The chances are quite high that you have never heard of Ella Wassenaer. Perhaps less so than the chances that you know Lipkje Post-Beuckens, or Ypk fan der Fear or Beitske Bûterblom, but that is all understandable if you live in the vague marshland area between Flanders and Friesland. In all cases, we are talking about the same woman who contributed to the revaluation of the Frisian language with her avant-garde poetry in the 1950s.
As a resident of the Randstad, you can now catch up on this knowledge gap thanks to a fascinating collaborative project between the Flemish cultural centre De Buren and the Leeuwarden production house and festival Explore The North. On Sunday 23 November, in the festival heart Podium Explore, an old hall church in the Frisian capital, a bundle presented in which Ella Wassenaer's original poems are printed alongside translations by the young Flemish poet/translator Zindzi Tillot Owusu. The collection also includes insightful essays by people such as Albertina Soepboer, Elisa Démarré and Annelies Verbeke.
Frisian Brel
It makes for fascinating reading, helping to shorten the two-hour train journey between Leeuwarden and Utrecht. The presentation of the collection was one of the attractions on the last day of Explore The North, a rather unique festival where northern poetry, literature and music come together in perfect harmony.
For example, at the Blokhuispoort, the converted old prison in Leeuwarden, I saw an exciting performance by Alexander Moto, whose Eminem-esque rap style is slightly less appealing than what he produces as a singer-songwriter behind his piano. There is a northern Brel in this young man.
The combination of rough rap and passionate singing takes on an exotic quality thanks to the Frisian language. I heard a similar sense of alienation in a work in progress by Sanam Tahmasebi, an Iranian-born prodigy who used loops, percussion and strings to make us forget the snowstorm outside.
Live contact
In the basement of De Harmonie, Leeuwarden's theatre with more rooms than you might think at first glance, Veerle van Overloop and her company Shelfish have created a unique installation artwork. In Flood the Zone with Shit You sit with seven others in a fabric-lined room, where the noise of the world slowly gives way to silence. Almost automatically, a parlour game develops around the questions written on the pieces of paper scattered across the floor. A beautiful, gentle reminder that live contact offers us a way out of the flood of stimuli that inundates us every day through the online world.
Édouard Louis' performance was also special. To mark the publication of his latest work, The Fall, he visited Leeuwarden and Utrecht (ILFU), together with actors Minne Koole and Hans Kesting. In addition to the crystal-clear statements made by the young writer himself, it was Hans Kesting who made a particularly deep impression with his large physique and intense charisma. The actor, who has fallen out of favour with ITA, seems tailor-made for the explosive work of France's youngest literary star.
Frisian Berlin
Without Explore the North, I would never have gone to Leeuwarden for anything cultural. After a gentlemen's agreement in the last century shifted the cultural heart of the North to Groningen, it took an election as European Capital of Culture to put Friesland back on the map. Now, the provincial capital offers more than just the pubs in the alley between the city canal and Podium Explore, and a complex such as the Blokhuispoort is just as worth a visit as Berlin's Kulturbrauerei. Just to mention an unexpected side street.
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