Editorial: 20 May, 2003

January 18, 2006 A self-termed "citizen of the world", {id="979" title="Zhang Zao"} "fuses Chinese and Western sensibilities in his work," as PIW’s Chinese editor describes it. In his poetic creed as well as in his experimental style, characterized by daring metaphors and "lexical acrobatics", Zao’s work seems the embodiment of Ezra Pound’s old imperative to "make it new". This is the first time that a substantial selection of his work is made available in English.

Celebrated Italian poet {id="3548" title="Valerio Magrelli"} is the new Italian choice of the quarter. Magrelli, himself a translator and Professor of French, is "obsessed by the ‘translation’ involved in all writing, and thus by language games that reveal the complex inner life of words", as Jonathan Galassi puts it. Writing itself is often a subject in his work, such as in {id="3765" title="'The Pen Slides'"}, a poem which contains perhaps the loveliest description of writing about writing: "as if a cloud/ were to assume/ the form of a cloud".

The issue of translation – is poetry translation possible at all, and if so, how should it be approached? – is also addressed in an essay by Sarah Dudek this month, {id="360" title="'Can translated poetry matter?'"}

In the neighbourhood bar
I saw my shadow drinking
A glass of wine.
And I am here
Overtaken by drunkenness
As my words stumble.

These lines were written by {id="3820" title="Hassan Najmi"}, the Moroccan poet of the quarter, in his poem {id="3927" title="‘The Tavern’"}. With his interest in the quotidian and his mostly casual style, Najmi maintains a consistently lucid, committed tone in his poems.

Dutch poet {id="4000" title="Arjen Duinker"}, too, is "far more concerned with reality than with abstractions," as our Dutch editor writes. "His poetry is very much about the reality of things as separate, self-contained entities, about flowers, stones, mountains, wind and water."In his "User’s Guide", Duinker offers the following definition of his own work:

To this day I haven’t wondered what it is my poetry is trying to do. It’s child’s play: this poetry tries to make valid music in the forest of sets, graphs and charts between the word ‘the’ and the word ‘an’, tries for valid argumentation, from diagram to diagram, inside and outside of poetry.

One of Duinker’s poems was translated into no fewer than 220 languages for a project entitled ‘World Poem’.

Finally, Zimbabwe has added yet another poet to its selection for this quarter, {id="5752" title="Charles Mungoshi"} (next to {id="5758" title="Julius Chingono"} who was already chosen last month). Mungoshi, who was born into a farming family in the Chivhu area of Zimbabwe, is perhaps better known for his prose – which has won many prestigious awards, including the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize, twice – than his poetry. However, as Memory Chirere writes in a {id="5728" title="reflection"} on Mungoshi’s poetry, "when properly read, his poetry may be seen as the quintessence of his art - capturing subtly and briefly what he achieves in more elaborate ways in his prose." For Mungoshi - always striving to "condense language to a spare state of fine precision" - attains an unusual degree of conciseness and concentration of meaning in his poetry. Some of his poems read like complete short stories, fully developed within the space of a few lines of verse. This sets Mungoshi firmly within the Shona tradition of songs and stories, in which the artist is "a seer of both good and bad", with all the responsibilities that come with such a gift.