Frank Starik leads a group of Amsterdam poets engaged in a highly unusual civic project -- attending the funerals of the city's unmourned dead and remembering them at the graveside with a specially-composed poem.So a depressed loner commits commits suicide and a friendless woman succumbs to old age, and you, you sensitive poet, show up to use their funerals as a political platform against the people who are outraged by the murder of Theo van Gogh?
It spares people the indignity of a funeral without mourners, says Starik, a gaunt figure in a black jacket with an air of the Romantic poet about him.
"I want to give them back a life, a history," he said.
Amsterdam social services bury some 250 people a year, about 15 of whom leave no trace of relatives or friends. In such cases, the poets are called in....
Starik acknowledges there is a political aspect to the work.
"Part of the hidden agenda of this is that we have a very right-wing government, who are against foreigners, Muslims, and who are trying to reconstruct a society we had 50 years ago."
"This is not such a nice, tolerant country any more."
For migrants or asylum-seekers who die alone, the funerals are a chance to give them back their humanity and to consider their individual hopes and experiences in a climate contriving to demonise them and view them as a single mass, Starik says.
Dutch society is still reeling from the murder of filmmaker Theo van Gogh by a Dutch-Moroccan Islamist militant in 2004 which provoked an anti-Muslim backlash.
The murder of anti-immigration populist Pim Fortuyn in 2002 also saw mainstream political parties move to occupy his ground.
April 9, 2006
Poets for the unmourned dead... with a political agenda.
An Amsterdam project:
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Posts
16 comments:
"I want to give them back a life, a history," he said."
Oh thanks. I never met you in my life, but thanks for giving me a "history". I would so pay to have one of these unmourned dead pull a Carrie on these sensitive, politically engaged "poets"...
I'm struggling with the concept of giving something to the dead, specifically the unmourned dead. The dead are gone, they don't need us anymore, and for the subjects here, there aren't even any living friends or family who would be consoled by the gift of a poem.
It's the living that these oh-so-concerned poets should be more worried about. It's so much easier to give to the dead, they'll never tell you what you to do with your manufactured "histories".
You have to love this guy, having identified a "hidden agenda" so horrible that he is compelled to fight it... by composing poetry for dead people. He must be a member of the reality-based community.
I'm struggling with the concept of giving something to the dead, specifically the unmourned dead. The dead are gone, they don't need us anymore, and for the subjects here, there aren't even any living friends or family who would be consoled by the gift of a poem.
That doesn't mean one shouldn't try to honour them in death, though. He may be exploiting their deaths to make a shallow political point, but the impulse to give some homour even to those people who die in unglamourous circumstances is a good one, I think, and a worthy one. There's no one in particular who will be consoled, but there is some sense in which memorialising otherwise-anonymous deaths is offered up to all of us collectively as a kind of consolation, as an affirmation of the worth of human life, even at its meanest.
"Here's a guy trying to give some respect to the people that society has forgotten or even actively damaged."
Sounds more like a guy trying to give himself some publicity. If you want to honor the dead with a tasteful poem, fine, I love that. But leave the damned blinkered political crap for the poetry "slam". Politicising funerals- isn't that what Fred Phelps does?
Ara: Did you read the article? What do you think came first, his political agenda or his desire to mourn the dead?
I was ready to respect the project of poetry for the unmourned dead, but halfway through the article, I saw what was really going on here and was appalled. Look carefully, and make the right judgment. You may disagree with me, but read the article carefully and think clearly first.
Well, the only mention of "Theo van Gogh" is made by the article author, and not by the single (out of 15, supposedly) person involved in the project.
And the examples cited by the interviewee have nothing to do with Islam or any political or religious affiliation. But, since they protest the rise of anti-Muslim prejudice in their society, everyone involved has a craven political agenda, and is being dishonest with the rest of what they say.
Right.
" One man, a stowaway, was found dead on arrival from Africa, crushed by the heavy doors of the ferry in which he had hidden. He had a small knapsack on his back with food and medication to see him through to the new life he hoped for abroad.
Starik began the graveside recitals at the end of 2002 and since then he and other poets have attended more than 50 funerals. He hopes the network of poets can one day cover the whole country.
The initial idea, Starik said, came from witnessing changing attitudes to death and funeral lore, and the fear that the burials of the lonely might seem all the more dismal.
"There was a time when death was looked upon in a very instrumental way. That has changed in the last decades particularly with the number of people dying young of AIDS. They knew death was coming and wanted new rituals," he said."
Clearly, these are craven Muslim-partisan hypocrites looking for publicity, who have been doing what they've been doing for 4 years, just on the off chance that one of them might be interviewed, so that the writer (and not the interviewee) could mention Theo van Gogh.
I don't get what the big deal is? And I don't get why I'm being compared to the person who runs this blog?
I don't know who you are, Althouse lady, but you've riled the right people so you must be ok. :)
Could'st I liken thee to a rose
when thou had'st hair imbedded in thine nose
and gooey jam between'st thy toes?
N'er to praise where naught but fungus now slowly grows
the Lonely Donut Man (LDM)
Hmmm. This may have started out with the best of intentions and then spun out as the ever-so-sensitive poet responded to sadness of people dying alone, unwanted; or maybe this was his deal all along. Or maybe the reporter/editor goosed him for their own purpose - who really knows? What we really know, however, is that while modern "poetry" and poets need politics, politics surely has no possible use for poets.
Well I liked this
Eleanor Rigby died in the church and was buried along with her name
Nobody came
Father McKenzie wiping the dirt from his hands as he walks from the grave
No one was saved
All the lonely people
Where do they all come from?
All the lonely people
Where do they all belong?
We all die alone.
Hmm...Orson Scott Card at the conculsion of 'Ender's Game' introduced the concept of Speakers for the Dead. A person that gives an essentially honest and unbiased testimony of the departed. Not necessarily pleasant, but provided a great deal of closure.
The idea is intriguing, but in the real world, the execution seems to be lacking. Or at least the honesty and respect.
I worry about the Dead a lot since Jerry is gone. It is just a matter of time for the rest.
Not that Dead?
Well, never mind.
Post a Comment