Spoken word for the podcast 'Europe around you'
In Europe Around You you will hear the special and personal stories about the Maastricht Treaty, Kamp Westerbork, the Peace Palace and the Colonies of Weldadigheid, and why they are defining for the history of Europe or the European Union. Discover European heritage and experience what it means for today's Europe - and for you!
Four Dutch heritage sites have been decisive for the history of Europe or the European Union and have therefore been awarded the European Heritage Label. This podcast tells the stories of this heritage. Each episode features spoken word specially created by Hasan Gök, Marlon Penn, Danytha and myself. The series was created by DutchCulture and produced by Awe Studio and Are We Europe.
Europe around you: Maastricht Treaty
The episode I contributed to is about the Maastricht Treaty. Signed on Feb. 7, 1992 in Maastricht, the treaty is the foundation of the European Union as we know it: with a euro to pay in almost all of Europe and easier travel, living and working in different countries. For this reason, the Maastricht Treaty was awarded the European Heritage Label by the European Commission in 2018. Since then, it has been part of a network of 60 sites with the European Heritage Label across Europe. Together they convey European values, history and ideals.
Stick figures (1992-2022)
daubed wall: a swastika, below it stick figures,
- language too is a loan system - two men holding each other's
hand, like the paper puppet-sling
you learned to cut in elementary school, students
in carnival costume, the bumpy boulders, the sound of
heels as a carriage, a boy with a horse's head
'The specter of revolution haunts Europe,'
a chapter from one of your history books,
Weimar Republic, or was it Marx, the communist -
you walk into a garden, full of flagpoles, a square
here walked Helmut Kohl, François Mitterrand, Lubbers
one wonders if they know, the people in the shop-
streets, that their reflection jumps along as easily
from shop window to shop window, as from country to country, just like
the coin (from hand to hand) - who or what they are, because of
something that was clinched on that island in the Meuse, in that pile of blocks,
- or were they already, European?
1992 hangs around your neck, your birth year, on your passport,
the gold letters already almost worn off - you are not
myth, thirty years, your hair may be loose in the wind here,
around you you see history, or is it fantasy -
a girl who became continent on the back of a bull
a place we called civilization on the backs of
enslaved people, the black death, separation of
church and state, the ancient philosophers, Hannibal with elephants
over the Alps: now après-ski, referenda, populism
they were hopeful of a new story, the men:
Helmut, François, Ruud, Wilfried, Giulio, John, Jacques,
Poul, and the lady who sacrificed her head, they values
through this city, stick figures that sometimes stick, for those who
know it, for those who have the space to see it, to believe in it
© Amber-Helena Reisig
