On Writing, Performing, Teaching Poetry
Kit Azzopardi interviews Josep Pedrals
This year’s edition of the Malta Mediterranean Literature Festival (FMLM) is bringing together seven authors, including Josep Pedrals from Catalonia. Pedrals, whose poetry readings in Tunis have been the closest he’s been to our island, is an ideal performer for Maltese audiences given his affinity with the Mediterranean and his vast experiences in literary circles, ranging from recitals to poetry education in various media.
Our first point of discussion is, in fact, his recitals as performances rather than readings, especially since he has performed in Europe, Asia, and America, and has been awarded a prize at the Osaka International Slam (2009). “The difference between reading poetry, and reciting and performing it, is in the attitude of the reader.” Pedrals elaborates, saying that “when someone wants to be understood in an expressive way, sometimes they have to ‘sing’ or ‘dance’ or ‘stutter’ … They have to exaggerate some parts of the act.” Past audiences of the FMLM might remember a few guest authors whose acts match Pedral’s description.
Public performances for live audiences aren’t the only means by which Pedrals brings poetry to the people. Having written for TV myself, I ask him about his experiences on radio and other media. His short answer is simple and lies in the numbers: “It is like performing in front of hundreds of thousands instead of fifty or one hundred people.” But this isn’t the only reason Pedrals gives, and explains that every medium has its own special qualities, like playing with more sounds on radio or zooming in on the performative aspect on television.
In the same way the troubadours had their own platforms for performance, such as city streets and village squares, so do contemporary poets whose platforms nowadays can be either physical or digital.
Although being greatly involved in what he calls ‘poetry education,’ he does not consider himself a good student despite being studious, describing himself as an “anarchistic pupil” with problems with the institution. Nevertheless, he’s always been an enthusiastic reader and believes that “anyone can be a good poetry student because poetry is a very wide discipline that welcomes all the hearts that beat for it.” This brings me to another, pertinent, question in literature: Can poetry be taught? “What I teach in my workshops and courses is, first, the pleasure of reading poetry (because it has got bad press) and, second, some technical skills of writing to free the students’ abilities and open their expressive capacities. But it doesn’t guarantee that the poem can be ‘found’ (‘trobar,’ to find, is the word that troubadours used to explain what they do). Poetry is something complex, not the result of a calculus. It has no formula.”
In the same way the troubadours had their own platforms for performance, such as city streets and village squares, so do contemporary poets whose platforms nowadays can be either physical or digital. As a director of poetry festivals, Pedrals explains that Festivals are important to develop and encourage new audiences and warns that despite aesthetic differences, artistic directors should be “open-minded to show what’s happening in various poetry ‘movements’.” In this sense, Pedrals tells us that a festival is also a catwalk: “I am a big supporter of the idea of mixing poetry and party.” To him, such a mixture is natural.
The FMLM is a member of Versopolis, a poetry platform for emerging European poets funded by Creative Europe. It was through this network that Pedrals was invited to Malta. Asked about Versopolis, he expresses his admiration and gratitude towards such initiatives: “It’s like a brotherhood of poetry lovers who want to be aware of what’s happening in another’s house. The beautiful idea that the language is not a border because it has an aesthetic meaning, that poetry is a magical space where everyone can converge.” The past few editions of Inizjamed’s Festival have been testament to what Pedrals believes, given the diverse nationalities that have performed in both original languages and in translation.
By the end of this month, Pedrals will have performed in Malta and left, hopefully having touched some of our readers and experienced our history and heard our language, two things he especially looks forward to since Catalan, like Maltese, is a language at crossroads a between Spanish, French, Italian, and Portuguese.
First published on Newsbook, 20 August 2024.
