Last weekend (14-16/5 09) the Copenhagen LitteraturHaus celebrated its fourth annual international poetryfestival. A number of poets from Denmark and abroad were invited and featured at the festival this weekend. One poet came as far as from Mongolia, which probably seems like far far away to most people, and so it is. This poet, named Ayurzana Gun-Aajav, read his own poems in his native tongue as well as in English, and this Mongolian language seemed made for poetry. And the audience was taught that the meaning of poetry often lies somewhere else than in meaning itself, meaning that poems do not have to be understood intellectually, but can be understood on a much deeper level, on a sensual level through the musical sound of the rhythm of the words, through the unsaid words in the poem. And this was a theme at this festival: The nonintellectuyal understaning of poetry - the real language of poetry which is poetry itself and crosses every border and language barriers.
To visit this poetryfestival meant to know the language of poetry or to learn this language and cross borders like some of the poets, like Antoine Cassar, Peter Wessel and Øyvind Rimbereid, who even wrote translingual poetry, mixing different languages such as English, Malthese, Spanish, Italian, Danish, German, Norwegian and French.
One poet who really dazzled me was the Bulgarian poetress Kamelia Spassova. A somewhat punk or wild or I don't know poet, happy and serious, but when she read her poetry aloud it was obvious that she captured her audience, especially in duet with Peter Laugesen's band Sing Vogel.
All in all an inspiring experience at yet another international poetryfestival at LitteraturHaus.
