News

/ 27 June 2017

The Beauty of Words

Three years of VERSOPOLIS means fifteen booklets of international poetry being produced from our side, an impressive compendium of poems from ten different countries – Germany, England, Italy, Lithuania, Macedonia, Poland, Slovakia, Slovenia, Switzerland and Wales.

A few days ago I picked all fifteen booklets and moved to our garden terrace to enjoy them once more, this time without feeling the necessity to pay attention to possible mistakes – simply reading the poems and marking beautiful sentences. And believe me – I found a lot!

Some of the sentences seduced me to the world of dreams, made me hovering between heaven and earth or like Zehra Cirak put it in her poem „Cross questioning“ – yet Heaven is in chains and the ground has wings. I was discovering this while the clouds spooling past on wires (Meirion Jordan – „A horse in the dark“) and I started to play with the sentences like a „dream weaver“ …

And maybe, when the clouds disappear at night, we might feel like Slovenian poet Ana Pepelnik („Thirteen“) that it is a day to knock on the full moon. Probably she was awake all night watching full moon and then it was seven in the morning and I was watching the little coffee bean. („Take Off“).

After having breakfast she was probably going out discovering that a Red van full of forget-me-nots slides over streets („Sonnets“). Obviously she was not rushing to any office or factory but to a beautiful park as it really is a perfect day to go under the tree and look through the branches and see the sun cut („Thirteen“).

For sure Ana was lying down in the green grass finding out that even the bees are faster than flies („Thirteen“) and asking herself the beautiful question: I don’t even know if butterflies have a heart („Coca Cola“).

She might have been so much lost in thoughts to have probably agreed to Italian poet Valentina Colonnas idea that today’s suspension stops time („untitled“).

And also Swiss poet Rolf Hermann she would have met in this nice park who revealed I am peeling the forecasted rain („rue de la lune“). Maybe Ana Pepelnik wished to never leave this beautiful park anymore, maybe she stayed too long as she discovered that today it’s falling down like curtains on a stage – meaning the snow in her poem „Walk like“. 

Sometimes romantic, dreamlike sentences even become philosophical like in Vladimir Martinovskis poem „Coming to terms“, when he states If I follow the streams I will one day reach the sea or Valentina Colonna when she finds out that Sea never stops breathing („untitled“). Philsophic, even a bit ironic Rolf Hermann sounds when he finds out that each poem is an instruction manual („Opening hours“), the same applies to Stanka Hrasteljs statement: Mercenaries don’t grow on trees („untitled“).

I like poems reflecting some kind of irony like Vladimir Martinovski in his poem „A star is gone“ – The moon has a few more wrinkles than last year – But she doesn’t try to hide it unlike most of us.

Same applies to Slovenian writer Katja Perat who sometimes makes fun about writers taking themselves too serious – Blessed are the miners. They don’t need to write poems. („Miners“)

Lithuanian poet Vytautas Stankus offers some kind of ironic remedy in his poem „leap years“ – and if you get seasick – it suffices to sit under a tree and it goes away.

Irony mixed with fatalism seems to be a speciality of another young Lithuanian writer, Indrė Valantinaitė, when writing about herself: My biological clock is ticking like an explosive in a terrorist’s hand („Biological clock“) and In 2055, I’ll probably be a skinny old woman and I won’t take up much space on buses and in queues („I’ll probably be a skinny old woman“).

And finally – as we just mentioned „clock“ – her sentence Our God is born an infant every year, and has no time to grow up from the poem „Nativity scene“ is valid at least once a year!

The Beauty of Words – to be continued