UNMIK on
AIR
(Andrea
Saula)
Words have power. They can create and destroy. It only depends on those who use them.
These people are
certainly here to create. They are poets from more than a hundred different countries,
speaking different languages. Their diversity, an invitation to dialogue on the
perspectives of modern poetry.
Hello and welcome to this special edition of UNMIK on AIR on the recently ended Struga literary festival
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.
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 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 cannons
silenced the muses 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 exist in
Struga as well. Belgrade poet and translator Moma Dimic deplores the way
politics permeates everything, even the arts.
Erik Mekenton agrees - he wants to believe that the artist, the poet, the intellectual can avoid the traps set by the reality of the outside world.
Erik Mekenton: I’ve always had a feeling that
when you are a poet or an intellectual, at least somebody who thinks about his
own situation, who is he, why is he here I always find it strange that
political things come on top of that, that they might not want to speak amongst
each other anymore. I can understand why it happens but I see poets as
individuals and I always had the idea that when you think in a certain way you
must have something in common although you are from completely different
cultures and it must always be interesting to talk, to try to understand what
somebody else is telling you and even if the countries that you live in are at
war. And as soon as I notice that even the poets or the intellectuals don’t
want to talk to each other then I think that it’s really wrong that there is a
wall between them.
Recent history however shows otherwise – the wars that ravaged the Balkans this past decade shattered old contacts and friendships, the individual, says Moma Dimic, paid a bitter price.
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.
Lulzim Haziri: Unlike in politics, the poems we hear in these manifestations
are about the glory of love, of the human spirit and nature. And political
arguments belong to daily politics. However, it penetrates in other areas. To
publish a books in a multiethnic country such as mine only in the Macedonian
language and to ignore Albanian, is, I think a manifestation of xenophobia,
ignorance of other cultures, in this case Albanian.
Erik Mekenton:
For me language is very important and not only for my self, also to
really communicate with others. Others if they are trying in the same way, if
you have a very good poem from somebody then you might be able to understand
something of this other person and what is going on, not only in his mind also
in its hart. That’s the way of looking at the world.
This was a special UNMIK
ON AIR presentation. The program as written and compiled by Andrea Saula.