Female Improvisational Poets
In December 2009, 14,500 people met at the Bilbao Exhibition
Centre in the Basque Country to attend an improvised
poetry contest. Forty-four poets took part in the 2009 literary
tournament, and eight of them made it to the final. After a
long day of literary competition, Maialen Lujanbio won and
received the award: a big black txapela or Basque beret.
That day the Basques achieved a triple triumph. First, thousands
of people had gathered for an entire day to follow a literary
contest, and many more had attended the event via the
web all over the world. Second, all these people had followed
this event entirely in Basque, a language that had been prohibited
for decades during the harsh years of the Francoist dictatorship.
And third, Lujanbio had become the first woman to
win the championship in the history of the Basques.
After being crowned with the txapela, Lujanbio stepped up to
the microphone and sung a bertso or improvised poem referring
to the struggle of the Basques for their language and the
struggle of Basque women for their rights. It was a unique
moment in the history of an ancient nation that counts its
past in tens of millennia:
I remember the laundry that grandmothers
of earlier times carried on the cushion [on their heads]
I remember the grandmother of old times
and today’s mothers and daughters. . . .
Centre in the Basque Country to attend an improvised
poetry contest. Forty-four poets took part in the 2009 literary
tournament, and eight of them made it to the final. After a
long day of literary competition, Maialen Lujanbio won and
received the award: a big black txapela or Basque beret.
That day the Basques achieved a triple triumph. First, thousands
of people had gathered for an entire day to follow a literary
contest, and many more had attended the event via the
web all over the world. Second, all these people had followed
this event entirely in Basque, a language that had been prohibited
for decades during the harsh years of the Francoist dictatorship.
And third, Lujanbio had become the first woman to
win the championship in the history of the Basques.
After being crowned with the txapela, Lujanbio stepped up to
the microphone and sung a bertso or improvised poem referring
to the struggle of the Basques for their language and the
struggle of Basque women for their rights. It was a unique
moment in the history of an ancient nation that counts its
past in tens of millennia:
I remember the laundry that grandmothers
of earlier times carried on the cushion [on their heads]
I remember the grandmother of old times
and today’s mothers and daughters. . . .