Artikel
Editorial: September 2007
27 augustus 2007
The Chinese section presents He Xiaozhu, a poet of the peripheries. Of mixed ethnic identity, Xiaozhu uses his multiple heritages to create a valuable, individual vantage point from which he hones his craft. The result is a poetry of subtraction in which he cuts away “poetic languages excesses”; his observation of reality from an oblique standpoint forms a kind of philosophy:
As we ate noodles
a horse stood behind us
There were probably very few that
noticed
because as we ate
our eyes looked at the noodles
Only one or two people
turned their heads
and saw the horse
(‘A Horse Stood Behind Us’)
Also from China, we’ve added the poems of Yi Sha translated for this year’s Poetry International festival. Like He Xiaozhu, Yi Sha works with a reductionist style. He focusses on pared-down descriptions of seemingly banal incidents, or dramatic incidents described in a banal (or is it ironic) manner. His poems are a real treat and are available in audio format too.
I think Yi Sha would enjoy reading Gerry Murphy from the Ireland pages. We’ve also included audio files of Murphy’s poems so you can listen to the poet finding the essence of existence in a café. His works use surrealist, dada-ist and expressionist techniques to great effect but what I like most is his idiosyncratic humour.
so I thought if you say it now she might remember it
when she is being interviewed in her dotage
on Where is he now and Who was he anyway?
and it was Christmas I mean jingle bells just unleash
those three tinsled words they will land upright,
well-dressed, house-trained and plausible
on the welcoming porch of her ear
and finally convince her of your undying devotion
but no...
(‘And She Was Beautiful And She Was Ferociously Intelligent’)
Fellow Irish poet, Nuala Ní Chonchúir also does a good line in humour. Like Murphy she has been influenced by European poetry rather than British and this shows in her linguistic precision. A bilingual poet, Ní Chuonchúir provides us with a fascinating insight into translation in her poem, ‘A Kind of Forgery’ — here she calls it “adding old flesh on new bones”.
The Netherlands feature an updated page for Remco Campert, a Dutch poet and novelist famous for his humour. I recently read his hilarious 1995 novella, Ohi, hoho, bang, bang, about poet Menno van der Staak’s experiences at an international poetry festival in Rotterdam. It was all strangely familiar... The poems here though demonstrate something else. “Antwerp girl/you’re still on my mind/what have I done/with my life” he writes in ‘Faded Days’. Now almost eighty, Campert is clearly taking stock and his poetry has become more lyrical, more poignant:
but writing down the words
alters what I want to remember
that which had no words
was a living breathing image
so now I have two versions of the same
today I can superimpose them
but tomorrow when I’m gone
only the words are left
signs evoking something
that no eye sees anymore
(‘Memo’)
With humour as a counterpoint to politics, I hope you’ll enjoy reading and listening to the poems in September’s issue.
Is the pen mightier than the sword? Five poets from India demonstrate how to write poetry with a political agenda. “My pen collides with the skeletons of history,” writes feminist Saroop Dhruv in ‘It’s All In My Hands’. Her poetry addresses the human rights movement in Gujurat and aims to write ‘with’ the people, not ‘at’ them. Jameela Nishat, is an Urdu feminist poet fights for Muslim women’s rights and to conserve the Dakhani dialect, a regional form of Urdu, the language of most 16th and 17th century poets in the Deccan. Twenty-three-year-old Meena Kandasamy, a Dalit poet from Tamil Nadu, indites caste politics in her debut collection, written in English.
Also writing in English is UK-based Suniti Namjoshi. During a sabbatical in Canada she made the connection between politics, ethics and power and realized she had some battles to fight. The only male Indian poet in this issue, Veerankutty, an environmental poet from Kerala, uses a carefully nuanced style to conjure up distopic images, rather than clash head on with enemies of the planet. “What more would a leaf want?” he offers.The Chinese section presents He Xiaozhu, a poet of the peripheries. Of mixed ethnic identity, Xiaozhu uses his multiple heritages to create a valuable, individual vantage point from which he hones his craft. The result is a poetry of subtraction in which he cuts away “poetic languages excesses”; his observation of reality from an oblique standpoint forms a kind of philosophy:
As we ate noodles
a horse stood behind us
There were probably very few that
noticed
because as we ate
our eyes looked at the noodles
Only one or two people
turned their heads
and saw the horse
(‘A Horse Stood Behind Us’)
Also from China, we’ve added the poems of Yi Sha translated for this year’s Poetry International festival. Like He Xiaozhu, Yi Sha works with a reductionist style. He focusses on pared-down descriptions of seemingly banal incidents, or dramatic incidents described in a banal (or is it ironic) manner. His poems are a real treat and are available in audio format too.
I think Yi Sha would enjoy reading Gerry Murphy from the Ireland pages. We’ve also included audio files of Murphy’s poems so you can listen to the poet finding the essence of existence in a café. His works use surrealist, dada-ist and expressionist techniques to great effect but what I like most is his idiosyncratic humour.
so I thought if you say it now she might remember it
when she is being interviewed in her dotage
on Where is he now and Who was he anyway?
and it was Christmas I mean jingle bells just unleash
those three tinsled words they will land upright,
well-dressed, house-trained and plausible
on the welcoming porch of her ear
and finally convince her of your undying devotion
but no...
(‘And She Was Beautiful And She Was Ferociously Intelligent’)
Fellow Irish poet, Nuala Ní Chonchúir also does a good line in humour. Like Murphy she has been influenced by European poetry rather than British and this shows in her linguistic precision. A bilingual poet, Ní Chuonchúir provides us with a fascinating insight into translation in her poem, ‘A Kind of Forgery’ — here she calls it “adding old flesh on new bones”.
The Netherlands feature an updated page for Remco Campert, a Dutch poet and novelist famous for his humour. I recently read his hilarious 1995 novella, Ohi, hoho, bang, bang, about poet Menno van der Staak’s experiences at an international poetry festival in Rotterdam. It was all strangely familiar... The poems here though demonstrate something else. “Antwerp girl/you’re still on my mind/what have I done/with my life” he writes in ‘Faded Days’. Now almost eighty, Campert is clearly taking stock and his poetry has become more lyrical, more poignant:
but writing down the words
alters what I want to remember
that which had no words
was a living breathing image
so now I have two versions of the same
today I can superimpose them
but tomorrow when I’m gone
only the words are left
signs evoking something
that no eye sees anymore
(‘Memo’)
With humour as a counterpoint to politics, I hope you’ll enjoy reading and listening to the poems in September’s issue.
© Michele Hutchison
Sponsors
Partners
LantarenVenster – Verhalenhuis Belvédère