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 

Ondřej Buddeus - a brief interview

Ondřej Buddeus (1984) is a Czech translator, poet and a sporadic essayist. He translates from German and Norwegian (J. Winkler, J. E. Vold, A. Mortensen et al.) and is editor-in-chief of the contemporary Czech poetry magazine Psí vino and is writing his doctoral thesis in Scandinavian studies. His work has been translated into German, Italian, Polish and English. In 2011, he published his début text collection 55 007 characters with spaces and a picture book for adults, Orangutan in captivity tends towards obesity. He was nominated for the Magnesia Litera Prize, Bank Austria Literaris and Dresdner Lyrikpreis. In 2013, he was awarded the Jiří Orten Prize for his collection Swiftly.

Ondřej spoke to festival blogger Nia Davies...

Nia: I've been reading the poem Chatroom: The History of the Coca Cola Trademark in Central and Eastern Europe from 1990 - 2011. Like you I was born in 1984. So, though our educations began at different sides of Europe and we didn’t have to endure field trips to the same places, I share the same feeling of distant familiarity with the later events you describe in the Chatroom: the Gulf and Yugoslavia wars, Operation Enduring Freedom etc. In a chatroom you address in this poem I could say we share an awareness of world events, we are similar, ‘I am normal, and you?’ you seem to say. There's distant feeling of world 'experience'. You endure ‘field trips to Prachovské / skály and the Rwanda genocide’. The poem seems to explore the banal/shallow knowledge of online ‘friendship’. We both went to dance classes as the world trade towers came down and started work when as the war in Iraq began. This we share. I’d like to drive more too but I am scared of parking. So we must be ‘friends’. What do you think of this kind of ‘friendship’ we have? Do you find the kind of expressions and relationships one makes on the internet material for making poetry?

Ondřej: The one who is telling this poem, is actually not me. I always thought that here is speaking someone younger that me (let’s say 5 years) – so the situation is a little more complicated, because I’m reading that person's experience with the same eyebrow-lifting as you are – and perhaps with the same feelings. Is it his/her indifference (how can she/he equate a field trip to some local landmark with a genocide?) that is provoking me? Or it is not insensibility at all? (He/she knows well about what’s happening around her/him and has a very limited chance to do something). So is she/he a caring person or asocial idiot? Is she/he a guilty victim of infotainment and egoism or quite the reverse? I don’t know.

And based on this ambiguity it starts to be fascinating for me somehow – that person is speaking my language (and yours as I see, as well). Then I start to ask me if she/he isn’t too similar to me (since the “common/shared language” is an important cultural phenomenon and one of the pieces composing the identity) – and if yes – am I a person with the caring awareness or an idiot? Again, I don’t know. Do I really have to be friends with this person (yes, it is fictional, but nevertheless…)? The chatroom communication is extremely limited to the textual level (no voice, intonation, body language, gestures – so it is like all the social media an interface of role-playing-game), it brings a very special kind of friendship – a friendship-playing game. And this is something that you, me as well as that guy or girl do share and do intuitively know very well. Therefore I can hardly imagine that this identity– and relations– gaming/gambling will not be a part of what (and how!) we are writing. Or at least some of us.

Nia: can you tell me more about your ‘picture book for adults’?

Ondřej: It is a book with a very long title, namely 'Orangutan in Captivity Tends toward Obesity'. I wrote a series of three-lines poems (not really haikus) often using small paradoxes, minimalistic puns etc. There is one in English as well. It’s a kind of small subversion of the “artworld” where when you’re not speaking one special language, you are more or less invisible. It’s called “you knows”:

if be there no
English there
artist nobody!

I showed the texts to a friend, illustrator and artist Alžběta Skálová. Together with graphic designer Martina Kupsová we started to elaborate on a book which in its visuals uses the very same simper-subversivity as the texts do. And then, after all the work, we found out, that the pics and three-liners on the page compose something complex, you actually can’t separate them from each other when reading it. We knew from the beginning that it is going to be a book for “homo ludens” and because it is using the strategies of children literature, but the motives are from the adult world, we’ve created this category 'picture book for adults'. It’s nice and almost unmerchantable, because booksellers know only picture books for children or books for adults and if there is something in between, it’s rather confusing.

From Orangutan in captivity tends towards obesity

Ondřej Buddeus will be performing tonight at the final event of the festival - 'All ears' at Bangor University. You can read his poem in Welsh and English translation on the festival website.

Doina Ioanid - a brief interview

Born in Bucharest in 1968, Doina Ioanid is the author of five collections of poetry which consist largely of prose poems. Her latest collection is Ritmuri de îmblânzit aricioaica or in English translation Chants for Taming The Hedgehog Sow. You can read a poem from this collection on the festival website in English and Welsh translation.

In advance of her performances in North Wales Doina spoke to Nia Davies about her work. 

Nia: You’ve described a process which takes place in your writing of making surprising connections, often undetected at first, between memories, stories and images. Through these connections come an element of the surreal. So do you believe that the neurological process of pattern-seeking is central to writing? And if so how do you harness this to create a poem?

Doina: Those connections between memories, stories and images leading to a surreal element are important for my poetry. The act of writing in itself supposes multiple connections, in order to understand better how you feel, how you perceive the world and your being in this world. What we usually call reality is a superficial word covering an enormous area of realities. The world's manifestations have many layers as well as many levels and that's why a poet needs to find his way through all this in order to seize or to catch sight of them, or at least a glimpse. Paying attention to what happens to you, inside you and outside you, becomes very important. Writing poetry precedes in fact the act of writing itself: I see, I watch, I hear, I listen, I feel and I collect images, sounds, words, pieces of dreams, little stories, sensations and experiences. I become a receptacle where all these personal and affective slides gather in a puzzle. But it's not only my brain, my mind who stocks these elements. My body, my senses participate as well. I am a sensitive reservoir, a deposit working to grab connections, words, rhythms. 

It's a long and subtle process, not entirely conscious, of maturation requiring an internal attention and a lot of patience before arriving to express myself, to put a poem on paper. I bear inside me this mixture, this compost. I walk with it, I live with it and one day it hits off immediately: I just feel I'm reaching the right word, the right rhythm - or maybe it is the other way around, they reached me. Anyway, the poem pours out of me in an amazing way. Of course, once the poem is there, in front of me, once it took shape and voice, I have to refine it, to do the final adjustments.

Doina will be performing in Mold on Friday the 18th of October and in Aberystwyth on Monday the 21st of October and at other events over the weekend.  You can find out more at http://www.northwalesinternationalpoetryfestival.org