THE TRAVELS OF A PINK FEATHER: Lisa Kelly reports from the first international Performance Poetry Biennial Symposium-Festival
As I unpacked my suitcase after a late flight back from Thessaloniki, I found a pink feather. It was from a boa I had worn while being 25% of a quartet of performance poets known as the Poetic Flamingos. The boa had been an impulse purchase after I’d felt featherless and dull compared to my fellow flamingos: Simon Wu, who wore a shirt with a flamingo print, Paul Stephenson in a pink t-shirt emblazoned with POETRY; and Dino Mahoney who’d dyed his hair pink. We had donned all this finery for the occasion of the first international Performance Poetry Biennial Symposium-Festival (PerPoSF).
It was Dino, who lives on the island of Aegina with his husband Simon, who got us the gig. We had performed earlier in the year at a cultural centre on the island and our mix of poems – reworked for performance and audience participation — went down well. On that programme we explored multiple themes: migration, the oppression of British Sign Language (BSL) and Deaf culture; homophobia; gay parenthood; and tonal appreciation of Cantonese. When Dino spotted a callout for PerPoSF (issued by the co-organisers, EPOPSIS Non-Profit Organisation for Culture and the University of Western Macedonia supported by the Hellenic Ministry of Culture and Municipality of Thessaloniki) we decided to build on what we had and submit a proposal. Luckily, we were successful and witnessed the birth of something special at Warehouse D, Port of Thessaloniki. Academics and performance poets from Greece and countries including Denmark, Belgium and Spain took part in the three-day festival from the 6th to 8th December.
Christos Koukis is a well-known Greek poet, who often represents Greece at international festivals. It was his first time as a ‘performance poet’ incorporating a giant chess board in his set as he moved from square to square in dialogue with a fellow poet-performer, Kleoniki Drougka, while handing out text hand-written on coloured sheets of paper. The performance, Outsider or otherwise the human being, was accompanied by a guitarist and although I understood nothing of what was being said in Greek, the poets’ tones and rhythms, the plaintive music, the existential mood of angst and the audience’s ritualistic participation covered many of the elements apparent at the festival – namely spoken word, a strong visual aspect, music, interaction with the audience and awareness of the body in space. It is also remarkable that a successful so-called ‘page poet’ was eager to re-invent himself, if only for 10-or-so minutes, as a performance poet.
In the UK, the Page v. Stage debate is familiar, if somewhat hackneyed. We’ve moved on enough to understand that it is at the blurred edges and in the shifts and intersections where much of the energy exists in the UK poetry scene. But what PerPoSF explored and highlighted was the history of performance poetry and the scale of its cross-disciplinary ambitions, inviting audiences to ‘receive’ poetry with all their senses. Perhaps Greece is ideally placed to lead the way with its cultural roots in the role of the chorus in drama. Certainly, the insights of academics, researchers and practitioners alongside electric performances awakened a hunger for a more holistic approach in the UK. Over three days at PerPoSF, attendees could listen to a range of lectures on performance poetry, including the intersection between performance poetry and folk song; performative poetry actions with teenagers; and the role of the poet-shaman. We were also treated to performance poetry films, a poetry slam for peace and a range of live poetry performances that interacted with other art forms such as electronic music, on-stage painting, photography, and digital technology.
Warehouse D, at the end of the quay where a warship was anchored, hosted the political and the playful and everything in between. The space served as an allegory for performance poetry’s ideals of embracing all the senses and a sense of anything-can-happen. Performances were delivered on stage or from a lectern with a seated audience; and in the foyer, reminiscent of promenade theatre. In Of the feminine kind, Aliiki Beredima sat reciting at a tub while scrubbing wads of euros – literally money laundering – as two helpers pegged copies of Vogue magazine showing unobtainable ideals of womanhood on a washing line to the soundtrack of a baby wailing in the background. The actions and aural aspects underpinned the dynamic delivery the poetry.
Throughout the symposium-festival, there was a thrilling intersection of poetry with other art forms and all the available space. For one event, the stairs between the two levels of the conference centre metamorphosed into a performance space with the crowd leaning over the bannisters to watch a performer recite poetry while removing his clothes and spectacles. Throughout, he was attended by a silent performer on his knees in a black gimp suit who slowly wrapped a roll of white paper around the poet until he resembled a muffled mummy. It made me think of a ‘happening’, championed by Allan Kaprow, who was a student of John Cage, famous for his musical happenings; but every poetry performance was in collaboration with another art form or medium, and seeing all these strands weave together made the synapses ping.
Georgia Velivasaki, artistic director of PerPoSF, was inspired to organise the festival during the Covid lockdown and deliberately chose the dual aspect of a symposium-festival. While members of the public were welcomed, the symposium gave researchers, academics and performers the time and space to investigate and share methodologies and practices over a fertile few days. The next festival in 2026 will no doubt see further developments and increasing awareness and synergies through its international reach with attendees encouraged to connect and spread the word. Most performances were in Greek or English but there were also Spanish, Danish, and Belgian performance poets in attendance who shared work in their native tongue. In this context language is less of a barrier than it might be for more traditional poetry readings.
I did not know Demosthenes Agrafiotis before he gave a combined lecture and poetry performance, but I quickly became aware of his powerful presence in the poetry-performance landscape in Greece. He has been a leader in the art-form for decades and although I could not understand his lecture, my non-existent Greek could not deprive me of pleasure in his poetry performance. Embodying the shamanistic poet, he shook a bunch of laurel leaves at the audience, repeatedly intoning ‘Kronos’ in a semi-blessing. He handed out pages torn from a Filofax and invited the audience to do with them what they pleased – some scribbled, some folded, some ripped, some made paper aeroplanes. We were then invited to scatter our offerings over the foliage. When everyone had returned to their seats, Demosthenes poured grains of rice over the ‘sculpture’. As an exploration of destiny, pathetic attempts to diarise our days, futile micro-rebellious acts against the tyranny of Kronos and the grains of time forever falling, it is as memorable as any poem I have learnt by heart.
I was concerned my boa, which kept shedding feathers during the Poetic Flamingos performance, would annoy the stage manager. I needn’t have worried after watching all that rice spill out into the auditorium! Throughout the festival, creative freedom and interactions messed with the mind in a way that invoked a heady mix of anarchy, inspiration, and aspiration. While I was away, I lost my mother’s scarf – one of the few keepsakes I have of her – but I gained a pink feather boa which I also left in Thessaloniki. The single pink feather that snuck into my suitcase is perhaps the genesis of a performance poem about tradition and revolution. At the very least, it is a souvenir of what performance poetry is capable of when it embraces the past with an experimental energy that can address a challenging future.
Dec 27 2024
The Travels of a Pink Feather
THE TRAVELS OF A PINK FEATHER: Lisa Kelly reports from the first international Performance Poetry Biennial Symposium-Festival
As I unpacked my suitcase after a late flight back from Thessaloniki, I found a pink feather. It was from a boa I had worn while being 25% of a quartet of performance poets known as the Poetic Flamingos. The boa had been an impulse purchase after I’d felt featherless and dull compared to my fellow flamingos: Simon Wu, who wore a shirt with a flamingo print, Paul Stephenson in a pink t-shirt emblazoned with POETRY; and Dino Mahoney who’d dyed his hair pink. We had donned all this finery for the occasion of the first international Performance Poetry Biennial Symposium-Festival (PerPoSF).
It was Dino, who lives on the island of Aegina with his husband Simon, who got us the gig. We had performed earlier in the year at a cultural centre on the island and our mix of poems – reworked for performance and audience participation — went down well. On that programme we explored multiple themes: migration, the oppression of British Sign Language (BSL) and Deaf culture; homophobia; gay parenthood; and tonal appreciation of Cantonese. When Dino spotted a callout for PerPoSF (issued by the co-organisers, EPOPSIS Non-Profit Organisation for Culture and the University of Western Macedonia supported by the Hellenic Ministry of Culture and Municipality of Thessaloniki) we decided to build on what we had and submit a proposal. Luckily, we were successful and witnessed the birth of something special at Warehouse D, Port of Thessaloniki. Academics and performance poets from Greece and countries including Denmark, Belgium and Spain took part in the three-day festival from the 6th to 8th December.
Christos Koukis is a well-known Greek poet, who often represents Greece at international festivals. It was his first time as a ‘performance poet’ incorporating a giant chess board in his set as he moved from square to square in dialogue with a fellow poet-performer, Kleoniki Drougka, while handing out text hand-written on coloured sheets of paper. The performance, Outsider or otherwise the human being, was accompanied by a guitarist and although I understood nothing of what was being said in Greek, the poets’ tones and rhythms, the plaintive music, the existential mood of angst and the audience’s ritualistic participation covered many of the elements apparent at the festival – namely spoken word, a strong visual aspect, music, interaction with the audience and awareness of the body in space. It is also remarkable that a successful so-called ‘page poet’ was eager to re-invent himself, if only for 10-or-so minutes, as a performance poet.
In the UK, the Page v. Stage debate is familiar, if somewhat hackneyed. We’ve moved on enough to understand that it is at the blurred edges and in the shifts and intersections where much of the energy exists in the UK poetry scene. But what PerPoSF explored and highlighted was the history of performance poetry and the scale of its cross-disciplinary ambitions, inviting audiences to ‘receive’ poetry with all their senses. Perhaps Greece is ideally placed to lead the way with its cultural roots in the role of the chorus in drama. Certainly, the insights of academics, researchers and practitioners alongside electric performances awakened a hunger for a more holistic approach in the UK. Over three days at PerPoSF, attendees could listen to a range of lectures on performance poetry, including the intersection between performance poetry and folk song; performative poetry actions with teenagers; and the role of the poet-shaman. We were also treated to performance poetry films, a poetry slam for peace and a range of live poetry performances that interacted with other art forms such as electronic music, on-stage painting, photography, and digital technology.
Warehouse D, at the end of the quay where a warship was anchored, hosted the political and the playful and everything in between. The space served as an allegory for performance poetry’s ideals of embracing all the senses and a sense of anything-can-happen. Performances were delivered on stage or from a lectern with a seated audience; and in the foyer, reminiscent of promenade theatre. In Of the feminine kind, Aliiki Beredima sat reciting at a tub while scrubbing wads of euros – literally money laundering – as two helpers pegged copies of Vogue magazine showing unobtainable ideals of womanhood on a washing line to the soundtrack of a baby wailing in the background. The actions and aural aspects underpinned the dynamic delivery the poetry.
Throughout the symposium-festival, there was a thrilling intersection of poetry with other art forms and all the available space. For one event, the stairs between the two levels of the conference centre metamorphosed into a performance space with the crowd leaning over the bannisters to watch a performer recite poetry while removing his clothes and spectacles. Throughout, he was attended by a silent performer on his knees in a black gimp suit who slowly wrapped a roll of white paper around the poet until he resembled a muffled mummy. It made me think of a ‘happening’, championed by Allan Kaprow, who was a student of John Cage, famous for his musical happenings; but every poetry performance was in collaboration with another art form or medium, and seeing all these strands weave together made the synapses ping.
Georgia Velivasaki, artistic director of PerPoSF, was inspired to organise the festival during the Covid lockdown and deliberately chose the dual aspect of a symposium-festival. While members of the public were welcomed, the symposium gave researchers, academics and performers the time and space to investigate and share methodologies and practices over a fertile few days. The next festival in 2026 will no doubt see further developments and increasing awareness and synergies through its international reach with attendees encouraged to connect and spread the word. Most performances were in Greek or English but there were also Spanish, Danish, and Belgian performance poets in attendance who shared work in their native tongue. In this context language is less of a barrier than it might be for more traditional poetry readings.
I did not know Demosthenes Agrafiotis before he gave a combined lecture and poetry performance, but I quickly became aware of his powerful presence in the poetry-performance landscape in Greece. He has been a leader in the art-form for decades and although I could not understand his lecture, my non-existent Greek could not deprive me of pleasure in his poetry performance. Embodying the shamanistic poet, he shook a bunch of laurel leaves at the audience, repeatedly intoning ‘Kronos’ in a semi-blessing. He handed out pages torn from a Filofax and invited the audience to do with them what they pleased – some scribbled, some folded, some ripped, some made paper aeroplanes. We were then invited to scatter our offerings over the foliage. When everyone had returned to their seats, Demosthenes poured grains of rice over the ‘sculpture’. As an exploration of destiny, pathetic attempts to diarise our days, futile micro-rebellious acts against the tyranny of Kronos and the grains of time forever falling, it is as memorable as any poem I have learnt by heart.
I was concerned my boa, which kept shedding feathers during the Poetic Flamingos performance, would annoy the stage manager. I needn’t have worried after watching all that rice spill out into the auditorium! Throughout the festival, creative freedom and interactions messed with the mind in a way that invoked a heady mix of anarchy, inspiration, and aspiration. While I was away, I lost my mother’s scarf – one of the few keepsakes I have of her – but I gained a pink feather boa which I also left in Thessaloniki. The single pink feather that snuck into my suitcase is perhaps the genesis of a performance poem about tradition and revolution. At the very least, it is a souvenir of what performance poetry is capable of when it embraces the past with an experimental energy that can address a challenging future.