Twitter
Facebook
Reddit
Digg
Tell us what you think!Send a letter to the editor about this or any other article in The Maine Campus.
The final installment of the 2010 New Writing Series had a multicultural feel when partners Omar Berrada and Sarah Riggs came from France to discuss their work in bilingual poetics, this Thursday.
It’s tricky for the New Writing Series to get foreign writers on American soil: Some refuse due to our nation’s politics, while others just don’t care for the hassle that comes along with traveling abroad. Luckily, Berrada and Riggs were up for the trip.
A native of Casablanca, Morocco, Berrada first went to school with the intention of studying engineering before discovering his true passion in the art of poetry. Sarah Riggs, on the other hand, was born in New York and traveled overseas to study poetry and language.
Together, the pair has translated the works of many French poets, such as Etel Adnan, Oscarine Bosquet, Isabelle Garron and Jérôme Mauche. They also help manage and edit the bilingual poetry blog Double Change. Riggs is the director of “Tamaas,” an international multicultural foundation. She has taught at New York University in Paris, and previously at Columbia University in Paris with Berrada, with whom she co-translated Marie Borel’s “Wolftrot.”
The couple began their presentation by reading poetry the two shared with one another over the summer. It was a loose, yet intimate way to start the readings. The poems worked as observation and correspondence, illustrating a relationship that runs rather deep. Once finished, the pair took turns reading their own excerpts, explaining their processes and illustrating their individual interests.
Berrada’s poetry mixes French and English phrases, flipping between the two languages, provoking twinges of jealousy from those who are unlucky enough to only be fluent in one language. Berrada explained that he writes in French first and translates into English after the fact.
This mixture etches a unique feeling from the work, and his soft voice amplifies this. His readings sound like an old friend telling you a story in the middle of the night, using short hand communication as if you were friends for years.
Riggs then took stage and outlined her interest beyond international poetry, broaching the subject of communicational poetry as well. She has published three compilations of poetry exchanged through common communication: “28 Telegrams, 43 Post-Its,” “38 Instant Messages” and most recently, “60 Textos.”
Textos — the French version of “text messages” — was the focus of her discussion at the event, having just been released this past week. Riggs is concerned with how technology affects our writing: If the constraint of 140 characters hinders that experience, or amplifies it by forcing the writer to get their ideas across more quickly. We, as a species, are probably writing more then we ever have over the course of our own history — through text messaging, Facebook, e-mail, Twitter, etc. — and it will be curious to see the effect this has on us in the future.
As the New Writing Series closes shop for the winter holidays, we can look back at another year of fascinating authors and poets visiting the campus. The line up for the 2011 New Writing Series will be announced in January.
