and feeling that they're almost the same). I guess what I'm trying to say is that I enjoy the experiment, I enjoy the fumbling around, I enjoy being nervous and I enjoy learning new things. 

I think that malforming or destroying or stretching the language does have a deeper philosophical point, as well as a political and social point, but I'd be lying if I didn't own up to the fact that I do it because I enjoy it on some rather primal, instinctual level. I've always had the notion that art cannot only be entertaining, nor can it only be remarkable – it needs to be both. It needs to both bring the mountain to Mohammed and get Mohammed to come join the mountain. If that makes any sense. 

Nia: I loved the poem in which you played with the non-sensical/sensical words of an a legendary Icelandic blacksmith. This poem reminded me that both in Iceland and Wales poetry is a very important part of culture, identity and even everyday life. This enviable centrality of poetry can for poets be both an encouraging support, and key to continuity, but also potentially a conservative restriction.  What is your relationship with tradition? Is there something telling here in how you inverted the story and language of the blacksmith? 

(Is this the poem I saw? On Lyrikline?)

Eiríkur: Yep, that's the one. Æri-Tobbi is the name – Mad Tobbi. 

My relationship to tradition is a troubled one. Choosing Æri-Tobbi to work with isn't exactly a typical choice for someone meaning to give homage to his past – he's mostly seen as some sort of joke (and in the five volume tome, The history of Icelandic literature, he's not mentioned other than in passing while discussing someone else). It's not that I am not interested in the poetry or that it doesn't give me anything, this "having a tradition" thing – but I feel I want to subvert it, if only to escape the "nation-building" chauvinist parts of it, the parts used for political speeches and cocktail parties, where the president or the prime minister will use all of it, from Snorri Sturluson to Björk and beyond, to justify their own political ends, be they to encourage the now bankrupt bankers of old in the outwards excursions, or to garner support for increased isolationism, or the idea that Icelanders are somehow radically different. 

There is also a problem where this continuity of tradition blocks out other important traditions or influences from abroad. Iceland, for instance, doesn't have an avant-garde history. There are a few pockets here and there where something happened – but no continuity. Which is also why I like Æri-Tobbi – it's a way to create an imagined avant-garde continuity (as all traditions, like all nations, are beautiful figments of our imagination). 

Nia: Can you tell me what it was like being the poet in residence at the Library of Water?

Eiríkur: It was an honour and a pleasure. I don't know what more to say about it. It was a very hectic three months – I had a novel that just came out so I was constantly commuting to Reykjavík for readings, and the library was a quiet haven in between. I did organize two events there, a launch party for my novel, and a reading with my friend Angela Rawlings, which was wonderful. 

Eiríkur Örn Norðdahl will be performing at the festival in Bangor on the 17th and 18th of October and in Aberystwyth on Monday the 21st of October and at other events at the festival. Visit http://www.northwalesinternationalpoetryfestival.org to find out more.