Date: 24/05/23
Location: Ruigoord. Fiery Tongues Festival. The Netherlands.
Attendees: Florian Vetch (interviewee), Ana Collins (interviewer).
Florian: My first encounter with Ira Cohen was by telephone. It was the Swiss artist Lisa Schiess who gave me his phone number. At that time he was in Brussels. In 1997, I had just published my German translation of Paul Bowlesʼs poetry and she thought maybe it would be a good idea to get to know Ira, read his poems and maybe work together with him.
So I called him and he already knew me because I had made a long interview with Paul Bowles in Tangier about Gertrude Stein which was published bilingually. It was a very beautiful edition with photographs, four photographs to show Gertrude Stein, one shows the elderly Paul Bowles and one shows only the hand of Paul, which is handy! He was very generous. Ira loved these things.
Ana: Ira and Paul Bowles also had a long acquaintance.
Florian: Yeah, they had a long affair. So this phone call endured about one and a half hours and, a few days later, in dropped an envelope with stuff Ira had put together for me. I was overwhelmed and started to translate Ira Cohenʼs poetry. I brought out a very nice edition in 1999, at Göttingen, a very small Altaquito publication, but only in German.
Yeah, but then I met Ira in 1998. He was touring with Nadine Ganase’s dance troupe from Brussels. He was touring all over Europe. His performance was striking. It was brilliant. The dancers [were] very modern dance– not a ballet.
Ana: Quite experimental.
Florian: Yes, experimental and wow, really modern. They stayed quiet for a very long time and suddenly, you know, all of them– it was magical. Ira projected his photographs and read his poetry.
Ana: His photographs of which themes?
Florian: Of India, Kathmandu, Nepal, Sadhus, Naga.
Ana: What were your impressions when you met him in person, having spoken and translated his poems, already knowing his work so well?
Florian: I think he was very inspiring and actually his work is not that well known, but what is even more important is that energy which he gave to me and to others, which is still preserved, of course, in his work. It reminds me a bit of his big idol, of Brion Gysin. If you regard the work, itʼs fluid. His influence is spreading all over.My first impression was that Ira– actually he became my Guru. The Swiss writer Johanna Lier said this once, that Ira was my Guru.
At the beginning, I thought, “Hey thatʼs crazy; I donʼt need a guru.” After I thought it over and over, I must say that she was right. There is nobody that I’ve learned so many things from about writing poetry as through Ira. Through all these conversations, talking about details and open questions, all that.
Ana: Unpacking complex themes?
Florian: Yeah, on that night we were talking about editing. At that time I was putting together an anthology of contemporary poetry and Ira said something which was very astonishing. He said that for the selection, it doesn’t matter if itʼs not that good. If you come from the academics, the universities, you are looking for the top of the top of the good, the best of the best of the best. These heights, like rope dancing, Paul Celan, Ingeborg Bachman. You are judging between the big shots and only they have value. Then Ira said to me, “It doesn’t matter if itʼs not that good.” Sentences like those went deep into me and heʼs absolutely right.
I mean, the pleasure of an academic professor is not more worthy than the pleasure of a woman who sticks a poem to her fridge. How would you compare the value? Thereʼs no need to. Yeah, that was inspiring also for the Tangier Telegram– this broad anthology with over sixty contributors, artists, writers. I edited it in the city of Tangier.
Ira of course made that beautiful poem “Tangier Telegram from the Majoun Traveller.” Majoun is this hashish confiture which Ira was very partial to, and so from there I took the title of the anthology. Of course I cut “from the Majoun Traveller”– just “Tangier Telegram” which is obviously strange because telegrams used to be very short but our book has 350 pages.
Ana: I guess itʼs an ongoing dialogue, messages transmitted backwards and forwards.
Florian: Yes. You know, itʼs funny to call it a telegram because itʼs so broad. But somehow it is because Tangier is really a literary place.
Ana: Did you include Moroccan authors in the anthology?
Florian: Yes, like Mrabet, of course, Choukri, Abdellatif Laabi, Mohammed Bennis, also Chamseddoha Boraki.
Ana: Did Ira also have relationships with these writers?
Florian: No, it was Choukri who gave me these names. I asked him, you know Iʼm putting together an anthology, who do you think is important, who do you like, and so I went there. Itʼs really a full anthology. It starts with Hans Christian Anderson who arrived from Spain in Tangier when there was no port, so the ship had to stop and they came with the boats and people went down.
Ana: Rowed to the shore in little tenders. It must have been a very different Tangier than [compared] to what Ira Cohen encountered in the sixties.
Florian: Very different. Then I installed Gertrude and Alice on the double page like the pillars. The two pillars who lead the exiled literature to Tangier.
Ana: Because it was Gertrude Stein who first recommended that Paul Bowles go to Tangier.
Florian: Of course. I thought they were gay, they were homosexual. There were so many homosexual people but they were leading the way.
Ana: Like beacons, like the pillars of Hercules which guard the mouth of the Mediterranean near Tangier. Were there any particular moments or experiences during your time with Ira that had a particular impact on you?
Florian: In 2000 Ira was invited to come to Switzerland to give some readings in Constance, Germany and Munich. I made a tour for him. Zurich and in Gottlieben at the Lake of Constance.
Ana: What was the reception from German audiences like to Iraʼs poetry?
Florian: Oh they liked him a lot. Because he was a great entertainer, a great performer. You know if you speak with authors they say donʼt make a reading longer than forty minutes. That is the absolute maximum you can read. But Ira did it easily for two hours and people were yelling and shouting.
Ana: They remained captivated?
Florian: Yes, yes. He was very charismatic and had a great voice. So I got him at the airport of Zurich and said, “Okay, letʼs go to the Lake of Constance”. But he said “No, no. We go to Zurich. I visit a friend of mine.”
He gets up at about 1:30pm. So first we ate brunch, then we went to Hans Ruedi Giger who invented the figures of [the film] Alien. Giger, the great artist, Swiss artist. We went to his home. This was so phantasmagorical. So strange there. He was really living in the night. Surrounded by nightmares. The garden was very interesting with a railway and crocodiles hanging from the trees, sculptures by Giger.
Ana: Grotesque and surreal.
Florian: Surreal, absolutely surreal. But in reality it was all so crazy. It was very funny because Giger was very generous and he just put a glass, like a glass jar for confiture [a jam jar] on the table full of grass and then he asked Ira, “Ira, do you still take opium?” And Ira said “No, but if somebody would ask me I wouldn’t say no.” Giger stood up and went to the first floor, came down, and he gave him a piece like a fist.
Ana: A great nugget!
Florian: A great nugget . He just gave it over and Ira consumed it during the whole week.
Ana: Poppy dreams.
Florian: Yes, yes, and we went to Gottlieben where we met Petra Vogt.
Ana: Who was perhaps the great love of Iraʼs life would you say?
Florian: Yes. I will read a memory of this after. Then in Zurich we were at the cinema Phoenix. About two hundred people were there. Really full house. We had several, what is this French drink, pastis before. Wow, it was a high, it was a high. We were with the German writer Jürgen Ploog, the pilot.
Afterwards Ira usually said, “Come to my room at the hotel; Iʼm not yet finished with you.” He made a great photo series of Jürgen Ploog and me wearing plastic bags on our heads. It was very funny. Of course he ate opium. Then he said, “Would you take a piece of opium too?” We said, “No, no, no, no, no.” He said, “Aw, c’mon. Donʼt leave me alone. This is what I gave to my mother when she visited me in Kathmandu. Itʼs a very little piece.” So we said, “Okay,” and as soon as we had swallowed it he said, “Do you really think I gave opium to my mother!?” [Much laughter]
Ana: Thatʼs very Ira.
Florian: This is Ira. This is Ira, you know! So funny. Ok, so we read at Constance, great audience. At St. Garland there was a showing of his films, The Invasion of Thunderbolt Pagoda and Kings with Straw Mats. I guess they were also shown in Zurich. Yes, and [then] to Munich [where] he read at the Lyrik Kabinett with the Jazz guitarist Peter Eigenmann, Swiss jazz guitarist, great guitar player. We came back and it was a very exhausting week for me because Ira was suffering from insomnia. He would stay up, talking and talking. He never slept, never slept. Of course, he would suddenly sleep but not for a long time, he really suffered.
Okay, I brought him back to the airport and there was still a piece of opium, like a dove egg, and he swallowed it before entering the check in. Itʼs safer like that. What a ride! Yes, this was in 2000 and, in 2004, I met him again in Sevilla, Andalusia. That was the release of the Tangier Telegram anthology, so we had a great feast. My dear friend Axel Monte was there too. The German writer Thomas Stemmer.
Ana: You had some Spanish contributors to the Tangier Telegram too?
Florian: The theme, the subject was East meets West and West meets East. They are both the same somehow. How can we build bridges, intercultural bridges?
Ana: Which is appropriate for Tangier with the International Interzone past. Itʼs really a portal, a gateway city.
Florian: Rachid Taferssiti, the president of the society who takes care of the Medina, was there. He brought out several books on Tangier, great stuff. Great collections. One day we took off to Alcazar, the palace.
Ana: Which was previously a muslim fortress which was converted.
Florian: Yes, yes, this intereligious Jewish, Christian, Muslim monument. Ira took many photos and wrote a poem. I published this poem together with a small selection under the title Alcazar two years ago. A bilingual booklet. I can get it if youʼd like to have a look, Ana?
Ana: (looking at photos of Ira in Florianʼs bilingual Ira Cohen poetry books) That looks rather like the mask motif again.
Florian: Yes, yes, he loved the masquerade. Hereʼs Ira and Jürgen that night..hereʼs what he made with the plastic bags. Itʼs so funny, itʼs so strange, I look like Tutankhamen.
Ana: Or a Doctor Seuss character. [Laughter]