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The poet Peter Wessel (b. 1950 Copenhagen, Denmark) lives in Madrid. After long stays in Denmark, France and the USA, he settled in Spain in 1981 where he works as a teacher and journalist in the fields of art, linguistics and music. He was already writing in English at the age of 17 and his works were published in the USA. In 2003, he began work on his multilingual poems, which he calls “Polyfonías”. For these, he uses the languages of the countries in which he has lived: Danish, English, French and Spanish. Peter Wessel sees the use of several languages as a natural and organic enrichment of his poetry. His poems integrate and interlink cultural diversity and in so doing represent for Wessel a mark of respect for the beauty of the languages and cultures that in his opinion constitute the real strength of Europe. In 2008, his Polyfonias Poetry Project, which sees the spoken form of his multilingual poetry enter into a harmonious dialogue with Mark Solborg’s music, was released on CD. One poem that was included on this release, “Un Idioma Sin Fronteras”, won second prize in the international art competition 2008culturas.com, initiated by the Spanish Ministry of Culture as part of the European Year of Intercultural Dialogue.
Publications (selection):
In Place of Absence (Chestnut Hills Press 1990)
Polyfonias (delsatelite editores 2008)