ChicagoPostmodernPoetry.Com
Poetic Profile
Laura Erber
General Questions
1) Where did you grow up? Was poetry and writing part of that mix?
In the City of Rio de Janeiro. I also have spent time in Minas Gerais for some periods. Rio de Janeiro is and always will be for me a highly stimulating city because it is so beautiful, sordid and always shows something that is not foreseen. Rio is a city where you can have it all and also have nothing and where these tensions merge they explode. Writing and reading is my way to be a part and spy on the world.
2) Who are your poetic influences, favorite poets, writers, artwork, other things that inform your work?
Inspiration comes from being both perturbed and fascinated. It is possible to be a book, an edifice, object, a sound or a color, the way people live or wait. It could be the movement of the body, the way that we close or open our eyes. The afflictions and delicacies that pass with inspiration and work as well. Influences ?! Favorite Artists?! There are many and they metamorphoses at high speed. Do you really want to know? Three artists whose works always impress me are Helio Oitica, Beckett and Lezama Lima.
During the last few months I first discovered the roads and communicating vessels between the work of Eva Hesse, and the animations of the Canadian Ryan Larkin. Between "Das Buch der Klange" Hans Otte and the "malemolência" of Tom Zé. A road that crosses Empedocles and this led me to Alejandra Pizarnik. Jorge de Lima read by Mario Faustino. Mario Faustino read before sleep. Reverdy. Kurt Schwitters. Roger Laporte and his Carnet Posthume. Recently I descoverd the texts of a young writer, Margareth Obexer, and I have been reading wit pleasure the poems and essays of the italian Federico Nicolao with whom I have worked on various projects.
3) What is your opinion of global poetry? American Poetry? Latin American poetry? Poetry in Latin America an Spanish and Portuguese speaking nations?
It is difficult to say? I do not understand well the significance of Global Poetry I think that this categories, global and local are not a good way to focus. There are florescent marks here and there; old shadows over bodies that dislocated slowly there are zones that are little lived in and spaces that are abandoned. American poetry interests me a lot; the intersections and transit points open possibilities of convergence of poetry with other art forms and other areas.
I like a lot the impetuousness I see in young Argentine writing. I feel that this relationship is healthy with the literary inheritances mixed an enjoyable mix of the scornful and the experimental. Portuguese poetry also and a place that is beautiful but plays this game with something of the intense struggle and potent poetry of Adilia Lopes for example.
4) When did you 'become' a poet, when did poetry become part of your everyday life?
This could have a dumb response, or recurring, I refer to it one more time: The poet is always turning or trying to become a poet. Finally to be a poet is not more that a way of journeying and exercising intuition a mode of being in movement and to arise as from sleep and remove ones clothes, forget and breathe. Yes poetics is strongly present and has value for me and happily it dissolves the borders between value and what is extraordinary and uncommon.
5) Where were you educated? Was this important?
I think this is an unsightly the expression; educational formation. There must be a better word?
But seriously more or less the following:
Voyages, Detours, Returns, Escapes, Going in Circles, Stumbles, Losses, Encounters, Longings, Repetitions and Jumps.
Studies of Art in Italia, then the Faculty of Letters in Rio, courses of art in the School of Visual Arts of Parque Lage experiences with video, two years in residence with Le Fresnoy, Studio of Contemporary Art in the north of France and now the Schloss Solitude Akademie, in Germany.
6) Poetry in the USA is divided into Popular, Experimental, et cetera; how do you define Brazilian poetry?
I do not know how to classify the poetry or Brazilian poetry. Brazilian poetry, like our football team knows how to dribble and how to move through the intracasies of the artform and sometimes we score and sometimes we do not. Brazilian poetry is something we need to examine with depth and closeness. But to continue to play we need strong doses of rigor and freedom. There is also instigation from music, hip hop and more and more and the the continuation of Samba, Brazil's national music, finally the voice of Brazilian poetry is not in books.
7) What is your favorite food?
What I like to eat when I am hungry, preferable in good company.
8) Sports Team? Activity?
I am very absent minded regarding teams, but I consider myself a fan of Flamengo (Rio Soccer Team). Activity? Lounge, Love, Draw but not necessarily in that order.
9) Vacation Spot?
Many places I still do not know but I am interested in. I would like to navigate the Sao Francisco river in Brazil for example.
10) Curse word?
I do not use vulgarity much it has to be used for the right occasion and my preference is to be eschatological and comic. I like more the words of scolding in Italian.
11) Are the magazines in Brazil tied to certain movements?
I see some groups that show certain affinities. I think that there is a flexibility, the can not see distinctions that are clear between certain groups. there is a circulation that is strange of some figures that unify and these form a unity among the mists. Clearly, there is always a conservative group and the group that take pleasure in creating polemic at all costs. The moments of tension and debate are interesting, there are many excellent magazines and always more being created by small presses and medium ones. I hope that these gain new readers for each of these new productions. There are unfortunately many journals that we cannot see because Brazil is large always growing.
12) Is poetry in Brazil tied to academia?
My impression is that academic poetry in Brazil unfortunately has not created a fertile space to think, or discuss contemporary poetry in its multiple forms.
13) How do you connect the Cinema to your poetry?
Perhaps my writing has influenced by a cinematic sense, for the temptation to capture life in movement but I am not certain of this. In all senses, I think that the poems of my first book Insones, Editora 7Letras 2002, bring the knowledge of the words fixed in their places or a visual character in words.
14) Traditionally Brazil has a deep ties to Europe, how has Europe has effect your work?
I have two and one half years to develop my projects in Europe. I labor with the Porto-Brazilian language in the context of other remixed language in the space of other productions of art and these thoughts are very stimulating. For me Europe has been a point of departure as an experience that goes further beyond what can be called an European Space in a conventional sense. Like a takeoff runway and landing it a place of convergences and separations also. The dislocations, the immigrations the complexity the intensity and explosive contradictions. and this is for any person involved in whatever type of creative process is a great motivator.
Craft Questions
1) How do you form a poem?
In many ways every poem is formed with certain manner. The tablets of notes precious. This give a lot of importance to the work and the accumulated material gives a certain distance to poem after it has been written. Leave the poem alone and let the yeast let the poem rise and see what to keep and what to delete.
2) Is poetry an organic or synthetic process for you?
Both, the material is organic the process is synthetic. But also it can occur that a synthetic material demands organic developments.
3) Where do you write? Is ambiance important?
Here and over there as well, on my feet and in profile. When two people speak and they say the same words at the same time at this nexus a poem may start. With laziness, with thirst, with music, with diffused light, with longing, without longing. When the translator vacillates and swallows his words. Also I draw pictures and long lists of words so when I cannot conceive a poem.
4) In the balance between found language and created language where does your work fall? Do you use many sources?
The possibility of convergence between both
Links
http://perso.wanadoo.es/joan-navarro/varia/indextext.htm - Laura Erber's poems on the web
www.akademie-solitude.de - Laura Erber's residency in Stuttgart - Germany