5 Sptember
2003
UNMIK on
AIR
(Andrea
saula)
A fireworks display kicking off the annual gathering of
poets in the picturesque town of Struga on Lake Ohrid in Macedonia. The 42nd Struga festival took
place against a backdrop of rising ethnic tensions and fears that Macedonia is
headed for a repeat of the conflict in 2001 – reason enough for the writers and
poets who came together in Struga to renew calls for better understanding.
Hello and welcome to UNMIK on AIR with Sputnik Kilambi and
Martin Redi
The gathering brought together around 100 poets from all
over the world - four days of poetry reading and an exchange of views on every
subject under the sun. No holds barred in the world of arts, says Zoran
Anceski, the president of the Struga festival.
Zoran Anceski: There are about 20 languages
present in Struga, for me the most beautiful music. To see so many different
faces is the work of God.
Anceski is visibly
proud of the fact that Struga is the capital of poetry these days. Poets
literally occupied the bridge over the River Drim, the monasteries and the
beach.
Zoran Anceski: The world is divided into small
and big countries. Some are making differences between big and small cultures.
Some try to divide languages based on which are big and which are small. What’s
the destiny of the so-called small countries, small people and small languages?
It is to show the world that the definition of small is a wrong one. Macedonia
belongs to this category. But it has the biggest poetry festival and that’s
Struga. The idea of this festival is very human. The festival has lasted for 42 years and its main idea is to
bring together different cultures through poetry.
Erik Menkveld has
organized poetry festivals in Rotterdam, but this visit to the Struga gathering
is the first for the Dutch poet.
Erik Menkveld: There are many kinds of
festivals, but in this festival the readings are not maybe so important as the
gathering of the poets, because of all the people you meet here and you talk to.
And you get their work and you give them your work. You read it to each other
and discuss it. That’s what is important about this festival, so that you
really get the contacts. So it’s more about getting to know people and
socializing and meeting old friends and making new ones.
Making friends –
renewing old contacts and starting new ones has assumed new significance in the
context of Macedonia’s current troubles. This is the region where the muses
were silenced by the cannons and some of them are still silent. Unfortunately, the Struga festival could not
entirely escape from the shadow of the ethnic and political tensions.
K-Albanian writer Enver Gjerqeku, a two-time participant in the Struga festival
has been able to see the changes and he adds, unfortunately, the interferences
that occur.
Enver Gjerqeku: These meetings of the poets in Struga, it is true
that they have brought nations closer, though the politics have had a great
impact. Politics can have a short-term impact, but the connections that poets
and artists create are more compact, more human, more spiritual and they last
for a long time. The politics in the Balkans have changed, and the aggressive
policies of unrestrained nationalism, which had penetrated even the works of
art, have failed. The work of the poets has remained alive, though it has
changed a lot. I think that meaningful changes need to be made in these
meetings. Organizers should lead the way, be they Macedonian or Albanian, to
sit together and express what they want in terms of the Struga poetry festival.
And not all such
gatherings succeed in this. At least in Struga, says Dutch poet Erik Mekenton,
writers from divided communities are still talking.
Erik Mekenton: I’ve been in other festivals
where they had great problems, for example between Palestinian and Israeli
poets. They didn’t want to be together in one room, and even a few years ago
when the war was still going on here in Yugoslavia. Serbian and Croatian poets
didn’t want to talk to each other. But, I don’t see it now. I think that
everybody is mingling, as far as I can see. But I’m quite naïve in that sense.
But divisions do exist, in Struga as well. Belgrade poet and translator Moma Dimic deplores the way politics permeates everything, even the arts.
Moma Dimic: Contacts between writers in
Serbia and in Kosovo are not being reestablished. The same thing is happening
between writers in Belgrade and Zagreb. That’s the problem when the grim face
of politics shows up and starts interfering with culture.
There are divisions to overcome certainly, but there is also common ground when people believe in the spirit and power of the arts. It is important to make a clear distinction between art and politics, says Dimic.
Moma Dimic: Politics is something
constant, but poetry belongs to the present moment, for which we have to be
prepared. Politics is the system, but poetry is something out of the system,
something that has to exist of and for itself.
Kalosh Celiku is the
president of Albanian speaking writers in Macedonia. He thinks that the Struga
festival has somehow been politicized since the beginning.
Kalosh Celiku: It is true that communication among writers is not as
before, you cant blame either one side or the other, it is the consequence of
circumstances, this is a law of nature; if you respect somebody you will be
respected, if you love you will be loved, you cannot bring people closer in an
artificial way, nature itself will bring them together.
All one needs is for
people to lend nature a helping hand – and on that note we close this edition
of UNMIK on AIR program. Thanks for listening.