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Under the auspices of the Swiss Embassy in Egypt, German Cultural Center “Goethe Institute” and Austrian Cultural Forum in Cairo, three Egyptian contemporary poets, Guirguis Shokry, Salam Yousri and Hussein Kamel El Samak, met for the first time with their homologues, Jürg Halter from Switzerland, Micha Ebeling from Germany and Markus Koehle from Austria. This is the first time when East meets West in such unprecedented cultural event through a “poetry jam” event held in Alexandria, El Minya and Cairo on 29^th, 31^st March and 2^nd April 2009. “At first, back in December 2008, the Austrian poet wanted to hold a cultural event in Egypt alone.  But when the Austrian Cultural Forum contacted us, (Goethe Institute), we thought that it would better to have a group of poets from Germany, Austria and Switzerland to meet up with Egyptian poets who share a common point in their works and have poems recited in Arabic and in Deutsche” explains Frederike Köppe, Event Coordinator and Project Manager at Goethe Institute.

It can be fun.

Poetry Jam, this new “form” of poetry, totally unknown to many of the Egyptian public, has a lot to offer to its audience. “It differs from Slam Poetry which is mainly political, radical and is performed in the frame of a competition which will be judged by the audience themselves” says Salam Yousri, Egyptian poet. What is unique and new about Poetry Jam is that the poets do not only perform, improvise this “literary dialogue” in an informal, relaxed and fun atmosphere, but also interact with the public.  This was the case of Markus Koehle, Austrian poet, when he asked the public to repeat a certain word from his poem in Deutsche and follow his feet beat to enable him to recite and perform the whole poem, which they did in such familiarity. Even though the poem was sheding the light in a very critical way on our stressful daily life to achieve one dream, “build a house” everybody in the public was laughing out loud.

As for Guirguis Shokry, Egyptian poet who performed with the Swiss poet and musician Jürg Halter, this is a new experience for him. But for such a “classic” poet, this experience will just end there. “I wanted to try this new type of poetry but don’t think that I will continue performing in this style. I must say that this unique experience gave me new ideas about poetry and shed the light on what is happening in the world through our discussions and work with the German, Austrian and Swiss poets”.

No labels.

Jürg Halter, Swiss poet and musician, does not run after names nor labels. “Poetry is poetry, I don’t like the labels. I always look for quality and diversity. What matters for me, is to perform various styles of poetry, In Switzerland for example, I often perform poetry combined with a Rap life band” says Halter who thinks that the best way of communicating is a good sense of humor.

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