Tania Haberland
Tania Haberland, a tri-national poet (German-South African-Mauritian) is the hybrid of a Hamburg sailor and a Mauritian artist, born in Africa, raised in Arabia and matured in Europe. She publishes, performs and exhibits her poetry and multi-media collaborations across the globe. She lives in Italy where she writes, teaches, sings and creates with the water as her element of connection to this world. + Read more on Tania Haberland | Versopolis Poetry | + A dialogue with Tania Haberland-Gerald Kraak Award 2017 + Website The Technology Of Tenderness
// Penumbra // A poem by Tania Haberland from « Hyphen » 2009 (UCT Writers)
Home is shaded.
The buildings above and around weep in
an architectural eclipse.
Time here is demi-jour, always falling to sleep. Eyes rest in darkness coveted, shadows leaf the mind.
Rooms grow in the dark — loved, candled, mossed and covered.
The city is a canopy shedding light at night but never quite penetrating my penumbra.
Birdsong breaks through but the shadowed birds beaking at windows, they never enter.
The threshold remains tinted by light,
dusking the unbroken shoreline of my island, never woken.
– Poetry, voice : Tania Haberland
– Music, film : Poetics of Reverie © 2021
// Waking Up // A poem by Tania Haberland 2021
The night has left
Where did it go?
Seeped back into the shadows of trees
And the pupils of irises blinking
linking our brains to the memories of dreams unable to see the light
Our hopes need darkness to grow
Planted deep in the night soil of the earth
We will cry them awake
Drop by drop
Petal by petal
Dawning dreams
Till dusk do us part
– Poetry, voice : Tania Haberland
– Music, film : Poetics of Reverie © November 2022
// Resurrection // A poem by Tania Haberland 2009
The sea is a grave of shells
Each one a stroked pearl of silent wisdom entombed
Each one a slick clitoris housed
Stone walls are licked open,
a water phoenix rises from pulverised shell
Iridescent powder lurches forward
from cold into the warm
Sun breath on the sea
Everything shines.
Intro : In the Poetics of Space, Gaston Bachelard writes : « the contradictions of the shell, which at times is so rough outside and so soft, so pearly, in its intimacy. How is it possible to obtain this polish by means of friction with a creature that is so soft and flabby ? And doesn’t the finger that dreams as it strokes the intimate mother-of-pearl surface surpass our human, all too human, dreams ? » (Chapter 5 « Shells » p.115)
– Poetry, voice, presence : Tania Haberland
– Music, film : Poetics of Reverie
– Filmed in Lumio (Corsica island, France) June 2022
// Poetry film //
« Night Rain » a poem by Tania Haberland (from « Hyphen » 2009)
It rained last night.
In the middle of the night, it poured down.
Waking at first, and then lulling to deep
sleep broken only by the smell of the sun,
morning sucking up last night’s rain.
Things to do draining the rain’s dream,
I feel myself falling
into the morning
like last night’s rain.
– Voice, Poetry & Presence : Tania Haberland
– Sound Design & Film : Poetics of Reverie
Filmed in France at Manaska Retreat Center | July 2021
// Cloud Mountains //
This video poem expresses how a southern born global citizen sometimes feels in the wintery north… listen out for a quote from a famous Dylan Thomas villanelle ! + Cloud Mountains – The Technology of Tenderness
– Voice & Poetry : Tania Haberland
– Movement & Presence : Lyndsay Granveau
– Music & Film : Poetics of Reverie
Remerciements chaleureux à Lyndsay Granveau
+ www.biodanza-aude.fr/lyndsay-granveau
// Poetry film //
« Illuminescent » a poem by Tania Haberland 2021
Surrounded by snowy silence
I try and return to the bottom of my heart
like a fisherman catching creatures
from the deep I dive.
The stillness can be felt down there
while up here I am always in tides,
moving according to the whims of the moon
and day.
Slowly I swim down
into the calm of my heart.
With each breath, I fathom further
into the kaleidoscope of my depths illuminescent.
– Voice, Poetry: Tania Haberland
– Sound Design & Film: Poetics of Reverie
Filmed in France – Cognac Region | September 2021
Electro Poetry (album // work on progress)
// Poetics of Reverie est un projet artistique collaboratif multiforme qui mêle poésie, musique, peinture, court et moyen métrage, mouvement et nature, avec l’aspiration d’habiter poétiquement le monde ainsi qu’Hölderlin nous invitait à le faire.
// Poetics of Reverie is a multifaceted collaborative artistic project that mixes poetry, music, painting, short and medium-length films, movement and nature, with the aspiration to poetically inhabit the world as Hölderlin invited us to do.
2021-2022 Poetics of Reverie & Tania Haberland © All right reserved | Tous droits réservés
Tania Haberland (voice+poetry) | Carine Iriarte (sound design +video)