Indigenous Poetry: Natalie Diaz, Billy-Ray Belcourt, Daniela Catrileo, Hinemoana Baker, P. José

[Music] so [Music] so [Applause] welcome to eco eco indigenous voices the long poetry night here on stage at the international literature festival in berlin and also online as this event is being broadcasted live and available in the festival's live stream a warm welcome to the poets whose poetry will be hearing here tonight in order of their appearance on stage daniela catrille hinemoana baker billy ray belcourt peregrintino jose and natalie diaz [Applause] i'm carolina golimoska and it's my great pleasure to host this evening and to lead you through it within the next two hours roughly we are going to proceed in a hybrid format with some of my guests being here with me and others joining us online on this big screen ecoeco is a series of events organized in cooperation with the cluster of excellence temporal communities doing literature in a global perspective at freya university here in berlin in which as the cluster defines literature is understood as a multi-voiced diversed echo chamber tonight we'll be moving across the globe starting with chile moving on to new zealand canada mexico and ending the journey in the united states and we'll be listening to what is e-code in the poetry discussing the notions of indigeneity and traces of colonialism the relation between nature and the human body and also the relation between land and identity we will raise the issue of indigenous voices and narratives being a missing part in the western understanding of what literature history is and we'll discuss the different forms of access to the understanding of the world its elements and powers that the poetry will encounter here tonight can grant we will be listening to the poems first in their original language version and then the translations into german with us here are nina west and sven phillip actors and speakers who will kindly give their german voices to these translations after each reading we'll have time for a couple of questions and a brief discussion with the authors we will also see some visuals also here in the background the the task that all the authors were given was to show us a little bit more of their everyday working environment and they interpreted it in different ways so we'll see what that means within the evening so now i would like to warmly welcome and invite to the stage daniela catrille alexander schmidt who is our interpreter tonight doing interpretation spanish english and nina vest who is the german voice of daniela catrillo tonight [Applause] was born in santiago de chile she's a mapuche writer artist activist and philosophy lecturer she graduated from the universidad metropolitana de las cienzas de la educacion with a degree in education and philosophy she organizes literary workshops and is an active member of the mapuche feminist collective the name of which i practiced before the reading with daniela and i will do my best which means in between two rivers daniela was a fellow of the chilean ministerio de las culturas las artes el patrimonio in 2012 2016 and 2020. her most recent publication opinion the translation into english i found layered dirt published in 2020 is her first volume of prose daniela catrillo lives in valparaiso and i am extremely pleased that she's here with us tonight in berlin on stage to my left [Applause] opinion is [Music] my [Applause] in grass tower [Music] is [Music] [Music] is [Music] [Music] guadalupe candelaria is [Music] [Music] [Music] the glance these creeks in mittens sleds and bites [Applause] thank you so much daniela and nina we heard excerpts of guerra florida flourishing war published in 2018 for which daniela was awarded the premier municipal de literatura in the category poetry by the city of santiago de chile in 2019. the translation into german has been conducted especially for the festival by rick bolte daniela there's loads of violence in your poetry there is violence against women there is violence against indigenous women indigenous people in general and then there is violence done by the human to the nature or against nature um could you say a little bit more about these connections in your is [Music] representation yes um in a certain way this book um is also kind of a science fiction work in a way um but it is based on a very fundamental experience which is the colonial violence that was exerted right from the beginning and i think that being part of a first nation people and as indigenous people we cannot obviate this we cannot issue this we cannot simply ignore this because colonization of abiala as it is known or latin america as it is also known is one of the uh found founding and original elements really and in this whole in in this picture if you will the women are those who fight whereas the men are the ones that are the colonizers in a way the who are the in invaders in that sense um so what we experience in latin america is a form of uh patriarchal violence and um this is also something that has a very strong impact on the kind of images that also emerge from this mapuche make up around 10 percent of the entire population of chile and yet chile is the only country in latin america that does not recognize indigenous people in its constitution and we heard last night in a conversation with daniela here at the literature festival that there are efforts taking place to change the constitution and you are also active in pursuing these aims do you feel that your poetry is felt and read in chile also as a clear political statement and action the chile pero chile [Music] is [Music] yes i always feel uncomfortable with this designation as an activist or with the word in itself the concept of activism because i believe that that really belongs to the people who in a corporal way actually insert themselves in the communities and in this fight i see myself really much more as somebody who writes and who tries to speak through writing obviously i'm also part and parcel of or i'm also a member of uh as a member of my people also part of a movement but also above and beyond that with other movements that have emerged in recent times and i identify with i don't really perceive my writing or writing as such as an activism or form of activism but rather i believe that writing in itself is political because what do we do we really try and put forward the topics that are important to us we try to make them visible and in that sense right now in chile we are witnessing a moment where there is a clear with the hegemonical structure and power the powers that be really are being um knocked sideways really for the very first time there's a clear fragmentation of the kind of nomenclature or the kind of also dominance by the elites and bourgeois strata of his society and there is a moment where the history of the republic of chile is being changed in a way and we are becoming visible there is a form of representation that is taking place of our cause for the very first time and as i said yesterday we are writing a constitution that in itself is also an act of writing it is in a way a form of literature if you will but one that makes uh that allows many people to participate and it is a form of rendering unto the people what is of the people i.e the power thank you so much i would love to continue this conversation but we have to stop here thank you daniela catrillo [Applause] and now i would kindly like to ask hinemoana baker to join me on stage [Applause] hello kedemoana baker is of maori descent writes her texts in english but also in the maori language and performs them not only as a poet but also as a singer-songwriter she has lived in berlin since i actually found contradictory information 2015 or 2016. she came to berlin as the creative new zealand berlin writer in residence and state apart from being a poet and a musician she's also a doctoral fellow at the research training group minor cosmopolitanism and nismus excuse me at the potsdam university working on a phd carrying the working title or the finite title you're not the maori i had in mind the performance of maori indigenity in germany hina moana baker is the author of the poetry collections matuhi nido koivikovi bone bone waha mouth published in 2020 is a finalist for the occam new zealand 2021 book awards we will now hear three poems from funk house and one from koivi koivi first in the original version and then in the german translation prepared for tonight by ulrika al-mudzandesh kyo [Music] last born i am the last born i move through the crowd with my shiny red wheels i bring with me large animals and flaming spikes in cages i'm the last born and i know who i want to vote for i know the identity of the figure in black low prices are written all over my face i'm the last born and i have a long following everything and everyone is my elder i move through the relatives in my green leaves i eat canoes and drink inlets i have a beard and a small fat crab inside my shell i am the last born the poor tiki the taina everything breaks its back over me but there are many ways to build from scratch and in spite of the fact that every fourth corner of the land has been walked over i make everything ready being the last born i'm desired at each event to lay down the cow leather to direct people to the location of the devils and the tarmac we all bite something for a living i know not to rave and shout when i reach these places i bring children with me just the right number of pumpkins and i sing completely out of tune buying up all the land around with my lucky sand dollars [Applause] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] dollars [Applause] mother is a north wind and she stops the trembling mother has hands of flax and butter linseed and two-stroke all the same we hear the wind try and squall mother is ukai poor and east coast she's not north this early morning feet of cause and effect feet of bridges all of the mother around us all of the mother under us and above us with her we feel unclumsy and on shore the adds and hand smoothened mother of play of katakata of laugh mother of church and kindergarten of live and die mother of born she calls me dreamer knee kicker nail biter calls me in to eat my feet are a plant in real life too whaka now no one can make a non-human object out of me mother and mother we have half a bright red hour we have the whole bled out night through if you have to be diving mother be deep under with a good heavy roof of ocean on you good engineering mother of language mother of land flax fulls of seed and a hand in your hand [Applause] mota [Music] [Music] [Music] uber [Music] [Music] [Music] hand in hand [Applause] if i had to sing i have no idea what to call this rebirth and yet i'm here to name it to feed the new flame with wood from the old language is a flute a lily a chair over balancing a church we teeter on the threshold of there are places where they harvest water from the air drink fog from a glass then overnight hang the rag back on the bayonet does a thing which is reborn need to have died all those cities still live in my mirrors they rise and fall with the sun's realms the way the planet carves its own seismic trench in the solar system the spring charges and recharges its river system while on the columns of our lives press unimaginable stresses hold me up now as i do you sing and steady me under your strong sure feet [Applause] [Music] [Music] [Music] thank you [Applause] this is the last last one and um i just want to say thank you to the festival it's completely overwhelming to be at a festival again but so amazing so to everyone who's made it possible thank you so much to carolina and nina and and also to daniela beautiful [Music] yeah i have books for sale [Applause] [Music] probably not allowed to say that funk house you and i hang limp behind the real thinkers we order more moisture into the air we breathe we shovel up this morning and sprinkle its grit choose our words carefully blood litter bladder we float above our glorious proportions your berlin sends roots down through its dead its buildings and its total recall shake with trains words are gold bricks of light in the season i drift behind my own thoughts a street pigeon an egyptian queen a television tower even my close friends join in in the event of fire we are encouraged to shout fire you perch on a branch utterly visible what's the word for suddenly trucks and their wind gusts lift the leaf litter i hope to see a monolith and feel the ground shake i hope to open a bank account and send packages into autumn and winter but air water fire and when these elements leave the body tomorrow and september you lift at the corners as i pass by [Applause] [Music] [Music] see [Applause] [Applause] thank you so much hina moana thank you nina um i want to ask actually i want to ask many things i would like to ask you about the language you write and you speak you write about the language being a flute a church etc um it made me think just now about of um julia christeva the bulgarian french psychoanalyst and literary theoretician who once said a new language can feel like a new skin and it takes a while for the new language to become your new skin but it makes you wonder about yourself sometimes especially when you hear your voice for example recorded in that language and i was wondering what um what is maori for you and how close it is to your hearts to your skin to your bones good question and it's particularly good in this week because it's maori language week in aotearoa new zealand um we get we get a week it's awesome [Music] [Applause] most of the people i'd say in new zealand still who speak maori are still second language learners we statistically it would still be a language which is uh considered endangered but there's been a huge push from [Music] maori teachers writers speakers elders young people activists since the 1960s and 70s 50s actually earlier to revive it and for me i learned it as an adult and fortunately i'm i'm kind of good at languages but that doesn't mean it wasn't very painful it's not like learning any other language when you're learning your own heritage so it sits very close to yeah the bones and the heart in very stirring ways and it feels like like still feels like a second language which is why i don't write in it so much i'm not as confident in it but i certainly feel very fortunate to be a person who's been able to learn it because there's many maori in new zealand who who haven't been able to yet and another question that is linked to to this one and also to the city of berlin and to funkhouse not just a poem that we heard but the entire collection how has your time in berlin influenced or maybe changed your perception and understanding of indigeneity hmm in two minutes [Laughter] it's um no it's a very very good question and i'd say obviously when you're in a context you are read differently and you read yourself differently than when you are outside of that context and it's i think it's true not just for indigenous people but for humans and here i'm often kind of called upon as a maori writer or a former real person or i guess teacher which is great i'm all for it and and yet it kind of has a sweet irony to it because um one of the reasons i love being here is that i get to escape for a short time the very kind of uh deeply uh rooted racism of new zealand which is of a particular flavour so of course there's racism here i'm not saying there isn't and i'm not saying there's not racism here either but it's different so to be honest it's been quite refreshing to get a break from it and to be read and treated in different ways over here in germany thank you so much hina moana baker thank you and shout out to thank you shout out to rika almo amazing translations she's an incredible writer and performer herself thank you eureka [Applause] we will now be joined by billy rabel court we're moving on to canada and billy will be joining us via live stream hello [Applause] and i would also kindly like to ask sven phillip to join me here on stage who will be the german voice of believer able court tonight [Applause] billy rebel court is a writer and a scholar from the um excuse me driftpile cree nation he's an assistant professor in the creative writing program at the university of british columbia he earned his phd in english at the university of alberta and he is the winner of the griffin poetry prize for his collection this wouldn't is a world and the youngest ever winner of this prize um i'm a little bit confused because i see all of you here and i see billy here and you see you're seeing billy there so i'm i'm trying to address everybody but i'm just a little bit it's going to take me a while to get adjusted here um believe rebel court has published um also two other books ndn coping mechanisms notes from the field a poetry collection and we'll be hearing tonight excerpts poems out of this collection and and also a history of my brief body and essay memoir that was published in 2020 which i believe you talked more extensively here at the literature festival um last night so we will now listen to five poems from the collection ndn coping mechanisms notes from the field in english and then sven will read the german translations done extra for the festival by milan adam thank you so much so happy to be here i wish i um was able to be in germany a country is how men hunt what constitutes an indian a myth doused in midnight a soul in the shape of a clenched fist concerning the collapse of organized human life i demand my two cents to be taken seriously god sends his pale horseman westward every day canadian history or how to wage war on an emotion for a century no one spoke of the extinction of joy a village emptied of its children is a haunting every natural phenomenon becomes an elegant gesture am i a war hero if i succumb to mother nature's fury and not to my captors poets pledge allegiance to a country i don't believe in a country is how men hunt in the dark a man i love but don't trust kisses me the way a soldier might press his face into the soil of his old country i am a museum of modern misery he storms through which is to say the body signals a crisis of representation the body is an archive when it heralds an indictment my suffering will multiply so what if in the end my living amounts to an evidentiary act what i wanted was what i asked for i saw my cook gum for the first time in weeks miraculously she is still alive all morning i picked bits and pieces of history from her hair [Applause] and the foreign [Applause] indian brothers loneliness finds me drunk in an old billy ray belcourt poem what's important is that wherever i am my brother is perched on my right cheekbone we are 24 and already too old for our own good last night felt like our last night they always do this is what makes night nightly in an amnestic nation against the literature of treason behind the wheel of a car without headlights the night is a lukewarm mouth we sing into in other words where the heterogeneity of grief meets the singularity of death is the ndn experience today the ministry of historical ignorance didn't keep me and my brother safe with its extra-legal powers the ministry brought us to our knees so as to clog our throats with polluted language in defiance we lick the walls dirty in a house of administered subjectivity don't blame us our last hope a fever is sunlight breaking apart inside the skull [Applause] here b [Applause] the terrible beauty of the reserve after this idea hartman everyone's uncle thinks he's the world's most handsome indian and no one says otherwise res dogs roam about without having to perform emotional labor for humans they eat where they are welcomed which is everywhere most who live here don't know they are in the ruins of a failed experiment of epic proportions teens blaze to feel the euphoria of being outside memory we all bathe in a sociality of the hangover isn't that no one has time for themselves it is that they're always playing cards or talking about the hockey player connor mcdavid or carpooling the bingo or babysitting their brother's kids we all owe something to someone so we congregate under the presumption of debt and this is always already we all joke about falling in love with our cousins but we are all perpetually falling in love with our cousins in a platonic way because we grew up together and no one was alienated by the tyranny of the couple form vehicles pass through in droves but no one looks so we disappear hands intertwined into the freedom of a simmering anonymity [Applause] hangovers [Music] foreign [Applause] [Music] ndn homo sonnet an ndn is the ellipsis of a nation even in god's palm a homo is a yearning the size of a world is an invisible spectacle a paradox a good melancholia mathematically speaking an indian homo is a metaphysical conundrum but differently i am a mother before all else maggie nelson speculates that a mother is the archetypal of an asian subject which is to say my lover is two fingers pulling apart the mouth of a planet he is a dancer to him my living is the sound of an emptying when i die it will still be autumn in my body i trust he will dust my shadow off so as to watch it tangle in dusk's wild mane i was a windswept eye from the start is [Music] he [Applause] and lastly i believe i exist there are many ways to consume other people eradicate a concept for example without hope i'm a thick fog stained by what i gobble up something to weather under a star of the light i am a sticky dance floor on which a poem has been written on saturday nights i get stickier and stickier until i'm not a dance floor anymore someone death drops yes someone drops dead but he isn't white so no one is there to see it except everyone is there to see it they're just too busy thinking about how much they have changed for the better to open their eyes i am a drag queen named commodity fetishism i performed to rihanna's better have my money except by money i mean body i'm an abstraction of an abstraction of an abstraction and so on i'm a glass half shattered what is a ghost to a ghost but photocopied pity sometimes i want the language of a non-place but no language is placeless proved to me that he who despises the world isn't also transfixed by it i believe i exist to live one can be neither more nor less hungry than that i believe i existed one can't be left hungrier than that thank you [Applause] is plan [Applause] thank you very much billy ray balcourt sven philippe i was wondering about the acronym in the end so um we before we heard the german translation we got a little explanation as of what that means this is what opens your book but has not been read in english tonight and i was wondering can you maybe introduce the term a bit more elaborately to the german audience either is there anything more to know about it are there any origins of it where does it come from [Music] there are a number of indigenous writers in north america who make use of that acronym tommy pico is one of them leanne potassium sac simpson is another i was compelled to use it because the history of indigenous life post-colonization is a history of language we have been called many things names determined outside of our communities and then unilaterally imposed upon us but we know ourselves in different ways and ndn was an acronym that activists and others took up at a time of immense indigenous protests in canada it was called the idol no more movement and was sparked by a handful of indigenous women in the prairies um who were resisting a uh the government's insistence on showing a different to the lives of indigenous people various policy decisions that you know hindered indigenous freedom and also a general call to increase the amount of joy and freedom and sovereignty in our lives i wanted to retain some of that revolutionary spirit that that acronym [Music] emerges out of and another thing i wanted to ask you about um this particular book something that our audience can't see um or couldn't hear is that your mixing genre so believer able court works not only with um verse but also with visuals there are photographs in that poetry collection and there are also other visual interventions that work with the blackening page leaving out [Music] single words um so i was wondering can you maybe can you maybe say a little bit more about um about that additional layer of language that this is giving you um yeah when i was writing the book i came across a number of things that i photographed and that i knew i couldn't how to adequately capture in language so for example there's a photo of what's left of the residential school that my family some of my family members and my relatives were made to attend and there's such an intensity of the about the darkness that emanates from that building that i knew that i had to photograph in order to to represent there's also a photograph of a stop sign on my reserve where someone had spray painted go over the letters that spell stop and no one changed it it remained that way for a couple of years and i to me it felt like a subtle intervention of sorts and um it was proof of a kind of um rebellious ethos amongst young people in particular on the reserve and so that you know the photographs are one way of honoring um or adding another layer of intimacy with the subject matter thank you very much again here i would love to talk more also about the political levels of your writing you just mentioned this school the photograph of which is part of your book but we have to stop here thank you so much for joining us billy rayville court [Applause] [Applause] we're now moving on um on our journey listening to indigenous voices and poetry to mexico and with us tonight via live stream is pergantino jose whom i would like to warmly welcome now [Applause] jose was born in a zapotec village in the pacific highlands of the mexican province oaxaca he has published poetry in prose both in the zapotec language and in spanish and he's a member of the sistema nacional de credores de arte the mexican government's prestigious fellowship program for artists and writers pergantino jose is also a teacher devoted to teaching in small villages in schools where he gives workshops in writing in the zapotec language red ants is a book that i think is in front of alexander right now to be seen um is the first book that was published in english and it's also the first ever translation from zapotec into english done by thomas bunsted we will now hear five poems of um jose in zapotec and spanish and we will then read the german translations that were made prepared extra for the festival by lance lupet and with us is again alexander schmidt who will be interpreting for us gracias [Applause] is my is foreign is foreign [Applause] b [Music] foreign [Applause] [Music] [Applause] esperanto spirit a [Applause] i be asbestos [Applause] [Music] oh foreign [Applause] [Music] [Applause] capital is [Music] is [Music] [Music] foreign [Applause] [Music] [Applause] could for the last two poems to read just one language version because otherwise we won't have the time to discuss um and that would be a shame alexander if you could interpret briefly foreign replicated foreign [Applause] [Music] and [Applause] [Applause] a the green [Applause] gracias thank you so much um again i've got many questions i will start with another huge question and ask you to answer it in two minutes and you're right about political and ecological offences that threaten indigenous communities in mexico in general and you also use the zapotec language to talk about it and to write about it and i read in an interview that you gave that you learned the zapotec language as a spoken language only and you've only started to write in it and learn how to write it much later and i was wondering um what your linguistic strategies are in the poetry you're writing and how important is the language to address these problems that you're addressing and also do you translate all your poems or are there poems that appear or exist only in one language [Music] [Music] is metaphors [Music] a yes first of all sapotec is a language that is has an oral tradition and has been in this oral tradition for many many generations and so there's a scars written tradition really in it um so i have really taken this oral tradition and have taken it towards writing in that sense and have put it in writing so um that is all and also why does it uh lend itself easily also to poetry this is because the language in itself is uh strongly strongly marked by metaphors and that in itself is a very poetic language so it lends itself easily to poetry when i write novels for example or short stories i write them i tend to write them in spanish so when i look at poetry it comes to me easily in sepotec language and then i do the translations myself really into spanish whereas when i start with a novel i very often or a short story i really start writing in spanish itself so our languages are really languages that continue to live in this oral tradition and the fact that people speak this language where i live right now and hand it also on to new generations same happens where i live right now in oaxaca and the region of oaxaca and the mountains where i live and there's a there's an ongoing assault on the language and the people but we still resist and we still try to maintain it [Applause] thank you so much for being here with us for sharing your poetry with us and also the um amazing stunning visuals that we were exposed to throughout the reading um another event with parentino jose at the international literature festival in berlin will take place tomorrow at 4 30 p.m and will be hosted by hernan caro so all of you who are still hungry to you know and want to hear more please feel invited thank you again is well [Applause] [Music] [Applause] we are now turning to the last stop of our global journey tonight we're turning our attention upon the united states and i would like to warmly welcome natalie diaz who will be joining us by a live stream and i would also like to ask nina vest again to join us here on stage and borrow kindly her voice to the german translations [Applause] hello natalie and thank you for joining us natalie diaz hello i grew up on the fort mojave indian village in needles california so to say on the banks of the colorado river her party debut was published in 2012 when my brother was an aztec and her second volume postcolonial love poem won the pulitzer prize for poetry in 2021 we'll be hearing excerpts um or actually one long poem out of that collection tonight she is the director of the center for imagination in the borderlands and i love the name of that center i would actually love to be able to do some studies in that center it sounds amazing and she's also the maxine and jonathan marshall chair and modern contemporary poetry at arizona state university where she teaches in the mfa program in 2021 natalie diaz was elected a chancellor of the academy of american poets she lives in phoenix arizona and i believe she's joining us from there tonight is that correct yes i am yeah great um um nina for carrying my words into into the german language and it's really lucky to to be here with daniela jemiona billy ray and bergentino and gracias also for sarah and simone all of you who gathered us here in this constellation because i feel like most of the natives i know from germany are are playing dress-up so um that's always been an interesting thing for me is to know that that most of the natives in germany have better better regalia than i do so i'm just joining you today in my t-shirt and plastic buttons so i'm not dressed like a like a very good indian today i'm going to read the first part of the poem and nino of course will take it from there and you'll see some images um all of the images there are from my home so they're woven into the poem but yeah gracias again the first water is the body the colorado river is the most endangered river in the united states also it is a part of my body i carry a river it is who i am this is not metaphor when a mohave says we are saying our name we are telling a story of our existence the river runs through the middle of my body so far i have said the word river in every stanza i don't want to waste water i must preserve the river in my body in future stanzas i will try to be more conservative the spanish called us mojave colorado the name they gave our river because it was silt red thick natives have been called red forever i have never met a red native not even on my reservation not even at the national museum of the american indian not even at the largest powwow in parker arizona i live in the desert along a damned blue river the only red people i've seen are white tourists sunburn after staying out on the water too long hamakov is the true name of our people given to us by our creator who loosed the river from the earth and built it into our living bodies translated into english hamakov means the river runs through the middle of our body the same way it runs through the middle of our land this is a poor translation like all translations in american imaginations the logic of this image will lend itself to surrealism or magical realism americans prefer a magical red indian or a shaman or a fake indian in a red dress over a real native even a real native carrying the dangerous and heavy blues of a river in her body what threatens white people is often dismissed as myth i have never been true in america america is my myth derrida says every text remains in mourning until it is translated when mojave say the word for tears we return to our word for river as if our river were flowing from our eyes a great weeping is how you might translate it or a river of grief but who is this translation for and will they come to my language's four night funeral to grieve what has been lost in my efforts a translation when they have drunk dry my river will they join the morning procession across our bleached desert the word for drought is different across many languages and lands the ache of thirst though translates to all bodies along the same path the tongue the throat the kidneys no matter what language you speak no matter the color of your skin we carry the river its body of water in our body i do not mean to imply a visual relationship such as a native woman on her knees holding a box of lando lakes butter whose label has a picture of a native woman on her knees holding a box of lando lakes butter whose label has a picture of a native woman on her knees we carry the river its body of water in our body i do not mean to invoke the drug effect this is not a picture of a river within a picture of a river i mean river as a verb a happening it is moving within me right now this is not juxtaposition body and water are not too unlike things they are more than close together or side by side they are same body being energy prayer current motion medicine the body is beyond six senses is sensual an ecstatic state of energy always on the verge of praying or entering any river of movement energy is a moving river moving my moving body [Music] m [Music] [Music] [Music] b [Music] america is foreign [Music] zurich foreign [Applause] [Music] the german translation that we heard is of brita valtrov um [Music] i feel that the closeness to nature and generally somehow i've got the impression that you construct a language or a certain form of of language that allows you to talk about river land nature as if you were talking about somebody you had feelings for it comes across very naturally and i think it works very well and i also think it came across in the german translation so that there is this very close approach to um [Music] to nature very much linked organically to our bodies and um i was um i was wondering um i would like i would love you to say more about this but also in a political context i'm trying to combine two questions here um [Music] i'm wondering if this is being heard in the political discourse something that comes across very clearly to me in your poetry and i was wondering if um situations like um this one um that for example i mean not for example it's an unprecedented thing but um in december 2020 president biden nominated the first native american interior secretary de paland and a few days after that she tweeted and i'm quoting a voice like mine has never been a cabinet secretary or at the head of the department of interior i'll be fierce for all of us our planet and all of our protected land um [Music] it's a i realize it's a really complicated question but if you could say more about this also linking it to the political situation this would be great thank you yeah gracias and gracias and nina for that really beautiful like muscular energetic reading so i appreciate that i think i mean this is what's lucky right to be among poets um and and poetry readers and listeners and um because i think there's a certain uh physicality and sensuality of language that you know maybe simply becomes um maybe is simply from the fact that we are so intentional which sometimes is a luxury that you can be very intentional about what you say that you can slow down and not have to be fast and have an equation of meaning and sometimes the equation of meaning separates us right from our bodies because we become data or information or communication or a map you know a map even and so i think this is this is a it's our burden as as human beings as living flesh beings is that our language unlike other living beings our language has become disconnected in some ways from the larger living world and so you know uh i i think with someone for example like like deb halland and you know you mentioned that she said a voice like hers had has never been in that position and i think that's a very important thing is to think about the voice which sometimes the voice is not necessarily all there is about language you know what part of the body of language is the voice and then what part of the body of language is the text and our laws are written in text and i think this is this is why poetry there should be more poetry and law you know um and there was a time right when our poets were also astronomers and mathematicians and we set those aside um and i think for me it it is a lucky thing i know it's a lucky thing that i was raised with a language that that didn't um it didn't bifurcate my body from my land my body can only exist with my land or with my water it's almost you know it would be something that i think in english you would have to have a great imagination to to understand that um so i guess for me i'm i'm being i'll try to be more efficient right now but i i guess that's that's always our struggle right is that deb helen has another language a language that values land and water and the relationality and now her great burden is to somehow take that language and see how it can either dismantle the language of law or how how we can kind of bloom somehow inside of it to shift that that other language you know and it's crazy the language that makes law and the language that makes poetry they're they're the same words or come from the same roots it's just that they uh they have different bodies um or they they maybe they practice their bodies in different ways of violence or care thank you so much we're running out of time unfortunately um i think i'm i'm not sure if you feel the same way as i do but i'm um i'm not satisfied with the time we had to have a conversation with our guests but um on the other hand i'm very happy that we had the chance to have so many guests and so many insights into so many poetic landscapes and discourses i would like to thank all our authors daniela catrilleo gina moana baker billy rabalcort fergentino jose and natalie diaz for being here with us i would like to thank our speakers nina vest and sven phillip for reading the german translations i would like to thank our interpreter alexander schmidt for helping us out i would like to thank silent green and the man behind all the techniques that worked out fabulously thank you so much for your support and kindness i would like to thank simone schroeder and tabia fruba from the international literature festival who contributed greatly to establishing what we had tonight and i would like to thank zara irentrout of the cluster of excellence temporal communities doing literature in a global perspective and also lindsey drury and yasmin vrobe for conceptual scientific support thank you dearest audience for being with us this was this year's long night of poetry here in berlin at the international literature festival enjoy the rest of your evening have a good night thank you [Applause] you

Channel: internationales literaturfestival berlin

Views: 821

Keywords:

Id: LbKaHpeer3c

Length: 127min 53sec (7673 seconds)

Published: Sat Sep 18 2021