Poetry Parnassus: The Poetry World Comes to London

One of the biggest poetry festivals ever staged and part of the 2012 Cultural Olympiad, Poetry Parnassus kicked off today in London, with the star event of the evening being the Rain of Poems staged by Casagrande. I had to miss this due to another commitment, but it sounds as though it went off well and no doubt provided an incredible start to this festival.

I'll be going to several ticketed Poetry Parnassus events this week, and generally taking in the atmosphere and the poetry freebies at Southbank when I can, so I can't really complain. I'm looking forward to seeing and hearing some of the greatest poets of our time, along with lesser-known but brilliant writers, but I think what really thrills me about the whole event is its international scope, and the way it is bringing poetry into the public eye. Poetry seems to be pretty hot right now, relatively speaking, though that probably still makes it a brave candle flame.

I'll be writing some more about the events that I've attended at some point, but I've also been reflecting on poetry as a public art form and on its place in other parts of the world. For most of my poetry-reading life (which has now been actively for more than fifteen years) I've thought of it as a more private art form - not just because it tends to be quite "specialized" and "niche", but because it is a very personal and individual experience. The poems that I love, not unlike my other passions, are tied in to all sorts of events and memories in my life, past, present and future. Poetry strikes so deep into the subconscious and the inner person that it can be even more individual than other art forms.

At the same time, there are many parts of the world where poets are the figureheads and spokesmen or spokeswomen for artists, rebels, oppressed groups, and others. The English-speaking world has probably lost sight of this in many ways, but it's notable that a great many of the Poetry Parnassus events revolve around poets in exile, or from war-torn countries, or who are somehow disenfranchised or fighting non-violent battles. Even without specific response to conflict, there are many non-English-speaking countries where poetry has traditionally been the number one form of literature. When you look for poetry pages on Facebook, an enormous number are dedicated to Arabic poetry, and perhaps even more are dedicated to Urdu (Pakistani and Indian) poetry. In other words, those who call poetry a dead art form haven't got a clue; it's far from that in the Western world, but it is particularly alive in huge areas of the world such as the Middle East and Central Asia.

Beyond this, I'm just very interested in poetry as public art in the most literal sense: whether it's the Rain of Poems where tens of thousands of bookmark-poems fall from a helicopter onto the waiting crowds in cities around the world, or the Wall-to-Wall Poetry project in Sofia, or the poem by Carla Funk which I saw in the park in my hometown of Victoria, carrying on a great tradition of garden poems, or the extraordinary poem in the tunnel by Waterloo station in my adopted town of London. I've developed a radar for anything that might be called poetry in public places, and it's great if I have a chance to take a picture.

Some of the above rambling might provide matter for some further posts. But for now, I'm more than ready to enjoy Poetry Parnassus, and I'll be writing about it again in the pretty near future.

Walking Amongst Poets and Poems in Bulgaria

The month of May slipped away at more or less lightning speed – pretty much in a blur, actually – and now I find myself on a visit home to Canada, needing to write about Bulgaria. I have already shared a little of my Bulgarian experience in this entry, where Louis MacNeice and I wandered through towns, over mountains and into internet cafés, but I did have some fairly unexpected poetic moments in Bulgaria which I'd like to describe a little.

I had a great time in Bulgaria, where a friend who has lived there for several years guided me along ancient Roman streets, into beautiful blue and red National Revival houses from the nineteenth century, past spooky, crumbling art nouveau monuments, and to places and moments where I was able to spend time with the Bulgarians themselves. As I mentioned in my poem, I found them hard to read, which I think (among other reasons) can be a legacy of Communist regimes; it's best not to show too much. I found them hospitable and pleased to have a visitor, and the customer service was surprisingly good, but they were anything but transparent.

In poetic terms, Bulgaria gave me a few unexpected gifts. The above photograph is of a monument in Plovdiv to Hristo Botev, still a legend in the modern country; I saw his name graffitied onto at least a few walls. He was both poet and revolutionary, a key figure in the failed April Uprising of 1876 against the Ottoman occupation. The Bulgarian city of Botevgrad is named after him, along with places as far-flung as locations in the Shetland Islands. Botev wrote patriotic, revolutionary and romantic poems. On this monument, as elsewhere, the quotation is from his words: "He who falls while fighting to be free can never die."

As it turned out, my encounters with poetry in Bulgaria turned out to be more international than specifically Bulgarian. Wandering past the lovely houses in Plovdiv's old town, I came across this plaque dedicated to the French poet and politician Lamartine, who had passed through in 1833. Apparently this trip was partial inspiration for his work Voyage en orient:

My poetic journey in Sofia was equally unexpected, and actually started in Plovdiv. I went into a bookshop with a decent selection of English-language books, and asked if they had any Bulgarian poetry translated into English. Apparently they didn't, but the staff handed me a little book which at first confused me slightly. I thought it was some sort of anthology, but it turned out to be a guide (in English and Bulgarian) to a project called Wall-To-Wall Poetry, in Sofia. I was quite excited when I realised what it was all about.

Wall-To-Wall Poetry was launched in 2004 by the Dutch Embassy in Sofia, when the Netherlands temporarily held the Presidency of the European Union. The project took about five years to reach completion and involved installations of verses from poems, or short poems, on walls around the city of Sofia – one from each EU country and candidate countries. I'm still not sure why Sofia was chosen for this project, as opposed to another EU country, although it obviously had to do with Bulgaria's entry into the EU around that time. To me it does suggest an enthusiasm for poetry in that city. It was also a wonderful coincidence that I stumbled across this guide while still in Plovidv, because I really spent only half a day in Sofia at the end of my trip, and I could easily have missed the project entirely.

In Sofia, I managed to track down four of the poetry installations. The map inside the guide wasn't exactly stellar, so it took some wandering around and asking directions from locals without much English (and my Bulgarian is non-existent – but they were quite helpful.) I eventually located the installations from Denmark (Piet Hein) and Luxembourg (Raymond Schaak), below – it helped a lot that they were both on the side of the Sofia City Art Gallery:

A little later, I came across the Dutch (Jan Hanlo) and Lithuanian (Marcelijus Martinaitis) installations more randomly. The third picture shows the plaque which accompanied the Lithuanian installation and which was reproduced by all the installations.

The selections varied pretty widely: Bulgaria's of course featured Hristo Botev, and the Italians also went for an old classic with Dante, but numerous selections were much more modern. Many of them featured verses of poetry specifically about the contributing country, which I could understand, but I tended to prefer those that were more universal. The installations appear on schools, museums, galleries, underground stations, and elsewhere.

I'd really love to see a similar project elsewhere, especially as I have a growing interest in poetry as public art, and I felt quite privileged (and surprised) to have stumbled across this so unexpectedly on my trip, having no idea that it was part of Sofia. However, I did leave the country feeling that I still knew very little more about Bulgarian poetry. Online, I tracked down selections by the poets Konstantin Pavlov and Tsvetanka Elenkova, which can be found on the links below:

KONSTANTIN PAVLOV

TSVETANKA ELENKOVA

While there were moments in these that delighted me, I haven't yet had time to digest them, and I remembered meeting a Bulgarian woman at a poetry reading in London. I told her that I had plans to visit Bulgaria, and it turned out that she was from Plovdiv. I asked her about Bulgarian poetry and she told me that while they had a strong poetic tradition, little of it had been translated – or at least translated well – into English. I'd like to dig further, but in any case I can confirm that the people of Bulgaria live in a country where poetry has left many traces.