2017 Taipei Poetry Festival (TAIPEI QUARTERLY 2017 AUTUMN Vol.09)

Post date：2017-09-13

2010

2017 Taipei Poetry Festival

“Eyes & Lights”

Article / Photos｜ Department of Cultural Affairs, Taipei City Government

The annual Taipei Poetry Festival (臺北詩歌節), hosted by the Department of Culture Affairs, Taipei City Government (臺北市政府文化局), imbues the autumn with a lyrical atmosphere. This year, festival curators Yen Hungya (鴻鴻) and Yang Chiahsien (楊佳嫻) have chosen as a theme: “Eyes & Lights.” This event takes place September 23rd to October 8th at Taipei Zhongshan Hall (臺北市中山堂), Eslite Spectrum Songyan Store (誠品松菸書店), Nadou Theatre (納豆劇場), Kishu An Forest of Literature (紀州庵文學森林), Sun Yun-Suan Memorial Museum (孫運璿科技人文紀念館), GIS NTU Convention Center (集思臺大會議中心), and Duckstay Hostel (大可居). The event channels the spirit of the era to imagine a future world – one with a more expansive and better sense of humanity. It will allow lovers of good verse to discover and witness the driving spirit of this era, the lights of the city and the possibilities of literature.

▲Poet-in-residence, Kelly Tsai.

Spoken Word Poet Captures the Spirit of the Era

Continuing last year’s Poet-in-Residence Program, Taiwanese-American wordsmith, Kelly Tsai (蔡仁儀) will be coming to Taipei in September. A poet of great renown, Tsai has performed at the White House and at NYC Lincoln Center . She’s a spoken word artist in the American limelight to be sure, and in her 700+ performances, she has creatively blended poetry with plays and movies. The ability to combining different art forms like this speaks to a core mandate the Poetry Festival has been promoting all these years. Tsai’s achievements have made her a role model for Asian women; she has never lost sight of Taiwan history in her work. During her period of residence, she’ll give speeches and perform a new version of a monologue called Formosa, which she has rewritten especially for the Taiwanese audience! It tells the story of the manufacturing of Barbie dolls in Taishan (泰山), Taiwan from the 1960’s to the 1980’s. In this piece, her angle is that of a second-generation Mainlander, and she discusses such subjects as globalization, beauty, plastic surgery, and cultural recognition. She also uses the work to criticize the way Westerners see Easterners. Sponsored by the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, this play was first staged in 2012, and has been performed many times since then to good reviews.

International Poets Gather in Taipei and Bring Light to the City

This year, the festival has invited writers from Nigeria, Vietnam, Hong Kong and Japan. The founder and director of the Lagos International Poetry Festival, Efe Paul Azino, is a well-known Nigerian performance artist and poet. His poems vividly portray the intersection of history and modern city life, and are filled with a unique African sensibility. Hirata Toshiko (平田俊子) is a Japanese poet, playwright and writer who has won the New Poet’s Award (現代詩新人獎), the Hagiwara Sakutarō Prize (萩原朔太郎獎) and the Bansui Prize (晚翠獎). Her poetry uses a simple but cold style that upends the approach traditionally associated with female Japanese writers, showing contemporary Japanese verse in a different light. Her work has been translated into many languages and is popular in many countries.

Chung Kwokkeung (鍾國強) is a poet from Hong Kong who has received the Youth Literary Award (青年文學獎), the Hong Kong Biennial Award for Chinese Literature (香港中文文學雙年獎), and been named Artist of the Year (Literary Arts) by the Hong Kong Arts Development Awards (香港藝術發展獎藝術家年獎). His poetry often deals with the relationship between life and family. It also talks about the daily lives of everyday people and their interaction with various social systems. His wording is delicate and passionate. The well-known bilingual Vietnamese poet, Dang Than (鄧紳) is considered the most revolutionary character in Vietnam. Poets & Writers Magazine (詩人與作家) says: “What people admire most about Dang Than is the distinctly personal style of his prose and his rebellious character.” His work deals with many different subjects, and has proved to be a very important turning point in the evolution of literary style in Vietnam. These international scribes are coming to Taipei to attend the Poetry Festival, hoping that participants will use poetry to explore this era from a wide-ranging cultural perspective.
Every year, the Taipei Poetry Festival invites several national and international poets to converse with poetry lovers.
▲Every year, the Taipei Poetry Festival invites several national and international poets to converse with poetry lovers.

▲With various interesting types of performance, the Interdisciplinary Action Poetry is one activity lovers of verse really look forward to.

Performance and Interdisciplinary Action Poetry

On September 23rd of this year, the performance poem, The Mirror of the Heart –The Translingual Landscape of Poetry (心の鏡──跨越語言的詩歌風景) will take place at Zhongcheng Auditorium (中正廳) in Zhongshan Hall. This sparkling new work, the opening program of the Poetry Festival, features Lo Sirong (羅思容), a master of the art of sung poetry, aided by several famous musicians, with video by the poet Ye Mimi (葉覓覓) and video music by sound artist Yannick (澎葉生). This piece tells the story of poets including Lin Hengtai (林亨泰), Du Pan Fangge (杜潘芳格), Chen Qianwu (陳千武), Chen Xiuxi (陳秀喜), Zhan Bing (詹冰), Jin Lian (錦連), and Luo Lang (羅浪), who wrote in several different languages from the Japanese Era to the post-war period. The evocative music takes us back through an almost forgotten period of Taiwanese literature, and the poetry acts like a candle, shining a light on the lower depths of history, and illuminating that era.

Interdisciplinary Action Poetry includes the highly popular Poets’ Constitutional Convention (詩人制憲大會), one of the festival’s highlights. This event echoes the theme of the Festival, and all participants are encouraged to find a visionary poetic image to describe environmental and social goals needed for future peace and prosperity. Submissions have been coming in already, and next comes the organizing and selection stages, with results announced on October 1st. Eight poets, from a mix of locations and generations, will judge the works and suggest revisions. Everyone is welcome to take part and design the blueprints for our future!

In addition, the Italian sound artist, Alessandro Bosetti will hold an action poetry workshop, The Pool and the Soup (聲音詩演出：池與湯) this year. He has already started to recruit participants with a range of native languages and dialects, who have had no experience performing. He’d like to weave their narratives into a musical form and shape it into a vivid theatrical picture of people’s lives in Taiwan, one allowing the diversity of Formosan languages to be heard. After this intense workshop, a public performance will be staged on the last day. Everyone is welcome to come and experience the power of sound on October 8th.

This year the festival schedule includes a series of speeches, performances and displays, and Interdisciplinary Action Poetry at locations all over Taipei City. This event focuses on “era” and “city,” emphasizing how poets face facts, both realistic and imaginary. There will be artists from America, Nigeria, Japan, Hong Kong, Vietnam, Italy, and, of course, Taiwan. They will interact with each other on such topics as poetry, history, environment, language, culture, and communication, and engage with people here about the cultural impact of past and future connections. In this fest, both artists and audience will widen their vision. The 2017 Taipei Poetry Festival will bear witness to this era with you!

▲Taipei Poetry Festival uses interdisciplinary forms to break boundaries, visible or invisible, allowing words to connect with different aspects of life.