Versos Transversos

These Versos Transversos reverberate the verses of Gerald Raunig´s song Far-Near and emerge from the pedagogical and political praxis of an organization of migrant women in Linz, Austria: das-kollektiv.at.

They are verses that reverberate the profound distances and visceral proximities between educator and student along the path of reciprocal and transversal learning to read and write—words, the world—in literacy and German-language courses. Courses where the relationship itself becomes the space of knowledge production. Courses marked by the latent tension between the colonial capitalist normative imperative and the joy arising with the desire to reinvent the world. Becoming-poetry.

The student, here transformed into almost-fiction and embodying many at once, learns to read and write for the first time in her life. In addition to the difficulties common to adult literacy in a foreign language, she experiences difficulties typical of dyslexia, making the process more difficult and protracted and increasing her vulnerability before a state that demands her rapid transformation into a productive workforce. She is a refugee, suffers from heart problems, and divorced her violent husband here in Austria, very near to, very far from Afghanistan, very near to, very far from the Rio de Janeiro of Clarice Lispector’s character in Near to the Wild Heart, resistant to the dominant norms of behavior of her time.

And flowing, these verses reverberate concomitances and distances between struggles, processes, sufferings, joys, violence, achievements, voices, and silences, and cause present, past, and future times to flood into one another, nourishing tomorrows and becomings. Pulsing with the joyful certainty that there is no plan for human life beneath the starry sky of this our planet.

Bastian Lehner: mix and sounddesign
Ian Salgado: arrangements and guitar
Rubia Salgado: lyric and vocals

The audio file will be released on 30 Sept. 2026.