ICORN guest writer Gilles Dossou-Gouin releases CD with poems in Norwegian

Dossou-Gouin, originally from Benin, has composed a CD with poems in Norwegian, entitled "å hvile et annet blikk" (roughly translated "to rest an other gaze"). The CD is a collaboration with Norwegian singer Inger Johanne Brunvoll and musician Walter Heim.

Says Mr. Dossou-Gouin: "The content of the CD relates to different areas of our lives. The love of one’s mother, is something one can never forget. A toi ma mere is a poem I wrote to honour my mother. This spring, she died in my home country. It means a lot to me.
 
Spring is finally here, Glade fugler ("Happy birds"), and we see birds, smell the crocuses and snowdrops. We have had a wonderful winter, with lots of sun, cold weather and little wind. Now the rains and the wind are coming, but also warmer days with sunshine.

The month of April offers plenty of nice days to come, with birdsong. A new theme brought on by the spring is Easter, Påske, which means something important to us in European everyday life. We are visited by a grandfather (those who give their soil to welcome us) who will build nesting boxes with the children and watch the little lambs. We smile at nature and nature smiles back at us, Smil, as we discover the language of the trees.

Yes, the trees speak, Trærne. From springtime until the autumn, we feel at ease, Å være og å samvære for å være.

In other words, there is a crucial connection between fresh trees and the colours of the autumn! This proves that the trees actually communicate with us. When I walk among the flaming red, orange and yellow trees in the autumn, I think that I might be walking through a visual cacophony where the trees are arguing about who gets to shout the loudest; don’t come here – go somewhere else!

The trees speak. They react with stress when they are caused damage. They emit electrical impulses filtrating the nerve impulses of human beings. The wind blowing through the canopy is how the trees communicate. We need to decode this sound and translate it to our own language so we can know what the trees are telling us." 

Dossou-Gouin arrived in Molde as the city's first guest writer in 2005. Since arriving in Molde, he has written several books and become an active, integrated and important part of the city's cultural life. Dossou-Gouin, on his part, finds that the city provides him with the opportunity to write freely wherever, whenever and about whatever he wishes, and thrives in a city with what he finds to be an extraordinary culture and cultural life. 

The collaboration with singer Inger Johanne Brunvoll started 6 years ago, when Dossou-Gouin went to one of her concerts and pitched the idea of the project to her. The collaboration resulted in Gilles Dossou-Gouin's first CD in Norwegian, poems from which will be performed at the Bjørnsonfestivalen - the Norwegian festival of International Literature in Molde, taking place from 27.-31. of August 2014.
  
COVERAGE in Norwegian:
Føler seg fri i Molde (nrk.no)