Poetry in orangeland

ROTTERDAM – Thursday, June 17, 12:30 p.m. I am using a computer with Internet access courtesy of the administrative staff of the 35th Poetry International Rotterdam, here at the Poets’ Foyer on the third floor of the Rotterdamse Schouwburg Theatre where the weeklong poetry-plus-everything festival is being conducted. Today is the sixth and penultimate day, but the young, gorgeous staffers of both sexes, most of them clad in black T-shirts with the festival logo and title, are still as energetic, efficient and helpful as they were on day one last Saturday.

Leading them is Bas Kwakman, a poet himself and first-time director of the annual affair that draws close to 30 foreign and homegrown poets, nine international contestants for the World Slam Poetry championship, various collaborative artists, photographers, film makers, music groups and a daily audience of some 500 to 700 poetry lovers who divide themselves among the several venues for the half-a-dozen performance programs scheduled each day.

As I write this, here comes the bespectacled Bas – in his usual dark suit sans tie or buttoned collar – tall, dapper and youthful-looking at 40, despite a shining pate bookended by close-cropped hair over his temples. He fills up a plate with half a brudje or sandwich from the open bar, and chooses to sit beside me as I pound away on this black keyboard before one of three PCs on a long row of desks littered with all sorts of papers sporting Dutch and a dozen other languages.

I reward him with a proffered box of Don Juan Urquijo cigarillos from Manila. He takes one and smokes it appreciatively through his light lunch. Minutes later, program coordinator Eva Ragut, ever effervescent, of the lively, beguiling eyes, approaches to discuss some matter with Bas. Two nights ago, nearing midnight at the end of the evening’s programs, Bas and the rest of the staff had surprised her with champagne and gifts, because she had just had a successful interview for a teaching position at a university, so that this will likely be the last year she’ll serve the festival cause.

Someone else joins them to whisper something. It’s another staffer’s birthday, so Bas quickly deserts his lunch plate and strides to the bar to call everyone’s attention and announce the milestone. Everyone sings the Dutch version of Happy Birthday – "Lang zal ze leven" ("Long shall she live!"). Gift boxes are produced from behind the bar, and the birthday girl Nel is greeted warmly all around.

It’s a large staff composed of young veterans – in their 20s and 30s – trainees and volunteers who have been helping Bas Kwakman in steering the festival as best they know how, zestfully, with nearly overweaning attention to both the visitors and sundry details, ready to help and/or entertain anyone with questions or predicaments minor or major. And yet they manifest fine discipline in ushering all the scheduled performers to microphone tests and our assigned row of seats in either the Grand Hall or the Little Hall for the group readings, or any of the ground floor venues for a theme discussion.

One such was on "Poetry of Engagement" last Tuesday, which had me teaming up with poets Ramsey Nasr of the host country, Zvonco Mancovic of Croatia and emcee Marc Reugebrink, a Dutch writer based in Ghent, Belgium. Over pre-program dinner, I had to tell Marc that I visited his town over two years ago, and was shown a building with a historical plaque saying that it was where our national hero had his second novel printed.

My initial participation was at the opening program on the first day, fittingly titled "In the Beginning," with some of the invited foreign participants weighing in with a theme-related poem each.

Sunday was a break day for me, and so the writer Ella Sanchez Wagemakers, whom I had met at the AWP Conference in Chicago last April, and her Dutch husband Adrian took me on a countryside tour that gave ample opportunity for posing with giant windmills. At three in the afternoon ("a las tres de la tarde...") that day, we sat down, at my urgent request, at a Chinese resto outside Rotterdam, where I finally had rice again after five days of abstinence, starting in Antwerp where I had attended a preliminary poetry reading festival. I’ll render that flashback report next week.

Monday had an international program with an Asian flavor as the main event at the Grand Hall. Thanh Thao of Vietnam, the young and delicate Yi Won of South Korea, and I took turns onstage, for 15 minutes each. Dutch translations of our poems were projected on a screen hanging on a corner above the stage.

Every night after the programs that lasted till close to midnight, most everyone trooped down to Theatre Foyer where a bar served drinks for which we gave up complimentary stubs. On Tuesday evening, between our 7 p.m. forum and the main event that was the Tribute to Pablo Neruda starting at 9:30 p.m., I had the window of opportunity to catch Holland’s first game at the Euro Cup 04 in Lisbon, against old rival Germany. Hours earlier, wandering about the straats around the centrum or city center, I had picked up enough of the orange-madness paraphernalia to equip a daycare center: top hats with bells, caps, pennants, bags, T-shirts, clappers, whistles, even a cell phone holder in the shape of a football – all in orange, of course.

The previous night I had thrilled solo in my hotel room to the England-France match, where Zinedine Zidane had not let me down, scoring two dramatic goals in extra time to dishearten all Brits – this only hours after I had texted kumpareng Juaniyo Arcellana that my heart was for Zizou and the defending champs.

Bad enough that the NBA Finals was nowhere in sight except as radiant text on my cell phone, through messages from Dumaguete, Ermita and Loyola Heights as to the Pistons’ progress against the accursed Lakers. Beh, buti nga kina Shaqobe, I texted back, before waiting for morning to get to an Internet facility and read all about it on-line.

Tuesday night, 8:30 p.m., I joined a group of festival support staffers at the theater canteen, where a TV set loomed large up a corner. Midway through the first half, someone led a quick exodus to the Little Hall, where a technician had managed to patch up the broadcast onto the large screen back of the stage. But the Germans scored first, to moans and groans from the 20 or so spectators, including myself, scattered on the upper tiers.

Then it was time to join the program participants in the Main Hall, for an opening video-in-progress on the life and works of Neruda, followed by readings of Pablo’s poems, and poems on Pablo, by poets from Canada, Zimbabwe, Peru and the Philippines. But I could have stayed to watch the second half and still made it here for my time onstage, I mock-protested to the usherettes. For my verbal pains, my legs were kept in chains locked to the seat.

It’s party time every night ‘round midnight, the so-so Amsted beer mixing it up with Glenlivet 12 years vintaged in American oak barrels, or at least as much of that as my trusty flask can hold. A different band plays every night at the Theatre Foyer. Some nights of good football on TV, I join the party late, content to conduct something legal and enlightening here in liberated and enlightened Orangeland. I inspect my small plastic packets of NLX and K-2, homegrown stuff, purchased at the Alpha Blonde coffee shop from a Rastafari-styled bartender at ¤10 per 2.3 grams, and smile to myself, thinking of Juaniyo and how we can celebrate the Lakers’ demise when I get back on Fathers Day.

Wednesday, the Wagemakers drive me to Leiden half an hour away, where we hook up with Anvil’s Karina Bolasco, U of Wash’s Vince Rafael freshly flown in from Morocco, Fr. Joey Cruz and Jovi Miroy from Ateneo, Maricor Baytion of AdMU Press, Maria Mangahas, and over a hundred other Filipino academics who have descended on this university town for the 7th ICOPHIL or International Conference on the Philippines. Dr. Belinda Aquino of the U of Hawaii has been instrumental in steering it this far, and we congratulate her for it inside the Pietersklerk, the "church of freedom" per Nicole Revel and Charles McDonald, where Education Secretary Edilberto de Jesus delivers the keynote address at the opening program.

We say hello to Ambassador Romeo Arguelles and his wife, ask them to extend our apology to fellow Philippine STAR contributor Manny Baldemor, as we can’t attend his exhibit opening later that evening at The Hague. But could we hook up together soon, so we can share in the images of severed hands, windmills at rest and Oranjeboom?

We promise our friends we’d be back by train the next day for the conference sessions. But something keeps us in Rotterdam on Thursday. This keyboard pounding. This struggling with Internet connections. And the wall-to-wall, hour-to hour partying with Bas Kwakman and the rest of the crew at the theater venues.

Meanwhile, even the poetry has been radiantly orange, just like my dreams before the juices of yet another breakfast at the hotel’s rooftop resto overlooking much of Rotterdam.