Driving that red Ferrari – Appreciation note by curator WINTERNACHTEN FESTIVAL Shervin Nekuee

Writers Unlimited Winternachten Festival Den Haag 2018

Dear international writers and poets, 

I didn’t had the chance to say goodbye to all of you. Hence this short note to express my gratitude. You brought us visions and verses, horizons and imaginations. You brought us new words, new horizon to approach the new world to come. I am deeply touched by your passionate way of contributing to our searching for a new and inclusive sense of belonging, in the time of Globalization at large. I bow to you, to your engagement and being able to go beyond talks about your own works and your point of view, to be sincere listeners and to be sincere conversationalists. Thank you Nino HaratischwiliMohsin Hamid, @Fatma Aydemir, Ghayath Almadhoun, Sanam Sheriff@Efe Murad, Grazyna Plebanek, David Van Reybrouck, Magda Carnecii and Alain Mabanckou II. 

My sincere thanks to our eloquent moderators that make this conversation possible by functioning as multidimensional intellectual bridge, between the speakers and the public, within the panelists and between different socio-cultural and historical context. A hell of a job that you done brilliantly and almost altruistically, putting your own opinion aside to make space for the other. Thank you Hassnae Bouazza, Bas Heijne, Chris Keulemans, Lisa Weeda, Margot Dijkgraaf @ Judith Uyterlinde and David Van Reybrouck.

Thank you dear brilliant musicians Oleg Lysenko-trio and fantastic Stephanie Ruijsenaars and her Stefka trio Amer Shanati. And I bow deeply for beauty of our UD players Monir Goran and Kamal Hors. For the rhythms and harmony's and compositions and songs you brought to the festival.

Gerda Dendooven i bow to you deeply for your dedication and the images that you draw and enriched our imaginations.

And all Dutch and Flemish writers and poets among them two great souls whom poetry both brings inner silence to me and let me enter the dream world within. Joost Baars and Charlotte Van den Broeck and dear Rodaan Al Galidi and Baban Kirkuki with those I share a history of the pain of being in exile and thus enjoy laughing and living life the most. And thank you my dear team of The Hague invisible city project: the poet's of passion, joy and engagement, Max Lerou and Mira Feticu and the young brilliant essayist Hizir Melik Cengiz

I would like to express my deep respect for Diann van Faassen and Harry Zevenbergen who once again went on Writers-Unlimited mission to high-schools of The Hague in search for the young poetic potential of our city. Once again they came back with masterful by them trained young ones with their poems who performed during the festival nights beautifully.

Many thanks goes of course to our team of management Ton Van de Langkruis not only the director of festival but also the inventor of WINTERNACHTEN festival and there from its very beginning. A festival that in my terms is a Ferrari among European festivals. A piece of art you made Ton! 

And Tineke van Manen our hardworking business administer I admire her for a truly big heart for literature, music and art next to her amazing sharp eye for details and her professionality.

My thanks goes of course to my dear editors and fellow program-makers. I am now for 20 years involved in creating public events and programs of all kinds and formats about politics,history, literature, poetry and (mystic) music. I have been making documentaries and working with journalist creating bilingual media platforms about Iran and beyond in the Middle East. But as editor in chief or curator I never experienced such a safe, fluent, disciplined and yet full of creative joy editorial ever. You are one of a kind and I hope the circumstances will be as such that we could create a next poetic literary and intellectual feast together. Thank you Gerlinda Heywegen, Jet Steinz, Francis Broekhuijsen, Maarten van der Graaff, Ilonka Reintjens. You are all gold!

Last but not least all those magnificent people I mentioned here above wouldn’t succeed in their passionate need to share with our dear public if the office-team and the backstage-team wouldn’t contain such an intelligent, disciplined, hardworking people with a bright smile and heart-warming approach. Bert-Jan Zoet head of our publication created together with his colleague Ingrid Huijsman an amazing virtual and street-level publicity space that brought us to a wide public and leaded to one of the best visited WINTERNACHTEN festivals ever. 

I thank my fantastic producer Ellen Geertse for her patience with me and her always open and positive approach and her amazing action oriented approach. And our volunteers coordinator Laressa Mulder for the smooth way of leading a huge group of people in a way that I and my editorial team felt we were carried by an invisible yet warm hand all the time.

And the volunteers, how kind and heart-warming were your presence. How hardworking you are and all of that work only for your love to build this amazing feast of literature. I thank Kyrill Goosseff as a living icon and the symbolic representative of the joy a volunteer can bring to a festival. 

My pre final word to all dear audience. I never feel that there is a border between us, the makers, the speakers and musicians and you. Those magical moments of deeper conversation and those sincere emotions that our poetry, musics and readings create couldn’t exist without your openness, your longing for and your sense of admiration for the one on the stage. Each of you are a melody and a rhythm to me. An inseparable part of this composition. I bow to you and hope to welcome you once more. Time and again.

If WINTERNACHTEN festival is the Ferrari among the European literature festivals, I felt this year as its number One driver. Forgive my vanity but it felt absolutely so. And it felt so amazingly well.

And the very last word. It is never ever self-evident that a love-relationship become a soulmate-ship as well. I am too old and too experienced to believe in that ferry-tail. The dialectic between any love-couple - like all other dialectics in our world - have a rich repertoire. Love goes together with hate, shared joy with dividing anger, love fire and passion will follow by cool scenes. And this all will go round and round like anything and any phenomena in this action and reaction driven world. 

But beyond all that, in a few exceptional cases in your life-time you find somebody that enter much deeper spaces in you, beyond the rise and fall of the waves of the surface of your inner ocean. He or She open doors to places within you, places you even didn't know they exist. And vice versa, you guide him/her to his/her deeper environment smoothly and naturally as f you've been there so many times. 

Then, beyond the faced of social norms and myths about love-couples the very rare moment arrive that two human-being deeply feel as One. Balout Khazraei many times, after a long clime of a robots tough rock I rich the top and look and admire the highest mountains of shared human beauty and celebrate the victory of being there, it is not that I forget to recall your name. It is that I feel that we did it together again, and that it is us stand high together. Over there on the top of that tough rock, amazed and admiring the aesthetic potential of humankind. Once again, we did it! Together.

Thank you all.

Shervin Nekuee

Curator Winternachten 2018

photography by dear friend Liliane Waanders