On November 4th, Yael Peled and Mariona Miret set off on an adventure: sailing towards the depth of language. Departing from the Faberllull residency, Linguapax gave fuel to our ship by supporting the crew at every step.

The poetry journey, streamed via Zoom, started in Europe, with Rafael Caria (Alghero Catalan), and we continued towards Wales to meet Mererid Hopwood (Welsh). We sailed towards the Jersey island, where we met Geraint Jennings (Jèrriais) and then up towards Sweden with Bengt Pohjanen (Meänkieli). We anchored our ship in Sardinia to visit the melodies of the oral poetry of Remundu Piras in Sardinian, before sailing towards further lands: Arthur Mukhamadeyeff’s region, Chelyabinsk, in Russia, with its Tatar language. We went back to Europe to visit Triinu Laan in the south-east of Estonia and her mother tongue, Võro. We then crossed the Atlantic towards North America to meet Margaret Noodin of the Ojibwe people. Back to Europe, we visited Ireland and Nuala Ní Dhomhnaill’s poem in Irish before finishing our trip in Gascogne, France, with the Occitan poem of Elisa Harrer. An unexpected guest and fellow resident, Kola Tubosun, joined the trip in the end to read a text in Yoruba.

The recitation was a wonderful collective experience of sustaining grief and exploring all the perspectives it can offer, from pure light, as in the sensitive apprecitation of the sound as linked to the natural world and mother earth, passing through violence and power disparities of politic ideologies and oppression, to the experience of caring for the language like a baby, among other experiences.

The recitation was possible because of all its contributors: authors, submittors, translators, Linguapax and Faberllul, Zoom audience. The persistence and presence of languages and its speakers was inspiring to all of us. Thank you for accompanying us on this trip.