Poetry International Poetry International
52e Poetry International Festival Rotterdam
Short reading: three poets

Short reading: three poets

Takako Arai, Cornelia Hülmbauer & Aigerim Tazhi

Celebrated Japanese poet Takako Arai replied to our invitation to Rotterdam with a poem about her frequent trips to small villages, where she sits on a bench and listens to the voices of old ladies. Everything is poetry to Arai. Her poems are playful, avant-garde and vibrant. They track sounds to their source, express how sounds are made in the body and give them names. In the enthralling anthology Factory Girls (2020) rhythmic, narrative poems reveal the harsh hidden world of women who work in the declining silk industry, bringing their emotional world to life and placing them in surreal situations: “Ghosts, people, factories, and creatures blow through each other like smoke rings (…) so vivid and vermicular, they all but crawl under the reader’s skin.” (Japan Times)

Cornelia Hülmbauer writes poetry, short prose and radio plays. Her poems are emotionally charged, with sentences that seek the precise words to express something intangible, and generally ominous. Searching language, ...

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Celebrated Japanese poet Takako Arai replied to our invitation to Rotterdam with a poem about her frequent trips to small villages, where she sits on a bench and listens to the voices of old ladies. Everything is poetry to Arai. Her poems are playful, avant-garde and vibrant. They track sounds to their source, express how sounds are made in the body and give them names. In the enthralling anthology Factory Girls (2020) rhythmic, narrative poems reveal the harsh hidden world of women who work in the declining silk industry, bringing their emotional world to life and placing them in surreal situations: “Ghosts, people, factories, and creatures blow through each other like smoke rings (…) so vivid and vermicular, they all but crawl under the reader’s skin.” (Japan Times)

Cornelia Hülmbauer writes poetry, short prose and radio plays. Her poems are emotionally charged, with sentences that seek the precise words to express something intangible, and generally ominous. Searching language, simple, featuring dialect and references to folk songs and counting rhymes; her sentences appear mainly to show how difficult it is to say things accurately. This is a serious task when it comes to the gulf between remembering and forgetting, or the harm people do to each other. Often, an ‘I’ will address a ‘you’ in a conversation that hints at wider engagement, like the imbalance in male-female relations. A fine example of this is the series Zyklus V, which is above all about the female body in the social space, and about the female voice in our society. Poems are often set in families, a context that is comforting, but is also infected by secrets and domestic violence. Threat combined with cool humour make for work that is multi-layered and full of surprises.

Aigerim Tazhi (1981) is a Kazakh poet whose poetry impresses and will move you. The profusion of images Tazhi conjures up makes her poetry a compelling call to reconsider the principles behind her world of magic. In her collection Paper-thin Skin she sketches a miraculous world that nonetheless seems to be completely watertight. However fictional characters, creatures and landscapes may be, they are photographically lifelike from head to toe, each with its own self-evident logic. Scenes of everyday domestic life metamorphose into almost unimaginable surrealism. Her poetry is thus one of twists and turns; her poems are portals to places that could be anywhere around us. Everywhere, and yet, always just out of reach. Tazhi's poetry is one of a reversal of roles, a depersonalized narrative where the author's perspective is often missing and has been exchanged for that of perception. 'Work of stunning originality' (John Butler).

Host: Tsead Bruinja

Date:
Su June 12
17:00 - 18:00
Location:
LantarenVenster 2

Pricing

For this program you need a day ticket for Saturday 11 June or a festival passe-partout
Day ticket: 10 to 25 euro’s
Passe-partout (three days): 25 – 50 euro’s
Discounts for CJP, Student card, Rotterdampas

Language and duration

Poets will read their work in their own language. Translations in English and Dutch will be presented simultaneously through projections. 

See also

Sponsors
Gemeente Rotterdam
Nederlands Letterenfonds
Stichting Van Beuningen Peterich-fonds
Ludo Pieters Gastschrijver Fonds
Lira fonds
Partners
LantarenVenster – Verhalenhuis Belvédère