Editorial: April 2006

June 07, 2006 Covering several decades, from the 1960s until today, Magadza’s work allows us to experience recent Zimbabwean history at first hand. Poems such as ‘November Eleven’ and ‘Ghosts in the Maize Fields’ portray the frustrations of the colonized, “a silent people/ Whose god is frightened”. His vision of his homeland is dark and full of regret; it is a ruined, scorched land inhabited by confused, scarred people whose “wasted labours” end up “In the open sewers/ of black aspirations.”

Yet it is important for such voices to reach us and be heard. ‘Cruel’ though they may seem, the experiences of drought, liberation wars, guerrillas and death have made up this poet’s life. Magadza’s poetry should be shared, else :

In the morning
The mist
Will cleanse your memory;
My story will become
Only a vague silence,
From a far off darkness;
And you will forget to be thankful
That the sun shines on you.
                 (‘Beneath the Rainbow’)

This month Japan invites us into ‘Inuo’s World’, a poetry theme park run according to the rules of Armadillogic. It’s a fun place to be. {id="6410" title="Inuo Taguchi"} is a poet who reminds me of the Dutch {id="6431" title="Toon Tellegen"} in March’s issue, his writing is completely fresh and takes delightfully unexpected turns. The poem ‘James Nachtwey’ ends in a very Tellegenesque manner : “Words are at a loss/ and quietly watching you/ from the top of a cliff.” Unlike Tellegen however, he more often imposes his surreal sense of humour on concrete historical situations : “Armadillos are proud of being natural-born ‘environmentalists’./ They didn’t invite factories to set up on Isabella Island,/ They didn’t break away from the Kyoto Protocol.” (‘Armadillogic’).

The Japanese section editor, Yasuhiro Yotsumoto, continues to educate his international readers in contemporary Japanese poetry and in this second issue has commissioned an essay by Makoto Ooka, one of the most important poets of the post-war generation in that country. This fascinating essay presents a clear overview of the development of Japanese verse within the context of Western influences and discusses the two contradictory drives at the heart of creative development there – resist Western models or welcome them.

Portugal features three poets : {id="6454" title="Ana Paula Inácio"}, {id="6456" title="Rui Coias"} and {id="6455" title="Luís Quintais"}, all born in the late 1960s. Luís Quintais, who was born in Angola, writes the kind of poetry that asks things of its readers : “You too will have to wake up/ to the vigil of metaphors,/ to the dream of language.” (‘The Dream of Language’). He tries to bring life out from under language, to separate the layers, to question the “World as Representation”.

Rui Coias’s poetry is concerned with landscape, writes editor Richard Zenith, but it is also about man’s relationship with this landscape :

each place impressing us only because it suggests
the next one that will come into view.
And in the end, when we let go of everything
and hear nothing but the bells’ tolling,
the landscapes cease to exist, being no more
than our breathing set free.
        (untitled)

Coias’s poetry is beautiful and relies upon traditional forms and expressions which it then subverts, sometimes leaving the reader deliberately unsettled. Ana Paula Inácio also plays games with her readers by setting up her poems like cryptic puzzles. Her poetry is full of signs and clues – flowers that blossom, a special pair of trousers, miracles that happen “at odd hours”, and a page of a book which may or may not deliver a key.

Each of the five poets in April’s issue challenges the reader in different ways, which is of course what all good poetry should do. Go on, take up the challenge!