Words of poets – Breaths

How do the sounds of everyday life resonate in the words of poets? How do poets listen to the world? Watchers for the unnoticed, they often suggest unexpected and profound ways to listen. “ Listens to things more often than to people… », writes the Senegalese poet Birago Diop in Breaths. Bursts of voice from a loved and remembered poem.

This episode was recorded during an improvisation and interpretation workshop led by Monica Fantini as part of an artist residency at the Alliance Française in Ziguinchor, Senegal, in March 2023. Thanks to the participants in residence: the poet Chehem Watta, the playwright and actress Danielle Lyse Itoumba Mbeng and the writer and director Luc Alanda Koubidina.

Pascale Evrard

LISTEN TO THE WORLD, IN BRIEF

Both a radio program broadcast every Sunday in the RFI news bulletin and a participatory platform, Listen to the world lets you hear the cultures, languages and imaginations of the world through sounds from Africa, America, Asia, Europe and Oceania. Hundreds of shows can be listened to as podcasts on this site, while the participatory and evolving platform offers sound postcards and recordings. To date, 245 sound recordings are freely available.

Author and coordinator ofListen the worldMonica Fantini listens, records and composes sound pieces based on everyday sounds: the slamming of Paris metro gates, the harangues of sellers at the Bobo-Dioulasso market in Burkina Faso, the cracking of glaciers in Patagonia, the rolling of Dakar carriages and even bells of Saint Mark’s Square at midnight in Venice, voices of poets… So many fragments of life with which she weaves stories to tell the world, create links and share knowledge.

From their collection to the creation of sound works and their distribution, Monica Fantini solicits the collaboration of artists, researchers, composers, journalists and writers, in order to bring together a large community and to pool experiences and knowledge in different approaches to sound. With the ambition to develop the practice, sense and pleasure of listening, she also leads sound workshops aimed at all audiences: teachers, children, students, migrants, prisoners, poets, musicians… Finally, the sound creations ofListen to the world are regularly the subject of public presentations within the framework of festivals, exhibitions, conferences and dedicated cultural events, imagined by the authors of the platform. Every year, the National Library of France gives Monica Fantini carte blanche around Listening to the World.