From March 11-17, the RIXT-poets Cornelis van der Wal, Elmar Kuiper, Syds Wiersma, and Geart Tigchelaar stayed in the Danish city of Aarhus. They wrote a series of poems there, had a few performances, and participated in a translation session with Danish poets. Besides Aarhus, the Frisian poets had also a performance in the Poesiens Hus in Copenhagen. In 2020 a bilingual collection of Danish and Frisian poems will be presented at the LiteratureXchange Festival in Aarhus. It will be published by Hispel, the Frisian publishing house to which these poets are connected.
The Frisian poets, for this occasion calling themselves The Red Runes (Reade Runen; after a famous Frisian poetry book by Ella Wassenaer published in 1959), were invited to Aarhus by the Danish prose poet Carsten René Nielsen. He visited the Frisian capital Leeuwarden in 2018 and decided together with Geart Tigchelaar that it might be interesting to initiate an exchange project between Danish and Frisian poets. The stay in Aarhus was a first step, the collection of Danish and Frisian poems and the presence of the Frisian poets at the LiteratureXchange Festival next year, is an important next event.
Janneke Spoelstra was RIXT-poet of the month February 2019.
You can read her original Frisian poems of that month here.
One of them – Fantastic Plastic – is published here.
Fantastic Plastic
I learned the power of plastic at a young age:
I was once with my mum
visiting nan and gramps for tea
and my nan gave us tea and biscuit.
It was a lovely get-together, until
gramps tried to crumple up
the plastic cookie container
now standing empty on the table.
His old worker’s hands could only
compress it a little, but as soon as he let go
it would spring back, with only minor
creases, into its original form
on the plush table cloth.
Gramps glared at it in disgust
and tried anew. Again, his wrinkly hands
got a hold of the glossy container.
He squeezed and squeezed, red-blue veins
popped up from the effort. Mum and nan
and I held our breath. Until finally
my mum said: ‘That doesn’t seem to work.’
The way gramps looked at her…
and even though it was only about 1970
and gramps liked his daughter in law,
everything was already, as I think about it now,
contained in this episode: our struggle
with the plastic soup in the oceans, the project
of Boyan Slat, MSC Zoe’s containers
in our seas, the poems on www.rixt.frl
and even the themed edition of Iepen Up,
like Obe Postma said: ‘everything lies in everything’
… but my mum was right. Letting go of the
container it stayed the same. Unflinchingly,
it gloated at us from the table.
‘I’m Fantastic Plastic,’ it shouted,
‘and indestructible!’
De krêft fan plestik learde ik al jong kennen:
sa wie ik in kear mei ús mem
by pake en beppe te teedrinken
en beppe joech ús in koekje by de tee.
It wie gesellich sa mei-inoar, oant
pake it plestik bakje, dêr’t de koekjes
út kamen, en dat leech op ’e tafel
stie, byinoar frommelje woe.
Syn âlde wrottershannen krigen it bakje
wol wat yninoar, mar sagau’t se los lieten,
sprong it, mei heechút wat falske tearen,
wer yn ’e oarspronklike foarm
op it plusen taffelskleed werom.
Pake seach der mispriizgjend nei
en besocht it op ’e nij. Wer griepen
de ronfelige hannen nei it glinsterjende bakje.
Hy kniep en kniep, de readblauwige ieren
op ’e hannen setten derfan op. Beppe en mem
en ik holden de siken yn. Oant op ’t lêst
ús mem sei: ‘No, dat slagget echt net, hear.’
Hoe’t pake doe nei har seach…
en hoewol’t it noch mar om ende by 1970
wie en pake goed mei syn skoandochter koe,
it lei, as ik der no oan weromtink,
der allegear al yn besletten: ús wrakseljen mei
plastic soup/sop yn ’e oseänen, it wurkstik
fan Boyan Slat, MSC Zoe har konteners yn
ús seeën, de fersen op www.rixt.frl
en sels de tema-edysje fan Iepen Up,
sa’t Obe Postma al sei: ‘alles is yn alles’
… mar ús mem hie gelyk. Loslitten wie it bakje
noch hieltyd in bakje. It gniisde ús fan
de tafel ûnferwoestber oan.
‘Ik bin Fantastic Plastic,’ rôp it,
‘en net stikken te krijen!’
Hein Jaap Hilarides was RIXT-poet of the month January 2019. You can read his poems of that month, written in the Bildts language, here. One of them – I sing against the relevance– is published here in translation.
I sing against the relevance
I sing against the relevance,
not the existence of last year.
No, I sing for the idea that
you should always grill someone
to stick to his imagination, fabricator
of a world of words that we inhabit.
Imagination makes a world of words liveable,
meaning to a condemned house.
I look at the poet.
The poet smells me, knows where I stand.
Will he find me? Good?
I smell his weak, sweet garlic smell.
I lose my smell,
my pages come loose.
The poet sees me. Doesn’t he?
He approaches me, feels me and whispers:
The preserving jar says the water isn’t okay.
The water blames the glass’s transparency.
The Other Words Literature project was put forward by Donostia Kultura and San Sebastian in 2016. It is a partnership programme between cultural organisations in European regions, which aims to establish a network of creative placements for European writers in small and minority languages. Participating regions from 2015-2019 were: The Basque Country, Friesland, Slovenia, North Macedonia, and Ireland.
During the project the RIXT-poets André Looijenga, Gerard Marcel de Jong, and Hein Jaap Hilarides were selected by a Frisian jury to write a creation work abroad. André was in Bitola in 2016 (North Macedonia), Gerard in Donostia/San Sebastian in 2017 (The Basque Country), and Hein Jaap in Maribor (Slovenia) in 2017. None of the three worked on poetry during their stay.
