With the physical cancellation of the European Poetry Festival in London during 2020, a series of new longform video interviews are presented here at 3:AM Magazine, again with some of the most dynamic contemporary European poets, whose work is exploring the possibilities and potentials of the artform, as part of the decade long interviews series – Maintenant.
In the 103rd of the Maintenant series, SJ Fowler interviews the Swiss poet Rolf Hermann.
With the physical cancellation of the European Poetry Festival in London during 2020, a series of new longform video interviews are presented here at 3:AM Magazine, again with some of the most dynamic contemporary European poets, whose work is exploring the possibilities and potentials of the artform, as part of the decade long interviews series – Maintenant.
In the 102nd of the Maintenant series, SJ Fowler interviews the Swiss poet Linn Molineaux.
It’s such a Welshman’s cliché but perhaps musicality, if not song, makes its way into my work and performance. In written work it’s the alliterative and sound aspects which are borrowed from song. Of course Welsh language poetry is a song / poem hybrid which uses cynghanedd (the welsh system of alliteration and internal rhyme) which amounts to a systematization of poetry that brings it in line with our rules for western music but working on verbal sounds instead of tonal sounds. Any exposure to it results in it creeping into your work it’s everywhere here- place names and phraseology! Certainly the welsh tradition of poetry has an effect of what you feel you are allowed to do.
In the 99th of the Maintenant series, SJ Fowler interviews the Welsh poet Rhys Trimble.
Rhys Trimble is a Bilingual poet / performer/improvisor interested in medieval welsh language & bilingual poetry, music/poetry, collaborations, digital-art and avant garde writing practices. Editor of Ctrl+Alt+Del Ezine and studying for a ‘psychomythogeographical’ PhD in creative writing.
By Rhys Trimble.
It was phase I – at first there were two Maidans. One on Independence Square – non-political scene. One on European Square – political scene. Then two Maidans were united. It happened on November 26. Big non-political Maidan full of hipsters lasted until the summit – then nothing happened. And then on November 29-30 night – violent dispersal happened. If this never happened – protesters would go home and the story would end but this attack changed everything. December 1 riots started Phase II – “this time it’s personal”.
In the 98th of the Maintenant series, SJ Fowler interviews the Ukrainian poet Volodymyr Bilyk.
It was as if I had two different men living inside me then. One was full of admiration and respect for ‘fine’ arts – music, literature, poetry; the other was full of mistrust of all the arts. The site for this struggle inside me, between those two personae, was my poetic practice. I felt admiration, reverence, for works of art – the aesthetic experience replaced the religious experience – but at the same time I felt a growing disdain for those ‘aesthetic’ values. I felt something had ended forever – for me, for humanity – and it was something that religion or science or art hadn’t protected.
In the 97th interview of the Maintenant series, SJ Fowler speaks to the legendary Polish poet Tadeusz Różewicz.
The poet is personal: the language is impersonal. Language is not a stable or static entity – it moves and crumbles and grows at the same time. The poet’s art lies in listening intently to the micro-movements of language while never forgetting the sense of the world as the pre-language – as instinct, apprehension, desire – that drove him or her to the threshold of language in the first place. Of course there are subjects and themes but that’s about as far as intention can go. As I see it is not a matter of wanting to say something, then finding the words to say it. You discover what you and the language have to say by entering the process of saying. The ethical power of poetry lies in its precise tension with language not in any broadly stated programme of doing good. The programme is advertisement. Technique, suggested Pound, is the test of sincerity. I think he was on to something.
In the 96th of the Maintenant series, SJ Fowler interviews the Hungarian poet George Szirtes.
on the ground, the black hand flapping
the brown hand spread as if to grasp
grasp what? a paving slab a street a sweep
of air then some cruddy music and leaf
leaf flattens, is pressed is what? is the body
as flat as this as brittle as surrendered to what?
and some you burn and watch fly and this
is what? an analogy as the mind makes it
of war perhaps which war? dare we answer? dare
the body be its own dialogue? dare the
long, shall we say? rain beat down on us
and our music is that the music? that cruddy
music you make in your bones and teeth?
By George Szirtes.
Modernism in Bulgaria contradicted the totalitarian doctrine known as “socialist realism.” Even though some scholars claim that socialist realism began as an avant garde offshoot of modernism, the two approaches conflict. This led to repression against many modernist writers by both extremely left-wing and extremely right-wing regimes. Modernism means “freedom” above all, followed by “individualism.” The first stage in Bulgarian modernism is called “individualism.” Freedom and individualism are the two things totalitarianism hates the most. Modernism was marginalised after the Second World War. During the 1960s, due to the partial liberalisation of the totalitarian regime in Bulgaria, some modernist writers were rehabilitated and interest in their work was revived. But true interest in modernism began at the end of the totalitarian epoch, when new postmodern literature used the foundation of modernism as its stepping stone.
In the 95th of the Maintenant series, SJ Fowler interviews the Bulgarian poet Ivan Hristov.
Then he asked me
how things were with us.
I told him
that our
Christianity
was more conservative
and more mystical,
and that we don’t
talk much
about our problems.
He was amazed.
I didn’t dare
tell him
that for 45 years
we didn’t have God at all
By Ivan Hristov.
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