Review: Wordtrip Europe 2020
Paris Lit Up promotes international collaboration, and believes when artists cooperate despite borders they arrive at deeper truths and a greater respect for freedom. Since PLU’s inception, a group of writers, painters, musicians and other creative individuals have regularly travelled abroad under the aegis of the PLU association to share their work, often with other artists. These experiences have been invaluable for all involved; those who went out returned enriched with new essence and energy.
However, a global, ongoing pandemic threw a spanner into the works; in the first half of the year, PLU was meant to tour England, several of us were supposed to head to Italy, and we had all planned adventures, movement, flux. Our monthly meeting suddenly had to go virtual, while we tried to understand what cancellations, postponements and schedule changes meant for us.
We adapted. At the same time as the Open Mic night, which has been running every Thursday since time immemorial had to be replaced by an online version, we started talking to Oliver Cable, who runs the Open World Jam Night, where we would have been performing, had a travel ban not been implemented. We put our heads together and came up with an idea that would combine crossing borders, hearing new voices and remaining accessible to anyone with a love of poetry and the arts. Wordtrip was born.
Start your Wordtrip here, the first day.
It is by having new experiences that we can grow as artists, which is why closed spaces represents such a dearth for us. So, what do you do when you can’t physically go to the places where the poetry is happening? You get the poetry to come to you. Paris Lit Up and Cable Writes mobilised to contact as many artists as possible from the continent of Europe - 51 countries, depending on the source, stretching from Iceland in the west to Kazakhstan in the east, Finland in the north and Malta in the south. Instead of being artistically deprived, we reached out, sometimes blindly, into the void to ask for a poem, a video, an impression from another country in the continent of Europe.
Though we did not manage to get poetry from all 51 countries (41 on our last count), thanks to these videos, each ‘leg’ of the journey provides a vicarious exploration of several cultures. If you visit the Wordtrip page on our website, or even better, watch the videos, then you will see that the journey was broken up into eight stages and if you look at the map you will see that it is a very doable road trip. The first leg takes you around the Nordics and Baltics; the second is a Slavic whistle-stop; the third heads close to the Middle East; the fourth is the Balkans; the fifth ventures more centrally; the sixth heads to northern Europe; the seventh visits the Romance countries; and the last is a blend of micro-states and Ireland.
This rapid description does not represent the complexity and density of what we have collected; it’s astonishing to see a series in which you can sample the poetry of so many different countries. But it is only a drop in the ocean compared with what we could achieve. Wordtrip Europe is not supposed to be a political message, though we realised when defining our boundaries that geography is in itself inherently political. We want to represent the complexity of culture, the exhilaration in crossing boundaries, and that flame that unites all poets and artists all around the world: share and be shared.
We wanted to set ourselves a bold target - 51 countries on the continent of Europe - that sounds ambitious enough, right? And what’s next? Paris Lit Up and Cable Writes are always looking at ways to connect with other artistic associations. We have worked with groups in Germany, Italy, Holland and the UK. Where could we go next?
Humans have always travelled - we have feet, not roots. We have sailed in ships, ridden horses, flown in hot air balloons, laid railway tracks and spread tarmac over the globe. At this moment, we are travelling with the most recent development in movement: digital navigation. Pack your bags; we’re going on a Wordtrip.
Thanks for continuing the human journey!
Paris Lit Up and Cable Writes