UMass Amherst to Host Lecture and Live Demonstration of Basque Improvised Poetry

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AMHERST, Mass. – Poets Maialen Lujanbio and Miren Artetxe will present “Basque Improvised Poetry: Politics and Poetics from a Woman’s Point of View” in E24 Machmer Hall at the University of Massachusetts Amherst on Wednesday, Feb. 7, at 4 p.m. The event will feature lectures in English and live demonstrations of poetry in Basque, the language of residents of the Pyrenees mountains. The event is free and open to the public.

Part spoken word, part hip-hop freestyling, part a cappella singing and 100 percent improvisational, the tradition of bertsolaritza (bare-so-lar-eet-sa) has become a cultural signifier for the renaissance of Basque language and popular culture.

Lujanbio, the first and only woman to win the national bertsolaritza competition, and Artetxe, a scholar and poet, will discuss the craft of improvisation, how the art form has changed and the experience of being women poets in a largely male art form. They will also provide insight into how poetry is attracting young people of the Pyrenees to take an interest in learning this minority language and how popular poetry operates as a medium for social commentary and changing social values.

Maialen Lujanbio is the most well-known female bertsolari (oral poet) in what has been traditionally a male dominated art form. In December 2017 she won the Txapelketa—a competition of oral poets held in Bilbao once every 4 years—for the second time. She is part of a new generation of socially-conscious Basque speakers who have helped to revitalize this oral tradition of improvised versifying. Her performances across the world have garnered her a reputation for the depth and originality of her imagination. Lujanbio also writes social and cultural commentary, and engages in various photographic and graphic projects in the visual arts.

Miren Artetxe is a bertsolari performer and a scholar of traditional forms of oral poetry performed in European minority languages. She has conducted extensive research on the identity of young people who become oral poets, the linkage between oral poetry and women’s sense of empowerment, and most recently, she is documenting the impact bertso eskola (poetry schools) are having on young French Basques’ use of the Basque language. A fluent speaker of Basque, Spanish, Catalan, French and English, she has given talks in France, Finland, Spain and the UK and is a frequent contributor to Basque print and radio media.

This event is made possible by the sponsorship of the Etxepare Institute of the Basque Regional Government, the UMass anthropology department’s Douglass Chair in Basque Cultural Studies, the UMass modern European studies program, the Poetry Center at Smith College and the Smith Lecture Fund, with additional support from the UMass Spanish and Portuguese program, and the Spanish and Portuguese, French, and women and gender studies departments of Smith College.