Collective Work

The “personal” is already a plural condition. . . . One can look for it and already one is not oneself, one is several, incomplete, and subject to dispersal.
–Lyn Hejinian

Although polyphony can already be found in early literary forms — think of the polyphony of the Greek chorus — the dominant assumption in poetics remains that a poem speaks in a single voice. There is a long lyrical tradition that values authenticity, the personal, and individual experience as the foundation of the poem.

Yet the inherently shared nature of language naturally provokes a counterreaction: from surrealists like Breton and Éluard to the L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E poets, with their aversion to the notion of the personal, there exists another history — that of so-called collaborative poetry. “Collaborative” poetry encompasses an extraordinary variety of projects — from community art to radical formal experiments — all united in their attempt to let go of the individual and its baggage, as the center of gravity of the poem, and to explore how poetry sounds when it begins from multiplicity.

This evening, we extend that line — from collaboration to collectivity — to ask what happens when, at every level, from production to performance to reception, collectivity becomes the foundation of a poetics.

What lies beyond creation in which the writing of poetry is presented as an intimate, solitary act — beyond the lyrical tradition in which the individual speaks, beyond the darkened room where the reading is listened to alone, in silence? How does poetry sound when it begins from the premise that language is a collective activity — never belonging to an “I,” but always to a “we”? How does poetry sound when it founds its own community — a prefigurative poem?

With Hannah van Binsbergen, Betül Şefika & Alma Apt (performing together), Lola Swindles & Olga Tsyganova (performing together), and Maxime Garcia Diaz. Hosted by Jarmo Berkhout.

This Avond is in Dutch and English, and made possible by the support of the Nederlandse Letterenfonds.

***

Maxime Garcia Diaz is a writer of poetry and prose in both Dutch and English. Her debut Het is warm in de hivemind (2021) won the C. Buddingh’ Prijs 2022. Her second book The network must be built will appear in November 2025 in a Dutch and English version. She studied cultural sciences in Amsterdam and poetry at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop.

Hannah van Binsbergen (1993) started her writing career with a book of poems and a novel which can both be considered to be about the crisis of collectivity. She published her second book of poems Kokanje in 2022 in which she formulates a way out of that crisis. She is currently continuing this project by writing a work in prose which will probably appear in 2026.

Alma Apt (1995) is a poet and editor of De Gids. They are also part of performance collective Lick Press, which explores the intimacy of remote collective writing. Alma is part of the anti-zionist Jewish community and has been active in several activist collectives. They currently live in Paris and Norwich, working on a book of essays on obsession.

Lola Swindles (she/her) is an antifascist writer, performer, and organiser of Amsterdam BANGS. Used to be a time traveler.

Olga Tsyganova (she/her) is a mime performer, dancer, organiser of Amsterdam BANGS, and lead singer of punk band Stealing Honey.

Betül Şefika (1995) is a visual artist and writer. In het work she explores the meaning of presence and absence in text and image. She was selected for the deBuren writers’ residency in Paris in 2020, as well as for the Slow Writing Lab. She has collaborated with Maarten van Graaf and has published work in many outlets.