In the previous two editions we had the pleasure of hosting Galician women artists from the worlds of dance and drama. This time, the tour is led by five Galician women slam poets.
Silvia Penas, Yolanda Castaño, Nuria Vil, Nieves Neira and Xiana Arias have chosen different spaces in Cidade da Cultura to create a poetry route with their voices.
Poetry as a watercourse, a river that takes us to unexplored places and improvised scenarios. Poetry as a meeting, as a staging device. Poetry as an artistic reflex, visible and vehement. Poetry, which we really need.
Idioma da tinta. Yolanda Castaño
What separates Galician poetry written by women today from society is often a transparent plaque, a glass which keeps apart while letting you see.
How can we stop books remaining in their glass cases, as immaculate goods? How do we combat the showbusinessification of written culture, getting a whole language of ink to speak from the display case?
Is there a glass ceiling for Galician poetry written by women, or is it just a glass wall?
The composer Isaac Garabatos sets the poems of Yolanda Castaño to original music in an immersive interdisciplinary dialogue over 15 minutes. An expanded recital which stages a couple of the themes found in the book-record Idioma da Tinta, full of expressiveness, at times provocation, at other times subtle elegance.
Yolanda Castaño.- Poet, editor and award-winning cultural manager with 28 years of work and her own Writers’ Residence in Galicia. Her eight chapbooks have earned awards from bodies including Crítica Española, Librerías de Galicia, Ojo Crítico, Afundación, and González Garcés. Her bibliography is completed with personal anthologies (bilingual, with music, as a poetry comic, etc.), plaquettes in six languages, titles in English, French, Italian, Slovene, Serbian, Macedonian, and Armenian, works as an editor, biographer of poets and as a translator, and seven chapbooks for children. An award-winning pioneer in the fusion of poetry with other arts, with international fellowships as a writer-in-residence in Rhodes, Munich, Beijing, Scotland, Andalusia, Finland, Galicia, and California, her work has reached over 40 countries in Europe, the Americas, Asia and Africa.
Cortar, refogar, afogar. Silvia Penas
A piece of action poetry with live electric guitar and percussion. A reflection on women’s hair as a battlefield and as a symbolic element where messages of subversion and freedom are entangled, but also of extermination and submission. The shaven heads of Francoism and other totalitarian regimes, the dreadlocks of the slaves who mapped escape routes, and the recent protests in Iran which have raised a worldwide wave of sisterhood are a few examples of how women’s hair has been and is a target, excuse, place of conflict and historic events. A diameter of approximately 70 microns carries the dense weight of humanity.
Silvia Penas.- Silvia Penas (Vigo, 1980) is a poet, performer and creator. The starting point for her work is writing texts, with a strong call to investigate slam poetry and other volatile or ephemeral forms of poetry. Her projects also centre on experimentation with the fusion of poetry with other artistic disciplines. Penas and the musician and video artist Jesús Andrés Tejada form the slam poetry, music and video art duo Cintaadhesiva. She has published five books of poetry: Biografía da multitude, As uñas crecen, Diario de ladras, bailarinas, asesinas e flores, Fronteira Paraíso, and O resto é céu, some of which have won awards in different competitions.
Placa. Clo Plas (Xiana Arias y Berio Molina)
This is my name for a concrete terrace. Without balusters. What she liked was to be on the placa in the sun. And to look out. Apparently thrushes have over thirty different songs. Nature tries to be abstract for us. Pin, pin. Clin, clin. Clo plas. Two voices, two rhythms. Low-fi. Radical tenderness. Don’t follow the ball to the end.
Clo Plas.- A duo formed by Xiana Arias and Berio Molina in 2020. Minimalist rap sounds and low-fi pop hooks. Their first EP ‘bafi’ was recorded and produced by Hevi and published on the Regueifa platform in 2022.
Berio Molina (A Fonsagrada, 1979) is an artist and programmer focusing on sound art, audiovisuals and action art. He has been a member of the collectives Flexo and Escoitar.org and of the free art and action community Alg-a.
Xiana Arias (A Fonsagrada 1983) is a writer and journalist. She worked at Radio Galega, on the programmes Diario Cutural and Onda Vital, from 2005 to 2020. She formed part of the group Atrás Tigre, with whom she issued the record Fainos Saír in 2017. She has published the chapbooks Ortigas (Espiral Maior 2007) and Acusación (Galaxia, 2009) and the story “As Tigresas” in the anthology O ano do tigre (Rodepris, 2022).
espazo a vulnerar. Nuria Vil and Iria Silvosa
the body extends as the question is pronounced
Espazo a vulnerar is a piece where analogical image, word and sound combine to explore possibilities. Based on the experimental music of MorlitaM, Nuria Vil and Iria Silvosa create a sensorial landscape through which to travel in the construction of identity itself.
Nuria Vil (Nuria Vilán Prado – Santo André de Comesaña).- Reciter. She diversifies her interests in an attempt to make a living as a self-employed creator. Since 2016, she have been part of the slam poetry show Dúas Gamberras e un Micro, and the literary criticism platform A Sega; she manages a profile on Patreon and on the cultural YouTube channel Coidado coa Cadela. She works as a proofreader and also teaches workshops on poetry writing and Galician. Simún (Chan da Pólvora, 2021) is her first and only book of poems published on paper. Transfeminism, anti-racism and social activism are central to her way of creating and positioning herself in the world.
Iria Silvosa – Audiovisual creator specialising in editing and focusing on composition using analogue media. She is a working member of the Numax cooperative and combines her interest in film with the creation of pieces in Super-8, MiniDV or any other medium considered amateur that comes her way.
Tornasol. Nieves Neira
Nieves Neira (poetry) and Rafael Mallo (music) are in dialogue in this piece with a poet who a thousand years ago flung the heart of a bird, a poem, to us. Ibn Hisn is the name we gather, the path of the arc that bends the writing, the bird which sings in this experiment with sound, body and voice.
Nieves Neira.- Born in Lugo in 1983, where she works as a journalist, and as such is a winner of the Johán Carballeira award. She has published the chapbook Neve de agosto (Chan da Pólvora, 2022) and is a co-author of O feitizo de Maruja Roca (aCentral Folque, 2020). She has worked with such artists as Carla Andrade (Geometría de ecos, Cando os ollos non bastan), Sabela Mendoza (Dedicatoria), Luís López Alonso (Salífero opus 4), Olalla Caamaño and Cris Vilariño (Trenza), and Rafael Mallo (Tornasol), and with the members of Lugo’s performing arts association 3 Monos, with whom she maintains an intense creative friendship. She works closely with the Fundación Uxío Novoneyra and also participates in Espaço Llansol, in Lisbon, where she co-edited the work Fulgor. Lectura danzada de Maria Gabriela Llansol (Ámboa, 2019).
