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The Origin of Poetry

© Alexandra Ekkelenkamp

"poetry comes from every second of existence… and from the lives of those who lived before... comes from the stones in the street the nails in the rafters... the breath of infants... the throat of the frog... poetry is between 2 at a table... skin on skin... grass flattened by a wind... insects on a flower... blood thru veins and in every movement of all.

- richard zola

Today I listened to the radio. A man was reading a poem and I could not understand a word of what he was saying. The poem turned out to be written in a certain dialect, spoken only by a handful of people who live on a small island on the north coast of The Netherlands. This man had been a teacher for years and one of the last ones who honoured his verbal heritage in this way. He argued that the dialect he spoke was a language because its grammar had been documented, it had produced many literary works and poems had been written in it. This man felt that he had to legitimise his efforts to keep this dialect alive. He sought an excuse for its existence.

Recently, one of my teachers posed the following aphorism: "What is language? It is dialect with gun power." He meant to say that all languages and their "deviations" are legitimate, but that some can dominate others because of the power of those who speak them. When applied to the case of the man above, this means that the dialect he is speaking is as legitimate as the standard Dutch language, but that it is only smaller. If the man had known this, would he still "fight" for his language? I think he would, because his language is more than just words. This, therefore, is my aphorism: "What is language? It is tradition and roots."

For this article I’ve "interviewed" some of the Performance Poetry poets about the influence of surroundings on their work. Most of them said that their writing was somehow influenced by what (had) happened around them but that this influence was only secondary. It surprised me. I myself am Dutch; English is my second language and it is not easy to express myself exactly the way I want to. However, in whatever language I write, I always feel that I am connected to something. I call it my heritage: a package containing (amongst others) my culture, my language and my surroundings. I cannot get away from this- I am bound to it.

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