Margento has launched a brilliant new online journal (of sorts, it is very high tech!) and kindly hosted a unique in dialogue interview I have done with poets that are at the root of my festival and it’s ethos - Julia Rose Lewis, David Spittle, Lavinia Singer Krisjanis Zelgis and Zuzana Husarova. They reflected on the festival and then asked me a question.
“It was around the lockdown that I realised the festival had become sustainable because it was interpersonally sustaining. Or rather, my approach of putting collaboration first, rather than translation or singular solo readings, had led to people being put first, as everything was being created for the events, and communities and friendships spiralled out from this model. As such, in the absence of people getting together for one night to share new collaborative performances I realised the festival was sustainable for me for an individual as all extraneously reflective consideration, including goals or even curatorial visions, had drained away and I was just doing it, wanting to do it, to see people and see their work. I wanted to get a few hundred good people together, connect them, and have a lovely few weeks in their company, and all else could flow from that, because of that, often oblivious to me. Since then this has increasingly been the case, that I am able to be in the moment of the events and not mind the admin and effort it takes to build up to these moments, for they are just less nice but neutral moments in the service of me seeing and meeting and working with people.”