Sweden Sans Lockdown: Poets in Public Space
How a group of poets gathered, and staged their poetry in spite of the coronavirus pandemic
Poets in the 21st century are not restricting themselves to compose their thoughts on white space, online and on the pages. They are also reading to their audience to bring out phonaesthetics. Poetry has manifested as a performing art: Spoken Word.
On the second Thursday of August 2020, a group of poets gathered at Järntorget the Iron Square and started to walk towards another square, which witnesses a larger number of footfall in Gothenburg.
Göteborg is Sweden’s second largest city and the heart of Scandinavia. Göteborg is the only Swedish city with an international name Gothenburg; there is a town in the USA with a similar name.
During their twenty-minute walk, they displayed placards and raised slogans: ‘liberate poetry’, ‘let the poetry come out’, and ‘out of line is the time but not the poetry’. They attracted the attention of the passers-by, and those sitting outside the cafes and restaurants and pubs. Most of them surreptitiously acknowledged the poets, some with a smile, and few captured them in their smartphones.
Coming out on to the streets for a demonstration against someone or something, or as a manifestation of support to someone or something is uncommon in Sweden.
The poets walked past a medieval fortification, moat, backstreets, side streets, zebra-crossings on the train-cum-automobile road and reached their destination named Kungsportsplatsen. It is a square where an equestrian statue of King Karl IX is placed on a plinth with a small staircase of steps around it. It is a popular landmark because of its location and closer to the bus- and tram-stop; it is within the walking distance of the city’s parks, shops, and eateries. King Karl IX (1550–1611) defended Sweden from Danish attacks and also laid the foundation to this city. A statue in his honour was inaugurated in 1904 and the inauguration was a great spectacle for the city at the time.
In the summery evening, the poets eased on one side of the plinth facing an empty space while Louise Halvardsson of Poesiwerken placed the portable sound amplifier along with a cordless mike. For the performing poets, she ensured there were sanitisers and tissue papers reflecting the prevailing times of coronavirus pandemic. Each poet who would use the mike had the tissues and sanitisers to use before and after one’s performance.
Sweden: During coronavirus pandemic
Sweden did not opt for complete lockdown like elsewhere in the world but advocates social-distancing measures and barred gatherings of fifty people or more to prevent the spread of the coronavirus pandemic. It trusts in its society that the people will take responsibility for their lives. In the country, accountability to one’s life goes hand in hand with the freedom to move around in the time of covid-19.
Poesiwerken is a small organisation that gathers poets and artists, and led by Louise Halvardsson. She said usually about 50 people who write poetry or engaged in other artistic work meet once or twice in a month. Their monthly or bimonthly gatherings were not hindered during the coronavirus pandemic and they were in the outdoors: parks, woods or public space.
At the events of Poesiwerken, the poets are not judged: first, second, third like that, and it is open to all. Most of its members are not on social media and do not thrust their work into the digital domains, but here they share their work and pay attention to others. Their association aids them to collaborate with other artists and cultural festivals, usually largely unknown beyond their socio-cultural orbits.
In the first and the only gathering in August 2020, one after another started to take to the centre stage in the open space between the equestrian statue and a cement bench. In addition to the fellow poets and artists, their audience were the passers-by, strollers who took pause by the plinth, walkers stopping by with hot beverage in their hands and the ones who had takeaway meal but stopped here to eat their meal in the soundtrack of poetry and free-of-cost spectacle.
Henrik Mimerson: Poetry and music finds you
Henrik Mimerson read a poem in less than four minutes and took a seat among the audience on the floor of the public passage. The poem was about small poets, big poets, book poets, poets getting published and poets getting not published. The subject matter of his poetry is usually ‘to say something about now, the real things, what is going on today’. Does it matter to get published or unpublished? “No, I don’t think so,” he said. “It doesn’t matter, whether we get published or not, we should keep writing, everyone can learn to write or express themselves.”
Henrik is a poet, songwriter, part of a music band, and associates with artistic expressions that combine music and poetry. He is with Poesiwerken because of the spirit of the members; it offers a platform to express his poetry. He said poetry and music are the forms that finds the person and not the other way. Poetry and the sounds flow out of a person somehow, somewhere. “I believe it is like … the poetry chooses you, it is not you choosing the poetry,” he said, “I guess I had it since I was a kid.”
Was he not afraid to mingle with other people in the Covid-19 times? He said, “It has become better, people are not as afraid as they were in April and May. It is getting better.”
Fatima Yousef: What I stand for
Fatima Yousef collected the mike and said why she had come here today. In less than sixty seconds, swinging between Swedish and English, she delivered her message though little but poetic.
Fatima announced, “What I stand for is … Black lives matter, it always mattered for me.” She has a wide smile but when it disappears she is pensive. She had styled herself for the event in LGBT colours for socks and with the symbol of Black Lives Matter as ear rings.
Karl Andersson: With tambourine
Karl Andersson the oldest among the poets, soon-to-be sexagenarian, held the mike between his kneecaps and recited a poem as his hands played on tambourine. He was the only one who used a musical instrument which he had carried with him in his plastic satchel.
Johan Schöblom: Environmentalism, activism, poetic expressionism
The soft-spoken Johan Schöbolm staged a poem published by Poesiwerekn in a collection titled Den Fula Ballongen (The Ugly Balloon). In the collection, he evokes the ambivalence and vibrations of life, and the possibilities of happiness and being damn pissed at the same time. Also, the desire to contend life with little sorrow, anticipation of the apocalypse, an elegy to the broken globe and its inhabitants are reflected in the poems.
Johan is a poet and an artist. In his artistic works, he uses improvisational forms merging environmentalism and activism. He read an untitled poem from his book Den Fula Ballongen, which is about an encounter with a stranger at the waiting room of a bus stop and reflections upon himself. In that poem he uses the English swear phrase ‘FUCK YOU’ but in a whisper to the world around him.
Elsa Linn: Energy and inspiration
Elsa Linn is a drama student, and working on a music album for which she has written songs. She took to the stage with spontaneous manoeuvres: shaking, sliding, rolling, and breathing mystically into the mike. She is studying drama and wishes to be a drama teacher soon.
“I love the community and here they are my friends doing lot of things. I like to come here and share what I have and it can be a performance. I get a lot of inspiration to come here and watch the performance and listen to the poetry. It gives me lot of inspiration to my music,” Linn said.
When reminded of covid-19, Linn revealed she had already had it in April and was house-bound for almost three weeks. She said she fought against the coronavirus without going to hospital but keeping herself hopeful, and physically and mentally fit: singing and writing a bit, and staying in contact with people via internet.
Malik Farah: A lot of things inside me
Malik Farah is a Somali-Swede. Three languages run in his head: Somali, Swedish and English. He read a poem he wrote in Swedish that evoked heat and sun, and the vicissitudes life: peace and joy and tears and longing.
Malik said the subject matter for his poems started with close friends, family members, and stretched out to the wide world. He said, “You have to start somewhere … to formulate, articulate, and express it … a lot of things inside me. I went under, and came up.” He maintains a notebook in which he jots down his ideas, and tests his thoughts in words, a succession of words to give rhythm or melody.
Mauritz Tistelö: Performance artist
In the August performance, when the sun was descending but shining, Mauritz Tistelö moved aside from the square towards the bus- and tram-station. There he stood facing the setting sun with an unfurled white paper in his hands. After a couple of minutes, he returned to the stage with an invisible discovery and started to recite a poem by holding the mike in one hand while the other hand held the paper, fluttering to the evening breeze.
Mauritz has published 15 books; Fejkpoesi is the latest one and published by Poesiwerken. His genre is the space where there is a convergence between physical action and the spoken word. The subject matter ranges from politics to pain to everyday humor. He organizes the Absurd Festival of Poetry Performance and is a member of the performance group Ahoi. A graduate from the Art Academy of Gothenburg, he has been participating in art exhibitions, spoken word festivals, poetry and performance festivals in Sweden, and beyond.
Evelina Varas: The party songs are over
Evelina Varas was one of the most active members of the group who voiced slogans, held a placard in support of poetry, and supplemented other’s poetry readings with her moves in the space between the audience and the stage. When it was her time, she unspooled the scroll of papers of poems and recited one in a fierce voice. The poem touched the subjects of time — an era but afraid of that era to describe — capitalism, and the habit of looking for difficulties. It also evoked the current times: The party songs have ended, we would buy medicine to try to upgrade the capacity of the lungs but only to discover that the medicines had no effect on us, for our bodies would have learned to bite back harder!
Louise Halvardsson: No guitar music, poetry demands attention
The last one to walk up to the stage was Louise Halvardsson, and recited a poem from a collection of published poems. She is a lecturer, novelist, short story writer, and stage poet. As an organiser, the only rule that she has is: a performer should not use guitar as an aid in staging a poem. She said when music dominates the poetry, poetry becomes secondary. Aspiring musicians dabbling with guitars could use the platform and divert the attention of the event. “Poetry is harder … you should not be distracted with musical instruments,” she noted. Only small hand-held instruments are allowed such as the tambourine.
Louise’s earlier project was Swenglish, a portmanteau of Swedish and English, both a book and a film. In Swenglish, she charted her journey through everyday life in England and Sweden.
Poesiwerken was founded in 2015, whose earlier avatar was a loosely-composed group of friends who had cultural, literary and poetic interests. They want to take poetry to pubs and parks, out on to the streets and squares; and they do. Nowadays it is also a micro-publishing platform. Their gatherings are in open places where text-based art (poetry, prose, diary, drama) is performed. The stage for their performance can also be an attic or in a forest. It has published the works of three poets whose contents chafe, crack, and dare to think: reality in the imagination, imagination in reality.
Along with ‘The Soft Revolution of Goth Punk Society’ Louise and Hernik has planned an event that mixes poetry, music and performance for the autumn season and as part of Gothenburg Fringe Festival.
Poesiwerken has thrusted its performance in public space, and rolls on in spite of the coronavirus pandemic but with awareness of the infection; poetry is also infectious. As Herik noted if poetry is there in you, it comes out.
And the poets marched in the gloam of the summery day towards Haga — an old remnant of the city which is refurbished and remodelled as reminder to its working-class roots and as a tourist attraction — where a Chinese restaurant named Tai Shanghai awaited with extra tissues and sanitisers. Poetic discussions followed over drinks and dinner: Let the poetry come out!
Text and photos by Kovuuri G. Reddy
