When is a Poet a Rockstar?

Talofa friends,

I’ve been a full time poet and writer for 24 years now and I love writers festivals. They’re a time I can get out of my bedroom (where I write), out of my head (where I spend far too much time), out of my pajamas (which I wear far too often - not as fun as it sounds btw) and go to work like a ‘normal’ working-outside-of-the-home people do. I get to spend time with my (far flung) colleagues, work, talk about work, meet new people who are interested in work.

It’s a privilege but it’s also the social, ‘outside’ part of my job. It’s right up there in the top 3 things I love about being a writer. I am - by nature - a social person. I think I would do better as a writer if I loved my own company more than I do. I am very aware that some people disapprove of my profession - they think it lazy and self indulgent and according to ACT, racist (yawn!). They are also the people who think art is a waste of time and money. I was brought up in this society too, so there is a part of me who is plagued by the suspicion - especially in my darker moments - that they (excluding ACT) are right.

Like many writers, I used to teach to make a living, which made writing really difficult because working as a teacher at any level is super demanding. You are teacher, social worker and admin person and every year the demands rachet up and up as the government decides teachers - like nurses and so many others - should give up sleep completely to be able to do the work they’re tasked with. But as I’ve mentioned here before, my epilepsy took over about 8 years ago so now I have so many seizures I am unsafe in a classroom/ lecture room. A weird kind of double-edged blessing, if I’m looking for a reason to excuse (except to ACT) my fulltime writer status to the haters.

My life is about as far away from rockstar as you could get. Except for last night.

When is a poet a rockstar? When they’re on stage in Medellin, Colombia.

The opening night of the Medellin Poetry Festival was night before last. It was like nothing I’ve ever experienced (and I’ve been going to overseas writers’ festivals, on and off, since 2004). This opening was in an outside amphitheater with an audience of at least 3 thousand. I’ve never performed to such a big or such a responsive audience. They were clapping and shouting at highlights during the poems so I’d have to stop for a while for the noise to calm before I could continue. I mean, it wasn’t exactly a Beyonce moment but it was her less famous sister, Solange, perhaps. It was rockstar vibes!

Afterwards, there were autographs and selfies and hugs and handholds and hands over hearts while heartfelt things were said to me.

I wonder if that was because the audience was so young? New Zealand literary festival audiences are notorious for a much older, shall we say, less melanin blessed demographic. Even big overseas literary festivals don’t draw the young hip crowd that I saw that night, let alone in the thousands - clapping and chanting and shouting.

And this is for poetry. POETRY!

When I told this to Maria, (a young woman who I spoke to for quite some time), she shook her head in disbelief: “But we LOVE poetry in Colombia”. I’d heard about the love of poetry in Colombia but witnessing it, and being the at the centre of it - for my 15 minutes of rockstar fame - was quite something else.

In the places I’ve been during my nearly quarter century of poetic life, I’ve found that young people are only really drawn in numbers to spoken word and slam poetry. To see the young transfixed and lean in to listen closely to the twelve poets, who performed, and then again to their translators so as not to miss a word and then reward them with thunderous applause, was a new and marvelous experience for me.

An embarrassing, darkly funny aside: While I was waiting for my turn to read, I sat on stage with all 60 poets who are part of the Medellin Poetry Festival. Luckily I was sitting at the back, because I had a full loud-groaning-eyes-rolling-to-the-back-of-the-head-body- arching- backwards-then-falling seizure. I came to and I didn’t remember what had happened (I never do), and decided I wouldn’t ask anyone for the details in case it put me off getting up in front of thousands of people. And then, like the hardcore Aranui girl that I am, I slugged back a couple of coffees and got up on my crutches, sashayed my way to the podium and went hard!

Apart from that little display (which I hope did not show up on the livestream!) one of the highlights of the opening night was the poet of honour, Palestinian poet, Murad Sudani. The crowd were ready for him with Palestinian flags and a huge banner. They punctuated his every stanza break with Free Palestine chants. He read in Arabic and the translator read in Spanish. I have yet to hunt down English translations, but it is top of my agenda.

There are poets here from all over the world. For those of you who like lists: Irak, Jamaica, Egypt, Bangladesh, Libya, Senegal, Indigenous Sami from Norway, France, Greece, Vietnam, Uzbekistan, P.R. China, Italy, Lebanon, Spain, Netherlands, Morocco, Iran, Indigenous Innu from Canada, India, Sudan and Romania. There are also a good number of poets from this continent: Colombia, Ecuador, Argentina, Venezuela, Costa Rica, Peru, Bolivia, Panama and Mexico. And of course your girl here repping Aotearoa and Samoa and by extension, I think the whole of the South Pacific! It’s amazing to be here with them.

I was surprised how many poets from outside the continent speak Spanish. My Spanish is limited to a few little phrases so, I will have to find English translations of most people’s work. A Columbian woman at Santiago airport shook her head at me when we tried to have a conversation and she discovered I couldn’t speak Spanish. “French? Italian? German?”, she asked. I shook my head and thought again about the arrogance of the English-speaking-and-only-English-speaking world. How strange it is not to learn a number of languages like everyone else in most of the world does. It’s humbling to enter this rest-of-the-world and remember it’s on us to learn, not them to know how to speak our weird colonial language. I admit I love the language for what I can do with it, but imagine having 3 or 4 or 5? How much it would increase our understanding of other ways of being.

For now, on the other side of my short-lived rock-stardom, I bid you buenos nochas from Medellin. More stories - and new poems - to come.

Photos: Palestinian poet and poet of honour, Murad Sudani. Having my Solange moment. The audience.