Kholoud Charaf is a poet, an art critic and a social activist in search of better opportunities for women and children who survived the war. She is now the new resident of the City of Krakow as part of the ICORN programme. Kholoud Charaf comes from Al Mjemr in the south of Syria. As a poet, Charaf has published one volume entitled The Remains of the Butterfly, published by Takween Publishing House in 2016. Th originality of literary images and metaphors and the author’s ability to transform the difficult events of war into beautiful, imaginary worlds generated from memories has been well received by critics.

Currently, Kholoud Charaf is working on her second collection of poetry, which will be titled As If I was Born to Escape the War, and a book documenting the atrocities of war in southern Syria. As an art critic, Charaf wrote many reviews of contemporary art exhibitions by Syrian and Arab artists.

Szépírók Társasága has launched their project, Budapest-fragments, which is also part of SILO. Cofinanced by the Open Society Institute, this programme connects the variuos literary representations of Budapest with contemporary writers and secondary school students. Students learn about how a metropolis like Budapest has been represented in Hungarian literary tradition through short literary texts and contemporary writers' video commentaries. Students are also encouraged to write about their own Budapest experience. Check out the project's website at https://budapesttoredekek.wordpress.com/

There’s a beginning and an end. It’s obvious that he’s in pain, so much that he can’t sit in an ordinary chair, but has to use the couch while he waits for the news. He’s lying on one side, hopeful, trying to catch our gazes to see if he can read whether we know what the news will. I’ve a hard time keeping eye contact, the red familiar logo keeps catching my eye. Finally, it’s our turn and the doctor drones on and on. We nod and are afraid to ask too many questions. If things become too clear, we might lose hope, and then it's over. It has a name that we can’t pronounce. We say goodbye to the doctor and the pale green walls. He sits down on the couch again and looks at us hopefully. Above his head I recognise the doctor's verdict ‘Myelomatose’ and the red logo on the poster.

He looks relieved and leans against the wall.

"Well, at least it wasn’t cancer."

"He’s hit his head." The white-coated doctor with a foreign-sounding name looks at us emphatically and assures us that they will do everything they can. We cling on to hope. So accustomed to the fear, then the hope and joy when yet another crisis is averted. We listen anxiously at every step approaching outside the door, and we breathe a sigh of relief when the hectic steps continue down the corridor without bringing us bad news. New steps stop at the door, and it opens. He’s decided. The doctor who said he’d do everything he could has gone home. We sit quietly without talking to each other and are only interrupted by the nurse who adjusts the morphine. This is the end.

It was hard and it wore us out. Two things happened in the spring of 2008. I fell in love and my relationship with the young man was full of future plans and things to look forward to. Then my sister got the news. You’re a terminal patient. Her treatment back in 2005 hadn’t killed the cancer cells and now the last attempts at a cure had failed. Such a brave and strong human being - she was all alone when she got the news, despite our family motto: Don’t leave your head or your family at home when you go to the hospital. My husband-to-be and my sister really liked each other, and while I felt almost guilty about being so in love, she faded away, felt more and more pain and became ever so thin. At the metro station in Berlin, the pain became so strong that she had to crouch down and we thought it couldn’t get any worse; but it did. She lived for almost a year after receiving her death sentence, because we, her large family, gave her so much, and the process eventually made us stronger as a family. We know how you can die, and so do the 42 people that we sent daily mails to. Hospice Djursland, just hearing the name makes me want to run away, but it also reminds me of bright, frosty mornings and good humour. She was very clear about how she wanted to die, and that made it easier for us all. One evening after the other, we were at her side and we got to say our goodbyes to the smell of a decaying body and at the sight of all the wonderful fresh flowers in front of the panoramic window facing the fjord. There were so many of us that it was difficult to make room for us all. You were going to die of malnutrition and probably when the staff turned you over while you slept. You said that you’d like sleeping pills now and then slip into death. What time is it? It’s 17.10 on 19/2 2009. Then I’d like the pills. I love you. I love you, too. Then we sang for you for several hours, and at one point you hummed along in your drug-induced final passage into death. At 11.30, our brother-in-law, who was like a big brother to you, sat singing for you while holding your hand and then you opened your brown eyes, looked at him and breathed your final breath. We had been so sad for so long that there was no room for more grief, but the relief on your behalf and our own was enormous.

We have developed a methodology that organisers of literature events can use to evaluate their current practices.

During the international ENGAGE! Workshop in Poland, we have reviewed together each other’s current practices in a creative way. Participants critically reviewed and improved each other's literary event with regards to access, contribution and/or co-decision. Our workshop methodology focused on "storytelling" about the own event, by means of building bricks, pens, paint, wood and all other creative tools that can be useful to facilitate a discussion. Participants were asked to first visualise their current practices and then share this in group.

I’ve sometimes felt like taking the time to try and tell the full narrative of my disease. Now I can.

I was probably a little surprised that I was the one to be struck by cancer. Yeah well, who isn’t?

I have to say, however, that I’d been close to cancer before, as two of my sisters have gone through breast cancer treatment, including radiation therapy.

The same year that I was diagnosed with breast cancer, my husband had had surgery to remove a cancerous tumour in one of his kidneys. He was subsequently declared cured of cancer and didn’t have to go through more treatment. But before he had his surgery, I must admit that I was very pessimistic about it all. I felt sure I was going to lose him. He was very calm about it and confident that he’d be alright. We weren’t exactly on the same page.

When I received a letter from Holstebro later that year after a screening, I knew that I had to go in for more tests - even before I’d opened the letter.

It was as if I felt it from the letter. My husband was surprisingly calm in his reaction – also in this situation.

My first meeting with Viborg Hospital was really positive. I was well received and the level of information was high. They took a biopsy of the lump.

A few days after my first examination I got a letter again, saying that the biopsy was positive.

My next consultation, with a new doctor, when I was told the final result, all went very quietly. It was as if I had said to myself beforehand “this is something I have to get through, and I’ll try to handle it as rationally as possible".

When I left the consultation, a treatment pathway had already been planned for me. I was there on a Monday and on the Thursday I came back for surgery.

I remember thinking how amazing it was that the cancer package the politicians were talking about with such pride was really working.

It was a little unfortunate, however, that I had to undergo surgery again because the surgeon hadn’t been able to remove enough healthy tissue the first time around. Since I don’t have any discomfort from going under anesthesia, it didn’t worry me that much. 

April 19, 2018, Budapest

In this discussion writers, translators, critics were invited to share their ideas on if and how the elitism of literature and literary institutions should be tackled, how new audiences can be reached and inspired, and if extending tools and skills of storytelling can lead to a more vivid and versatile literary culture. Questions discussed at the workshop included: What are the best recent practices in each country to reach new audiences for contemporary vernecular and foreign literature? What role primary and secondary education should have in this effort? Is creative writing taught at all school levels in each country? Have paerticipating writers ever attended a creative writing course? If yes, did it play a decisive role in their becoming a writer? What aims creative writing courses should persue? E.g. supporting would-be writers,  educating audiences, providing useful tools for consciousness-raising and self-reflection?

Participants: Éva Karádi (Hungary), Ida Hegazi Høyer (Norway), Jonis Jonevs (Latvia), Noémi Szécsi (Hungary), Clare Azzopardi (Malta), Maria A. Ioannou (Cyprus), Giorgos [gy] Panagi (Cyprus - Germany), Eszter Tarsoly (UK), Peter Sherwood (UK), Julia Sherwood (UK), Anna Gács (Hungary), Emy Koopman (Netherlands), Theresia Enzensberger (Germany), Julia Weber (Switzerland), Katharina Winkler (Germany), Dora Kaplárova (Czech Republic – Germany), Anita Furu (Denmark), Satu Vasantola (Finland), Gabi Csutak (Hungary), Jakub Juhás (Slovakia), Weronika Gogla (Poland), Ádám Németh (Hungary), Ivana Djilas (Slovenia), Matěj Hořava (Czech Republic), Gábor Csordás (Hungary), Dorotea Vučić (Croatia), Dulce Garcia (Portugal).

Photo by: Lenke Szilágyi

Three creative writing schools exchanged their experience at this event on May 26. One of them, Van Helyed Alapítvány lead by writer and documentary filmmaker Krisztra Bódis, teaches creative writing among other skills to children form the poorest environments in Hungary. Another one, Penna Írósuli lead by writer, translator Rita Abody, offers writing courses to elementary and secondary school students in Budapest, and the third one teaches writing to adults in Budapest. Readings and writing exercises were part of this unique and ratehr entertaining event. Though the interviewees speak in Hungarian in this short video, hopefully it is still able to convey the atmosphere of the event.

"IV Festival dos Eidos" is the festival of scenic poetry and musics, that will celebrate on August 22th-26th on Parada village of Courel chain of hills (Galicia).

Festival dos Eidos is celebrated each August on Courel Hills since 2015. 3 days of cultural programation of different artistic happenings linked to Literature: Poetry readings, music lives, theatre plays, art exhibitions, guided routes over different spaces of a @Novoneyra house and open museum: Living museum and outdoors.

Member of @EULitfest, the European network of literary festivals to isolated communities litfest.eu and Creative Europe SILO project

 still remember her – the young woman, the girl. She was 20 years old – or thereabouts. She made an impression on me – and I on her. I was her contact nurse during her radiation therapy. But sometimes I was also her friend and her mother. I still remember the day she took me aside in the dressing room to ask for advice about her future life. She confided her anxieties, hopes and dreams. I also remember that she was absolutely crazy about Thomas Helmig. He had just released a new CD and she played it on repeat every day. It became a habit for us to remember the exact place we had come to in a song and then find it again the next day. She was neither the first nor the last young person I have been in contact with. But the only other young girl who made just as big an impression on me, I only met once. She’d been sent over to us for a single treatment – a fraction. She sat there in the room with her parents in the new clothes that they’d just been out to buy. And that she was going to go and return afterwards . She didn’t want them anyway. She sat there shuddering slightly in the chair – huddled together and with her head bent low. She clearly didn’t want to be there. I told her, as I’m supposed to, about what was going to happen – but it was only her parents who spoke to me. And then it happened – I asked the completely wrong question. I said "How are you?" – the answer fell promptly and with all the disdain of youth: “How do you think I feel?" It was my worst moment – but also my best – one of those moments when the answer, the continuation of the conversation, came promptly and without thinking. "I don't think that you're feeling very well – I don't think you want to be here," I said, and continued: "But I’m asking you because I need to find out how I can help you with what you have to go through here with me." Somehow what I said – the fact that I was able to react to her dissatisfaction with the whole situation – say the right thing – without having to think about it first - made her open up to me. I don’t think that she remembers me for anything in particular - in this regard, the two girls I remember are very different. For one of them I was something special – for the other I was just one of those irritating nurses. But with regard to the girl who was annoyed with me, I still got something positive out of it. Something that has affected how I approach other young people.

Perhaps this is more important than all the other things we learn during our training and other courses. Not courses and everything else aren’t important. But what we learn from our patients – from meeting them and listening to them. That we listen and don’t forget to pay attention to them, perhaps that’s the most important tool for developing our nursing and care – our way of being with and helping them.

As I write this, I also think about all of my mistakes – all the times (granted, one single episode in particular) where I’ve said or done something that was just totally wrong or silly in that specific situation. But you learn from these situations, too.

Created by Lotte Colaers and Kaat Vanmuysen

Over the past week, the Municipal Library hosted multiple lucid-pedagogical activities, stimulated by the students of the Technical Course of Psychosocial Support of the Professional School of Pico, instilling the taste for reading. The students dramatized

http://cm-madalena.pt/pt/component/content/article/2-geral/2005-biblioteca-da-madalena-acolhe-projeto-pedagogico-inter-escolar

https://www.cm-madalena.pt/pt/component/content/article/2-geral/2134-madalena-encerra-comemoracoes-do-dia-mundial-do-livro-com-poetisa-filipa-duarte

During a Sun Salutation in yoga, I notice that my clothes didn’t feel comfortable on me. I adjust them and go on to the next exercise. There's still something bothering me, but it’s not on the outside and I can't take it away. The next morning I'm number 7 in the phone queue for the doctor’s office. I’m about to give up, maybe the lump in my abdomen will just go away by itself? I know that it won’t, though, and therefore I wait. It’s hard waiting. I tell the doctor that I have a lump in my stomach! The doctor says "Are you pregnant"? Even though it was my highest wish I had to answer “No”'. The doctor says "come straight away". I call my boyfriend and cry – I’m afraid, expecting the worst. Perhaps I knew already this morning what the day would bring, because I didn’t put on my mascara. The doctor put me on a cancer treatment pathway and asked me to go to the hospital the following Tuesday. We went to our holiday home during the weekend. I sat with my boyfriend in front of the wood stove and drank red wine. We were hopeful and convinced each other that it was probably just a harmless cyst, just like the one my mother had when she was pregnant with me. I alternated between hope and fear. We shared the hope, but I was often alone with my fears. During an ultrasound scan, the doctor confirmed my fears. Yes, it’s a cyst but there is some tissue inside which could be cancerous. The plan is to have you go through an MR scan and then surgery. I'm afraid of cancer because you can die from it, but I'm almost just as afraid of losing the ability to have children. The waiting time: a void, a vacuum, it was long and merciless. I learned that as a human being you can’t cope with being sad all the time. It became a basic feeling, for a period, but I took my breaks from it. I went through surgery and then it was time to receive the news. Yes, I had cancer. 10 days passed before I received the answer about whether I needed final surgery. That was the doctor's code for saying whether my last ovary and my uterus also had to be removed. I wanted kids and couldn’t imagine a future without having kids. My boyfriend and I looked into alternative methods to have children, because what if? The biopsy result confirmed that the diagnosis was cancer. Fortunately, at such an early stage that my fertility could be preserved. 3 months later I became pregnant with Storm; he’ll turn 6 this Saturday.

The nurse with the young wife of B

You sat there, young and pretty with your dark hair. You’d just entered the ward, so B could get his radiation treatment. Your body had an aura of anxiety and fatigue, but you wanted to talk. Talk between tears and rubbing hands. You sat uneasy in the chair, upset but with a glimmer of hope in your eyes.

You were so good at talking and I enjoyed your words, I could use them in my project, while I also mourned for your terrible faith. Your love for B - “The love of my life,” as you said and cried again. I burned in that moment.

Oh, I so wanted to help you, learn from you — I knew that I could help you, do something good for you.

Do you like me, do you believe in me, do you trust me?

You left with your arms around each other, 'we’re going to make it, the two of us together' – confident in your hope.

You came, trusting in us, you received and took from us what we had to give. From tension and uncertainty in the uneasy atmosphere, everything became a little easier and calm – and things fell slightly into place – a ‘reconciliation’, you called it.

Now you sit here, you’ve cut your beautiful hair – you’re strong and beautiful in your grief, but determined to get through this. I’m so happy and relieved to know that we could and did do something good and important.

I wonder whether you often think of us too?