{"id":663,"date":"2018-08-29T18:20:13","date_gmt":"2018-08-29T16:20:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/uahost.uantwerpen.be\/sigwrit\/?p=663"},"modified":"2018-09-03T02:52:49","modified_gmt":"2018-09-03T00:52:49","slug":"when-language-struggles-become-poetry","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/hosting.uantwerpen.be\/sigwriting\/when-language-struggles-become-poetry\/","title":{"rendered":"When language struggles become poetry"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.maudvanhauwaert.be\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><strong>Maud Vanhauwaert<\/strong><\/a> may be renowned for being an award-winning poet, but she describes herself\u2014rather prosaically\u2014as someone who is \u2018professionally struggling with language\u2019. Her struggle got rather official at the beginning of this year, when she became Antwerp\u2019s City Poet Laureate. Using the city as her laboratory, she is on a quest to take poetry beyond the boundaries of paper.<!--more--><\/p>\n<p>Poetry is born from confusion, according to Maud. Confusion she willingly creates herself by addressing unsuspecting passersby with the question \u2018Shall we wait?\u2019 \u2013 and other lines of her poem \u2018Wij zijn evenwijdig\u2019 (\u2018We are in parallel\u2019). With reactions varying from \u2018Which summer?\u2019 to \u2018Mine are grown already!\u2019, unexpected new dialogues begin.<\/p>\n<p>As an investigator of our daily struggle with language, Maud also questions how we ask questions. She has recently created an updated version of the \u2018Guess Who?\u2019 board game, with characters that transcend the gender binary. After all, the game\u2019s classic opening question\u2014\u2018Is it a man or a woman?\u2019\u2014doesn\u2019t cover the broader M\/F\/X gender spectrum.<\/p>\n<p>With over 170 nationalities living in Antwerp, language is becoming a struggle for all its inhabitants. Tapping into that evolution, Maud has launched Radio Babel. Participants are invited in her little tower of Babel to read a poem in their mother tongue. On <strong><a href=\"https:\/\/radiobabel.be\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">radiobabel.be<\/a>,<\/strong> you can listen to recordings of their performances. It\u2019s a fast-growing collection of border-crossing poetry, because this Babel Tower is reaching for the sky.<br \/>\n\u2014Mike Beyers<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Maud Vanhauwaert may be renowned for being an award-winning poet, but she describes herself\u2014rather prosaically\u2014as someone who is \u2018professionally struggling with language\u2019. Her struggle got rather official at the beginning of this year, when she became Antwerp\u2019s City Poet Laureate. Using the city as her laboratory, she is on a quest to take poetry beyond [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":664,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[16],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-663","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-creative-keynotes","et-has-post-format-content","et_post_format-et-post-format-standard"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/hosting.uantwerpen.be\/sigwriting\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/663","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/hosting.uantwerpen.be\/sigwriting\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/hosting.uantwerpen.be\/sigwriting\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hosting.uantwerpen.be\/sigwriting\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hosting.uantwerpen.be\/sigwriting\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=663"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/hosting.uantwerpen.be\/sigwriting\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/663\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":680,"href":"https:\/\/hosting.uantwerpen.be\/sigwriting\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/663\/revisions\/680"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hosting.uantwerpen.be\/sigwriting\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/664"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/hosting.uantwerpen.be\/sigwriting\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=663"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hosting.uantwerpen.be\/sigwriting\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=663"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hosting.uantwerpen.be\/sigwriting\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=663"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}