Article
Editorial: 15 April 2011
April 14, 2011
The Zimbabwe domain presents Blessing Musariri, a Zimbabwean writer who has been published internationally. In an essay, Bevlyn Dube examines Musariri’s work, noting that “unlike most of her [female Zimbabwean] contemporaries [. . .] who grapple with the ‘usual’ topics of womanhood, land, politics, violence and governance, Musariri chooses to use her poetry to make a spirited stand for her individuality.”
Musariri’s individual identity as figured in her writing is largely informed by her travels and the act of travelling. Transition and displacement as themes are prominent in the selection of poems published here – in ‘Journeys’, the narrator in the airport is (perhaps with relief) “moving out of vision, alone /– invisible, again”, while in ‘On Platform 3’, with the cancellation of an early-morning train, again alone, she must “sit and wait”. ‘She, On the Way to Monk’s Hill’ narrates a walk in St. John’s, Antigua; in contrast to the “she” of the poem, who “knows everyone”, her companion, the narrator, is “a jockey without her reigns, / holding on to every word, bracing at every hurdle”. Whether stemming from very individual experiences, or reflecting on the African diaspora as a whole, as in the powerful ‘A Poem I Wrote Standing Up – Indictment’, Musariri’s eloquent, crafted poetry is a spirited reflection on postcolonial identity and translocality in a global age.
2011 Poetry International Festival
In our upcoming issues, we’ll be introducing you to some of the poets who will be visiting our festival in Rotterdam this June. This time, we present three poems by the multilingual Canadian poet Erín Moure, from a series playfully “purporting to be translations by Elisa Sampedrín – who doesn’t exist – and who translates from a language she does not even know: simply because she sees the poems and wants to read them, and can’t, in their original language.” What a wonderful metaphor for the process of poetry, encouraging us to think about the reading, writing and translating of it as entirely intertwined and inter-informative.
We’re also publishing two poems by the Romanian poet Ion Mureşan, first published in his collection Cartea Alcool (The Book of Alcohol, 2010). At times humorous, at others moving, these narrative pieces, both set in a bar, revel in dreamlike observations of rich visual details and alcohol-fuelled laments and brawls.
You’ll be able to read more work by these two fantastic poets in our 1 June PIW festival issue, along with the full festival selection of poems by all twenty poets coming to Rotterdam.
Welcome to our second April issue of PIW, featuring four very different and exciting poets, two of whom will be reading at the 42nd Poetry International Festival in Rotterdam this June.
Born in 1909, Michio Mado is PIW’s oldest living poet. Two years ago, Mado’s 100th birthday was celebrated across Japan – before then, he was relatively unknown as a serious poet and painter in his country; his best-known works are his songs written for children. Mado’s poems are linguistically simple and sparse, yet they resonate with a moving spirituality in their quiet contemplation, and wonder, of the small, everyday things of our world, “such a distant place where / stars can be mixed / with mosquitoes”. His work appears here in translation along with beautiful recordings made for the audiobook anthology Masters of Modern Japanese Poetry (1999).The Zimbabwe domain presents Blessing Musariri, a Zimbabwean writer who has been published internationally. In an essay, Bevlyn Dube examines Musariri’s work, noting that “unlike most of her [female Zimbabwean] contemporaries [. . .] who grapple with the ‘usual’ topics of womanhood, land, politics, violence and governance, Musariri chooses to use her poetry to make a spirited stand for her individuality.”
Musariri’s individual identity as figured in her writing is largely informed by her travels and the act of travelling. Transition and displacement as themes are prominent in the selection of poems published here – in ‘Journeys’, the narrator in the airport is (perhaps with relief) “moving out of vision, alone /– invisible, again”, while in ‘On Platform 3’, with the cancellation of an early-morning train, again alone, she must “sit and wait”. ‘She, On the Way to Monk’s Hill’ narrates a walk in St. John’s, Antigua; in contrast to the “she” of the poem, who “knows everyone”, her companion, the narrator, is “a jockey without her reigns, / holding on to every word, bracing at every hurdle”. Whether stemming from very individual experiences, or reflecting on the African diaspora as a whole, as in the powerful ‘A Poem I Wrote Standing Up – Indictment’, Musariri’s eloquent, crafted poetry is a spirited reflection on postcolonial identity and translocality in a global age.
2011 Poetry International Festival
In our upcoming issues, we’ll be introducing you to some of the poets who will be visiting our festival in Rotterdam this June. This time, we present three poems by the multilingual Canadian poet Erín Moure, from a series playfully “purporting to be translations by Elisa Sampedrín – who doesn’t exist – and who translates from a language she does not even know: simply because she sees the poems and wants to read them, and can’t, in their original language.” What a wonderful metaphor for the process of poetry, encouraging us to think about the reading, writing and translating of it as entirely intertwined and inter-informative.
We’re also publishing two poems by the Romanian poet Ion Mureşan, first published in his collection Cartea Alcool (The Book of Alcohol, 2010). At times humorous, at others moving, these narrative pieces, both set in a bar, revel in dreamlike observations of rich visual details and alcohol-fuelled laments and brawls.
You’ll be able to read more work by these two fantastic poets in our 1 June PIW festival issue, along with the full festival selection of poems by all twenty poets coming to Rotterdam.
© Sarah Ream
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