2/2/2021

ZEBRA Poetry Film Festival
New festival, new festival poem

Our festival poem this year is going to Pasárgada and was written by Odile Kennel. You can find the full poem in writing, audio and translation at lyrikline.org.

As the child of a German- French city partnership Odile Kennel (*1967) grew up bilingual. She now lives as a poet, novelist and translator for French, Portuguese, Spanish and English in Berlin.

Her novel Mit Blick auf See (dtv, 2017) was nominated for the Alfred Döblin Prize. The most recent publication is her poetry collection Hors Texte  (Verlagshaus Berlin, 2019). The most recent translations are: Raquel Nobre Guerra: Senhor Roubado (hochroth, 2019) aswell as Angélica Freitas: Der Uterus ist groß wie eine Faust (Elif-Verlag, 2020).

Going to Pasárgada was created as a response to the short documentary film “O poeta do castelo” (literally: The Poet of the Castle) by Joaquim Pedro de Andrade (1932–1988) about the Brazilian poet Manuel Bandeira (1886–1968).

In it, Manuel Bandeira reads, among others the poem "vou-me embora para Pasárgada." Pasárgada is the imaginary, personal space of happiness, where everything is better, and there is everything you could ever wish for. (Trigger warning from the author: the poem was written in its time and contains traces of sexism).

ZEBRA Poetry Film Festival<br>New festival, new festival poem