All my life I’ve had luck I can’t even
begin to account for, but this time it was just too much. I had the privilege
of attending a poetic event in the Arab world. An unknown world, incidentally.
A world awaiting discovery (on this end). And as if that weren’t enough, the
invitation called on me to think of the impossible. An annual poetry event
involving schools and poets, that invites young people
and adults to share their poems with a mature and serious audience – and a
joyous audience, pure as pure can be.
So, where to begin? Perhaps, with the
fact that we’re thinking of something real when we think of poetry as a
subject. Not as a vehicle for feelings or for redeeming tormented lives. Poetry
is real – the poetry of every day, of every personal experience immersed in its
own terms. That’s poetry. A personal and genuine look at a world that’s turning.
And voices and words that are turning, while something is bringing things
together, a feeling of community that’s not bent on war or competition, but
just on sharing an experience, each person’s very own experience. That’s
poetry.
It’s just one day a year, but it’s much
more than that. A parade of worlds where the rules are all in place, yet no
one’s enforcing them because it’s not a competition. Let me underline that:
it’s not a competition. Poetry never has been and never will be a
competition. These things come from
somewhere else. That’s why nobody’s expecting to win, nobody’s expecting to
outdo anyone else. The challenge is to look up and find someone else who’s
different, similar, the same.
One day each year, one morning and one
afternoon each year, students from different schools read their poems, and
listen to poets from other countries and other regions who all share the same
drive to communicate. And they become equal. The quest for meaning or no
meaning becomes a banner, and here are all these people with their abilities,
some with abilities that we in the West refer to as “different,” but this event
has another name for them: “people with determination.” And that’s how it’s
mapped out, it’s not their differences that show us who they are, but their
similarities. And then we’re sure that this is something new. The East is telling us to rethink ourselves–
or think less of ourselves.
With ideas ranging from dictionary trees to
growing by putting down roots, the novelties of each performance enrich us, the
rhythm of poetic cadences becomes deafening as it reminds us of what we’ve been
forgetting (the very essence). How many poetic hearts are there living in our
countries? Perhaps as many as there are residents, and yet in the unfolding of
the present somehow we fail to see them. Because a poem is this. Because a poem
is a lament. Because a poem is laughing so as not to cry, or the other way
around. And at this event, thousands of kilometers from the safety of home (and
the screen), we come face to face with uncertainty. Words. Words put in order. Words put in order by
people who are disorderly. Or not.
Words.
If I’m promised something new, I’ll show
up. And while I was expecting something different, I didn’t know the half of
it. This poetry event goes so far beyond
what they say it is. Making sense of maturity and what’s poetic all at the same
time is already more than enough. But understanding this and all its analogs is
simply too vast from the git-go. If I were to give it a title, I’d call it “Poetic
Heart,” because there’s nothing else to add. This is what the event is called,
and this is how it calls out to us. At its ninth edition, we find ourselves
among students, teachers and other kindred souls. So let us come together more often, because
East and West are not as far apart as we thought. We’re much closer together.
And so that’s the main challenge. Redrawing a map that brings us closer
together, so we can look into others’ eyes and they can gaze into ours. With the attendance of so many eminent and
unknown figures, the gathering is jammed.
Interviews and music, poetry and literature. The heart is one, it has no structure. The heart is poetic or it isn’t.
Poetic Heart is held in Dubai, United Arab
Emirates, with the selfless support of volunteers from many backgrounds, and all
information, poems, compositions, presentations and texts are available here. It was born from the proposal of another poetic
heart, that of Dr. Shihab Ghanem, a poet whom I had the good fortune and privilege
to translate (which is how I crossed my first bridge), who, with the support of
the Ikeda Foundation, is carrying forward this bold and ambitious project to
create a space where we can discover the voice (as well as the rights) of those
who are trying each day to make the world a safer place. Through poetry, through dreams. For all those
other poetic hearts and other hearts that dare.
Leticia Monge
(Translated by Kevin Mathewson)
