Tilburg has a new campus poet

Our new campus poet is an Italian PhD-student, Chiara Raucea. Last Thursday she was chosen from seven contestants, during the annual poetry party in Tilbury’s.

During the night, all the contestants recited two of their poems. This year, about half of them had written their poetry in English. The judges praised Chiara’s recital and her choice of subject. For the coming year, Chiara will publish her poems in Univers and she will appear at several Academic Forum events to recite her poetry.

Chiara is a PhD-student at Tilburg Law School. She studies the question: what is the conceptual relation between ‘citizen status’ and ‘citizenship rights’? About her life in Italy and Tilburg, she wrote this poem:

PRAY FOR RAIN

I was born in a cave,
Numbly.
Carved
on the rocky walls:
bites of bitter care
flavoured
of almonds
and sweet shame.

I was born, I left, I came back (you are right) but I left, again.

There is nothing new under the sun.

Here the weather is really good,
In winter too,
Here folks are jobless,
And smiling hopeless,
And tired,
And silently worried
but the weather is really good.

There is nothing new under the sun.
Children do not grow up,
They grow old.
But the weather is really good.

Here you can work without wage,
You can eat without hunger,
You can marry without love,
You can hate without rage.

But the weather is really good.

There is nothing new under the sun.

Here you can talk about nothing,
or about the weather: ‘cause the weather is really good!
You can even ask big questions
(about somebody else’s life)
and if you don’t have any answer on your own,
you can always enjoy the weather,
‘cause, here, the weather is really good!

There is nothing new under the sun.

Since it may sound a bit impolite,
I would recommend you not to ask, in public,
how offices are distributed in the city hall!
There are other things that matter:
for example, to kill the time, we can embroider private lives:
firstly, let’s add some spicy details to your neighbour’s bedroom
and, then, please, show off at the Sunday mass
the strange foreigner
with whom you share your most secret holes.
There is such a nice lovely weather…
You can stay with us…
…if a sunny day is all you are looking for!
Here the weather is really good.

There is nothing new under the sun.
Do you want have children?

Sometimes, I love when, in Tilburg, it rains all day long.

You can learn more about Chiarra in the next Univers!

_Advertentie.