Ariane von Graffenried is a Swiss poet and playwright. She graduated from the University of Berne with a PhD in theatre sciences. Von Graffenried is a member of the award-winning writers’ collective «Bern ist überall» and a curator of the International Poetry Festival Basel. Since 2005, she has performed as a spoken word artist with musician and sound artist Robert Aeberhard as the duo «Fitzgerald & Rimini». In 2017 her book «Babylon Park» was published. Her most recent work is «50 Hertz», a CD with a collection of poems. She has received several literary prizes for her texts.
In her spoken texts, Ariane von Graffenried switches playfully from Swiss dialects to High German, from French to English. She crosses language borders and geographical dividing lines and mixes aesthetics with social criticism, the fantastic with the factual, the laughable with the questionable. For many years she’s been working at the interface between literature, music and performance. In close collaboration with the musician Robert Aeberhard, some of her texts became spoken songs.
Her work has been presented at international festivals in Switzerland, Germany, Austria, France, Belgium, Greece, India, Poland, Serbia, Croatia, Kosovo, Macedonia and Russia.
Istanbul
There’s space for some at the railing.
One eats a sandwich with fish.
A Christian stares at the water,
and a dervish at the surf.
A drag queen softly prays,
a cobbler takes a drag.
A Fenerbahçe fan wears a chador.
and a pacemaker at her core.
Two Greeks hang off the side
and a speculator’s on the ropes.
A Chinese lady takes a picture
of Byzantium’s crumbled hopes.
A Kurd hums a tune and swallows a pill:
both are meant to be balsam.
Her tunnel vision skips past the seven hills
and wanders amid the jetsam.
Now the ferry’s at the quay
it smells of diesel and of çay.
They get off and they get on,
Europe, Asia, Europe.
They get off and they get on,
all together yet still alone.
Two continents crossed,
20 minutes of eternity lost.
Enthroned on the top deck is a trader entranced
chomps a sesame pretzel and reads
—good Muslim Calvinist—
the earthquake app and the stock exchange list.
An Armenian plays backgammon portside
against anyone who thinks luck is on their side
and all the money he’s played away
he won’t be getting back today.
At the stern everyone is napping
Even the suicide bomber’s in a doze
dreaming in his last sleep but one
that instead of destroying, he’d helped something grow.
An archeologist blows her nose in an Yves-Saint-Laurent scarf.
Her eyes burning from the glare,
She throws a bottle in the Bosporus with the message
“#Taksim is everywhere.”
Now the ferry’s at the quay
it smells of diesel and of çay.
They get off and they get on,
Europe, Asia, Europe.
They get off and they get on,
all together yet still alone.
Two continents crossed,
20 minutes of eternity lost.
Translation: Anne Posten