Camaraderie in the European Poetry Festival
The Book Office is proud to be supporting the European Poetry Festival, which took place between April 5th and 14th, gathering over 70 poets from 27 countries, in an extraordinary celebration of the possibilities of contemporary European poetry. The EPF is designed to be a pioneering showcase of live literature, including collaboration and performance, that aims at no less than to begin a tradition - an annual festival in the UK, that shares the best of 21st century European and British poetry across the country. The festival is about innovation as well as community, in that the more hospitable the happening, the more challenging the work on display is free to be.
Among the many events which were part of this year's programme, we would like to take a chance to focus on the Camarade, a concrete manifestation of European artistic collaboration. The Camarade is a way to bring together dozens of European poets to London to perform and build connections that will last for decades. The event has become a mainstay of The Enemies Project and is the tradition on which the festival has been founded. Collaboration inculcates not only an open, welcoming atmosphere at live literary events, but inherently inspires innovation in the works being performed.
... Discover an example of the result of such camaderie here, featuring a duo composed of French poet Frédéric Forte and Irish-Cypriot poet Christodoulos Makris!
Frédéric Forte was born in Toulouse, France, in 1973, and lives in Paris. He has been a member of the well-known Oulipo (Workshop of Potential Litterature) since 2005. He has published 9 collections of poetry (the most recent being Dire ouf (P.O.L, Paris, 2016)) and several chapbooks. Three of his books have been translated in English: Seven String Quartets (La Presse/Fence Books, Iowa City, 2014), Minute-Operas (Burning Deck, Providence, 2015) and 33 Flat Sonnets (Mindmade Books, Los Angeles, 2016). He has also translated into French the American poets Michelle Noteboom and Guy Bennett.
And for the French-speaking amongst you... Take a few minutes to read Frédéric Forte's impressions of England:
Stunning
Ce n’est pas passionnant d'attendre. Dans les salles d’attente, chez le médecin par exemple, on peut voir différents magazines posés en vrac sur la table basse, mais ce n’est pas passionnant. Ou quand on attend le bus à un arrêt de bus, quand on prend le bus. Ce n’est pas passionnant. Sauf en Angleterre. En Angleterre, quand on prend le bus, c’est toujours passionnant. Un certain jour de février, dans un bus en Angleterre, j’ai discuté avec un monsieur anglais d’une soixantaine d’années, qui m’a demandé ce que je pensais de la guerre à venir, qui m’a dit que son fils vivait sur la Côte d'Azur près de Monaco, qu’il y était allé une fois, que c’était très beau et que mon anglais était « really correct ». Il était vraiment très bien élevé ce monsieur anglais. C’était passionnant.
(extrait de Comment(s), éditions de l’Attente, 2006)
Christodoulos Makris is "one of Ireland's leading contemporary explorers of experimental poetics" (The RTÉ Poetry Programme). He has published several books, pamphlets, artist's books and other poetry objects, most recently The Architecture of Chance (Wurm Press, 2015), if we keep drawing cartoons (If A Leaf Falls Press, 2016) and Browsing History (zimZalla avant objects, 2018). One of Poetry Ireland's 'Rising Generation' poets, in 2017 he was Digital Poet in Residence at StAnza Festival in St Andrews, Scotland, and received a project commission from the Irish Museum of Modern Art. He is co-director of Dublin's multidisciplinary event series Phonica, and the poetry editor of gorse journal and associated imprint Gorse Editions. More on his website.
The European Poetry Festival is curated by Steven J. Fowler, with assistance in 2018 from Samantha Emily Evans, Katerina Koulouri, Yvonne & Litschel.
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