The project began in September 2019 with building collaborations across the islands involved. In December 2019 the Widening Fellow (WF), Dr Nicoletta Demetriou, travelled to Sardinia, where she presented DUEL at the Musas e Terras conference, organised by the University of Cagliari and the Campos Musical Association. In addition to the presentation of academic papers, this five-day conference included a performative part, which brought together oral poets from different parts of the world (e.g. Sardinia, Corsica, the Basque Country, Argentina, etc.) on stage. The WF had the chance to meet several of them and discuss their different poetic traditions in person. In January 2020, the WF travelled to Mallorca for a first period of fieldwork, and to attend a series of poetic duelling performances that are part of a yearly festival organised on the island around St Antony’s feast day (17 January). There, the WF met and informally interviewed several oral poets, in preparation for the fieldwork and filming that was due to take place later in the same year.
The project’s initial design had included plans for a book, an ethnographic documentary, as well as a festival. The entire project was, by its very nature, fieldwork-based. Several fieldwork trips had been arranged ahead of time, to coincide with festivals and celebrations taking place on each island, in order to meet the goals of the project. However, the restrictions brought about by Covid-19 (in this case, the near impossibility of travel over a period of many months, as well as the cancellation of all music- and poetry-related festivals that the project was meant to record from March 2020 onwards) had meant that DUEL’s goals had to be adjusted to the new realities. In consultation with DUEL’s EC officer, in September 2020 it was decided that the project’s research plan and deliverables would be adjusted accordingly, so as to ensure the safety of not only the WF, but also of the poets, musicians, and audience members involved in it.
After assessing the new situation and adapting the research to what it was still possible to do, a new plan was put forward. This made provisions for a new documentary, focussing on the Cypriot duelling tradition and its younger representatives, since the WF was based in Cyprus, where she could still conduct interviews and film, albeit on a limited scale. When travelling within certain European destinations became possible again, the project’s research plan was assessed anew and readjusted. Between June and August 2021 fieldwork and filming took place on four of the other islands involved (Malta, Sardinia, Corsica, and Mallorca). This was achieved by employing a network of collaborators on each individual island, consisting of one local researcher and one local crew. The material from the four islands has now been collected and sent to the WF in Cyprus.
Initial research on Crete (the sixth island involved) showed that the tradition of poetic duelling has all but died out there in recent years. Some of the remaining poets are now advanced in age, and so unable to collaborate on the project. It was thus decided to move the research to Rhodes, where a few poets/duellers can still be found. We are now in discussions with musicians and poets there, to see how we could get hold of relevant material. Additionally, the WF is currently exploring the possibility of obtaining material from archives in Greece; material from her own, personal archive of fieldwork recordings might also be used.
Filming for the Cyprus-based documentary, provisionally entitled ‘Poetic duels: Young tsiattista poets in Cyprus’, has finished; the film is now in post-production. The material for the second documentary, provisionally entitled ‘Fighting with words: Poetic duelling in the Mediterranean’, will now be carefully reviewed. After transcription and translation have taken place, its editing and production will begin.
