La jaune Schreibmaschine
Multilingual poet, typewriter artist, socio-artistic project developer and researcher
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About me
I’m Veronica Schmalz, in art La Jaune Schreibmaschine. I grew up in a multicultural family with Chilean-Argentine and Italo-German roots, between Buenos Aires and la Sicilia. Languages and migration stories have shaped my life since a very young age. In fact, home, identity, languages and connections are key topics I research in my works.
After an academic career spent in South Tyrol, Germany and Trentino, I moved to Belgium for a PhD in computational linguistics in 2021. Here, my artistic career has bloomed and become more professionalised. My style is characterised by the combination of my home languages, Italiano and Español, with the languages I have been learning, namely Nederlands, Français, Deutsch, English and Português. Translanguaging poetry, the simultaneous use of more languages as part of my linguistic repertoire, is for me a way to rediscover the magic and playfulness we experienced as children during language acquisition, while also staying close to my multicultural and multilingual story.
“Our reality is becoming increasingly multilingual. Literature should also reflect this. Poetry, as a free and experimental genre, lends itself well to embracing this idea. The aim is not to understand everything, but to stay open to and enjoy the uniqueness that each language brings to the symphony of multilingual poetry.“
Projects
Multilingual stories in ons nieuwe thuis: Kortrijk
Bringing multilingual stories among international nieuwkomers in Kortrijk to life through creative writing and multimedia workshops with a resulting multilingual poetry collection and a podcast. Supported by Durf2030.
Multilingual poetry to support foreign language learning
What if instead of pushing home languages out of language classes we embraced them and used them to support the new language learning through translanguaging practices? In this project, we use multilingual poetry as a means to bridge between home language(s) and the new country language(s) for efficient learning with adult learners. A project in collaboration with Babbelplus and Stad Kortrijk in occasion of the Poëzieweek 2025.
Multilingual collages for migrant children's Dutch learning
Migrant children need to be given the tools to learn how to manage living in multilingual realities. They might speak one language at home with their parents, one at school, another one in their free time. Through multilingual collages, we bring these realities to life on paper, analysing how they coexist and how they can support each other. They have unique resources and skills but need to be able to exploit them.
Multilingual personalised typewritten poems
What a better way to remember a special event like a wedding or birthday, attending a festival, hosting a vernissage, closing a teambuilding initiative than through personalised multilingual poems, typewritten on the spot, on an iconic typewriter? You share a story, a memory or a word with me, and I carefully craft a unique piece for you to take home and remember such a singular and peculiar interaction. No big event ahead, but still want to write a special poem for a loved one? I also send personalised multilingual poems via post!
Services
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