Fin de la Siesta - Review, Norwich 2023

Strangers in The Night

Fin de la Siesta curated by Oihane Garcia of La Perspectiva Artists Collective, Norwich

 

The Merchant House

Norwich

Friday,  02 June 2023

 

The literary side of Norwich came to the fore on Friday. An event curated by Oihane Garcia of Norwich-based Perspectiva artists collective, provided the sellout audience with a beautiful evening of poetry and music in Japanese, (via Chicago), Turkish, Cypriot and the Basque, as well as in English, whether as original writing, or in translation.

Oihane Garcia. Photo Ardhin Hasa

Along the way, the evening also provided moving insights to lives lived in translation, of bi-lingual people and into dramatic political and cultural changes that the past one hundred years have witnessed. 

The stories, which were revealed between performances by way of introductions, proved as vivid and enriching as anything scripted, sonically and poetically beautiful as they were.

Gathered in the courtyard of The Merchant House café next to Fye Bridge, accompanied by the evensong of blackbirds, we huddled together, some under the complimentary blankets, on the coldest early-June evening I can recall.

As we shivered, our host Oihane Garcia, shone.  She generated warmth and enthusiasm for the music and poetry, that was wholly justified and shared by the audience.

The first act of the entertainment was provided by James Luck, in his first ever solo public performance. He coolly sat at the keyboard, set it to the piano mode and astoundingly, improvised a beautiful jazz sonata. When I asked James what the piece was called, he admitted it had no name, he had made it up on the spot. 

James Luck. Photo copyright Ardhin Hasa

During his performance, when hearing a particularly melodic phrase, or satisfying tone, James would involuntarily gasp, perhaps surprised at how the keyboard had somehow taken over the composition itself. Jazz fans will recognise something similar occurring occasionally in Art Blakey live recordings, for example. Was this audible evidence of finding El Duende, the Spanish name for the magic force of sought through creative endeavour?

The running order of poets had been decided by the course of the Sun’s path from East to West. So, we began with a Chicagoan of Japanese heritage, Kana Hozoji.

 

Her poetry, read in short verses, each first in Japanese then English, is musical to the British ear, with short syllables, each a note of their own. Listening to the rhythmic phrasing and hearing repetition of lines, these Japanese poems made for entrancing listening. The contrast between the sounds of the two languages was fascinating. Hozoji is a poet and as such her poems contained the universal imagery of poetry, while addressing symbolic meanings. Hence stars and the symbolism of food were imaginatively explored.

 

Kana. Photo copyright Ardhin Hasa

Kana explained that a particularly problem of being bi-lingual is swapping in words of one language during speech in another, (code switching). With her brother this was an acceptable and easily accommodated language adaptation to living in two languages, although it left her parents aghast. Her third poem, consciously incorporated code-switching, sparked weird synaptic connections in my monolingual mind. I was clearly using some areas of my grey matter for the first time.

Bodies of Water was Kana’s final poem and compared the idea of pooled water, (the lakeside of Chicago provides an impressive edge to that city), to the strength of membership of an artistic collective. This fascinating allusion was a fine end to her set.

Priya Tripathy was next. She is an Indian poet, who grew up with a dialect that had no written element, but was taught English throughout her school years, as well as Hindi. Imagine how important listening and watching someone would be in order to grasp the sense of what is being communicated when there is no script to ever follow. Sadly, this dialect is at risk of being forgotten, as English is taught and spreads into aspects of all lives around India and the world.

 

Again, food provided some of the imagery. In Tripathy’s first poem, Dal, (a word from Indian cuisine), works at the mixture of cuisines and languages brought by English imperialists and Dutch traders. This was a poem that covered so many aspects of cultural influences that I would have been happy to hear it again, so rich it was in ideas.

 

It might have been be handy to have had a pamphlet available to read the poetry alongside the performances, something relative to a hymn sheet, to be able to reflect on these lyrical works. Such a resource would not detract from the entertainment, but it would allow the audience to savour the subtleties of the poems for longer.

Priya Tripathy. Photo copyright Ardhin Hasa

I Hope You Come (to Me) was a beautiful poem of anticipation and hope written by Priya. We heard it in her native tongue, followed by translation. In any language this was a delightful love poem. 

 

Elif Söyler’s turn on stage lifted us to a village in Anatolia where little had changed for centuries, until the establishment of modern Türkiye. Elif’s explanation of what nation building under Mustafa Kemal Atatürk meant for a land where literacy was a skill enjoyed by few was staggering. A language simplified, codified and

culled led to the official deletion of synonyms for words, such as beautiful. Beautiful, we were told, became a word (güzel) that would be widely applied in many contexts, spelled simply and consistently to ease the path to literacy. 

 

What literary people in England what might call dumbing-down, was put in place to lift people from the limitations of illiteracy. Clearly it will be the work of poets and other creative thinkers to develop the language in generations to come. In Elif Söyler, here is one of the poets to possibly contribute to the expansion of the written word in her father’s land.

 

The context of the poems Söyler read, was the dramatic changes wrought in an emerging nation. Thus, the marked differences between rural and urban living, the impact of a revolution and establishment of an republic on real people, on immediate family.

Elif Söyler, Photo Ardhin Hasa

We were read a poem by Orhan Arahami initially in Turkish, then one of Söyler’s own about the village where her grandparents and many cousins live. Snapshots of a land and lives so very different from lives in urban, cold Norwich. We were presented with a beautiful thread of images from Deep in the desert of eastern Anatolia. Who would not want to live for at least one August there?

 

Maria Foka, from the divided island of Cyprus, then introduced us to an element of the culture of patriarchy that overshadows women’s lives there. She particularly referenced women’s upbringing, strictly aligned with modesty, deference and family duty. Her writing, lively and full of humour, was a fierce and entertaining counter-weight to such principles. 

Maria Foka. Photo Ardhin Hasa 

Oihane Garcia, the headline poet, closed the literary element of the evening. She read poems in Spanish to us from Sonnets to Dark Love by Federico García Lorca. Seb Gale read the translation. The pair presented these pieces beautifully, Gale’s reading tone a soothing balance, to the urgency and desire of the lyrical content, so well communicated in the tempo of the Spanish words.

 

She was accompanied by Diego Leon, who improvised on guitar. Garcia had detailed how her parents had not been allowed to learn the Basque language under the dictatorship, revealing how deep fascism cuts into daily lives. Grandparents and grandchildren connected through a shared language, her parents, in a way, a lost generation. 

 

Speak to elder Welsh people about the banning of the Welsh language in the Port Talbot Steelworks and you will appreciate something of the antipathy held in South Wales towards the English. At least this was not enforced through imprisonment and state-sponsored terrorism.

 

The evening at The Merchant House closed with Diego Leon on electric piano. This was remarkable for two reasons. Firstly, the resonance of the sound from the ancient stone walls surrounding the courtyard was beautifully sharp. Secondly, that Leon could actually move his fingers to the right keys in the cold air was nothing short of miraculous.

 

One of the aims of this Fin de la Siesta show was to provide an auditorium for ex-patriot poets in Norwich. Perspectiva, the collective behind the event has wider artistic aims, but always aims to make space for overseas artists drawn to Norfolk. The city has a history of providing a platform for people from afar, (not just King’s Lynn or Downham Market), with its Strangers’ Hall and trading links through proximity to Europe. Norwich grew in partnership with people from different lands, not least from the Netherlands, which is easily identified in architecture around the region. The emergence of the Perspectiva gives a timely and vital boost to the long-standing symbiosis between natives and foreigners.

 

This was a thoroughly stimulating and enjoyable show. The attentiveness and engagement of the audience added further substance to the evening. Look out for events under the Perspectiva label at venues around the region. It is a group of artists who promise to be a worthy addition to the city’s cultural scene.

n.b. This article was first published on the website of Grapevine Live, June 2023. 

Chris Perry

Norwich

4^th June 2023