Language > Place, edition 9

Individuation / Assimilation

At first, my suggested theme for the 9th issue of the Language > Place blog carnival was ‘isolation/integration’ but it seemed a bit too academic. ‘Individuation/assimilation’ seemed to encompass wider topics and spheres of life, writing, language and place. Little did I know just how wide interpretation it offered.

Soon after the first submissions started coming in, this wideness started to evolve as another theme of the issue. A lot of the contributors didn’t feel sure their submissions would fit the frame of the issue, that their interpretations were too far off, too odd and unusual. Perhaps the poems and stories and art are 'odd' and suggest unconventional understandings of the suggested theme, but that in itself makes this theme come full circle by every contributor expressing their ‘individuation’ through their unique interpretation of living between two worlds.


Now, let's start this journey around the globe ...


Europe

In an interesting combination of art and a short commentary, Sandra Davies paints the stories of family members who migrated to London and as a result felt dislocated from their birth places.

Cathrine Lødøen explores how the fact that she grew up abroad affected her (linguistic) assimilation and coloured her identity with a tinge of foreignness. In this poetic journey she asks: ‘When will I come home?’

In an assimilated individual reflection, Dorothee Lang is moving from big cities to small towns, tinkers with homonyms, and follows 2 flash streams in: "Home, the road, and the global village”

Julia Davies muses on the foreignness of dreams, and missing the language to describe dream places. "I have whole dream architectures in my head, I don't just miss a plane, I miss a plane at "The Dream Airport"...” Let's take off.

Sheree Mack shares her poem On a faint hum of red. 

“Our destiny is closed intact 

branding heart, body and soul." 

Georgia Panteli currently lives in the UK, pursuing her PhD in Comparative Literature. Before that she lived in Vienna for a while and there she filmed a short film about how the city is perceived by newcomers and immigrants. See how they experienced living between languages and cultures here.

Jean Morris's photos speak for themselves.

Where are the limits of us as individuals on this global stage? How to recognize them and decide whether to embrace or refuse them? Brigita Orel builds a house she will live in.