SUPPORTED CONTENT
Top: Mary Jean Chan (credit: Forward Prizes 2017), George Mario Angel Quintero (credit: Sara Marin Amariles), Nadine Aisha Jassat (credit: James Barlow Photography) / middle: A.E. Stallings (credit: Milos Bicanski) / bottom: Balázs Szőllőssy, Laura Accerboni (credit: Carlo Accerboni), Marco Fazzini
˝ ˝
9 1 0 2
Some of this year’s StAnza poets tell us their thoughts on the power of poetry beyond borders
In periods of great uncertainty, poetry can be a means of comfort for many, reassuring, soothing or even challenging in its form and function. Each year, StAnza (Wed 6–Sun 10 Mar) delivers a programme packed with the fi nest voices in the poetry world, ranging from world-renowned writers to emerging performers who aim to engage audiences with key issues in a creative and constructive manner. As Scotland’s international poetry festival, StAnza continues to remain open, welcoming and positive in its events, installations and exhibitions, refl ected both in the poets and artists invited to take part and also in this year’s theme of ‘Another Place’. With its international focus contrasting directly with an increasingly insular political climate, we caught up with a handful of poets taking part in StAnza this year to get their thoughts on why the festival – and poetry on the whole – are vital in the exploration of new ideas, places and the unfamiliar.
On being a part of StAnza this year and the international nature of the festival
Mary Jean Chan: I’m excited to be a part of StAnza this year. I think poetry festivals are a great way for poets from around the world to meet one another and to be inspired by different poetries and poetics. I’ve always been hopeful for the future of poetry. As long as language and beauty continue to matter to people, poetry will thrive. Balázs Szőllőssy: Poetry is the most delicate way of speaking a language, and festivals which make the effort to make us even a tiny bit more sensitive to each other’s words and thoughts make me feel hopeful for the future of humankind in general. 28 THE LIST 1 Feb–31 Mar 2019
‘Poetry will not change or save the
world but it will always be on the side of resistance
to hate’
kind of limbo waiting to see where there future will be. I have become acutely aware of this displacement.
On how poetry explores ideas of home and place and its ability to transport readers to different and unfamiliar places Laura Accerboni: The ‘house’ is a recurrent image in my recent poems. I think that the historical moment we are experiencing, the dramatic migration and the criminal response by some politicians, have made images of places and of houses central in my writing. Literature has the power to tell, to make familiar places look alien, to show us our reality in a different light. And yes, to lead us where we do not know.
On interpreting StAnza’s theme of ‘Another Place’ in their own work On whether we’ll see more resistance from the poetry world as far as cultural intolerance goes
Nadine Aisha Jassat: Much of my work deals with the theme of memory, translating experiences from one place to the other. It is that bridge between the past and the present, somehow inhabiting both, and yet living in another place of its own. My collection, Let Me Tell You This, takes readers on this journey from the other places I have been in, and lived through, to where I am now, as well as the connections between women, both historically and in my own life, in healing, sustaining, and surviving. AE Stallings: I have spent most of my adult life in Greece, living in another language and another culture from the land of my birth. Maybe a poet is always otherwhere. Since 2016, I have also been spending a lot of time with asylum-seekers in Greece, with people who have fl ed their homes and are in a George Mario Angel Quintero: Poetry is intuitive and intimate language that touches on the universality of human experience. Even when it does not mean to be, it is in opposition to intolerance and cruelty by its nature. Poetry will not change or save the world. But it will always be on the side of resistance to hate. Marco Fazzini: Resistance in poetry will always be synonymous with rebellion, renovation and linguistic revolution. Poets are always the fi rst, in any particular society, to respond to these kind of coercive conditions. I am looking forward to reading a new imaginative and poetic ‘resistance’ in this right-wing political climate. ■ StAnza: Scotland’s International Poetry Festival, St Andrews, Wed 6–Sun 10 Mar.