Artikel
Editorial: May 2008
28 april 2008
I count the falling frangipani leaves.
Early April, the nights are growing cold;
the scent of wood smoke sours as neighbours burn
their household rubbish; every now and then
a discarded aerosol can explodes
triggering memories of another time,
another place, another war. ( ‘Waiting’)
I’d also like to remind our readers about the special Zimbabwe programme (sponsored by the Hivos-NCDO Culture Fund) which will take place on Tuesday 10th June during the festival. The event will feature Zimbabwe editor Irene Staunton in conversation, Togara Muzanenhamo reading and Samm Farai Monro, aka Comrade Fatso, providing some musical interludes.
We have more new audio material on the site: the renowned American poet Arthur Sze read last year at the festival and we’ve uploaded the recordings and his poems. New on the Portuguese pages is A. M. Pires Cabral who reflects on mortality in a variety of ways. His depiction of a computer in the trash, representing the loss of memory, questions what it is like to die; human and artificial intelligence going the same way.
The British issue features three very different poets – David Harsent, Peter Porter and Pauline Stainer, chosen by guest editor Fiona Sampson. She looked for outstanding talent and selected three resiliently independent, ground-breaking writers. Scanning the poems for references to city or country I came across ‘The Hut in Question’ by David Harsent, a description of what sounds like a walker’s refuge. It’s beautiful; pastoral turned existential:
I see, now, by that light. Rain finally coming in, the day
falling short, adrift in shades of grey,
and nowhere to get to from here, or so I guess,
with distances fading fast,
with the road I travelled by a thinning smudge,
with all that lay between us bagged and sold,
with voices in under the door that are nothing more nor less
than voices of those I loved, or said I did,
with nothing at all to mark
fear or fault, nothing to govern loss,
and limitless memory starting up in the dark.
Traditionally, pastoral poetry described a romanticised rural life, an ideal of the countryside. In the classical period it figured dialogues between herdsmen or shepherds in Arcadia, a real region in the Peloponnese peninsula of Greece which later came to represent the ideal of nature, something which has become culturally ingrained. Nature as indicative of meditation and tranquility — or as “a small, knowledgeable palliative” — is something former Israel editor, Lisa Katz, considers in her virtual tour of the rural and the urban in poetry featured on the site. She doesn’t believe city and country can be separated in the poet’s mind but instead jointly form the idea of the Outside. The Outside forms a point of access to the Inside, the poet’s emotions.
Australian Laurie Duggan also examines the bucolic, here in ‘Pastoral Poems’ :
The sky reflects the wilderness.
There are miles on the map without
“interesting features”,
the blank spaces Dorn talks about
& which are usually somebody’s home;
places I know nothing of
save those blanknesses,
colour of highways, unfathomables
suggesting more from less.
A kind of geography
which isn’t, finally, a nationalism
– isn’t a wallchart for a mining company –
announces there’s more out there
than we can take in.
It’s a poem which ends memorably with the proposition - “what they call ‘identity’/ a failure of imagination”: is he talking about the limitations of geography, landscape or history? Note the reference to the late American poet, Ed Dorn, whose geographical poems written in the 1960s and 70s emphasized the inseparable relationship between humans and place. As I gather my own thoughts on the City and Country theme, I see that this might well be the crux of what matters about place in poetry, or at least a way of getting a handle on it. Although nature and the countryside feature heavily in contemporary poetry, have we abandoned the idyll of Arcadia? Does the destruction of our natural environment have an effect on the mind, on poetry, on art? As our cultural hubs — cities — take over the countryside, Arcadia might well be sought in a sparrow. If you’d like to contribute to this debate yourself, please post your comments within our Facebook group.
Finally, as requested by many readers in our survey last year, we’re including an article, The Art of Poetry Translation, in which I talk to four translators whose work is on the site. Next month we’ll be reporting live from the festival and, sadly, it will also be my final issue as Editor.
This month we’re thrilled to present an eagerly-awaited and specially-recorded audio issue from Zimbabwe, featuring the voices of slam poets Ticha Muzavazi, Comrade Fatso, G.O.D. Obori, Outspoken and Mybruthazkeepa. As to be expected, politics comes to the fore in these poems, listen for example to the frustration in ‘Everything Remains the Same’ by Mybruthazkeepa. It’s also a chance to hear the beautiful Shona language as spoken by Muzavazi and the richly-voiced Obori. An essay - ‘The House that Words Built’ - by Comrade Fatso gives some context to these poets: a lively slam scene formed around a club night.
With Zimbabwe currently in the headlines, we’ve received a brand new poem by John Eppel on the recent elections:I count the falling frangipani leaves.
Early April, the nights are growing cold;
the scent of wood smoke sours as neighbours burn
their household rubbish; every now and then
a discarded aerosol can explodes
triggering memories of another time,
another place, another war. ( ‘Waiting’)
I’d also like to remind our readers about the special Zimbabwe programme (sponsored by the Hivos-NCDO Culture Fund) which will take place on Tuesday 10th June during the festival. The event will feature Zimbabwe editor Irene Staunton in conversation, Togara Muzanenhamo reading and Samm Farai Monro, aka Comrade Fatso, providing some musical interludes.
We have more new audio material on the site: the renowned American poet Arthur Sze read last year at the festival and we’ve uploaded the recordings and his poems. New on the Portuguese pages is A. M. Pires Cabral who reflects on mortality in a variety of ways. His depiction of a computer in the trash, representing the loss of memory, questions what it is like to die; human and artificial intelligence going the same way.
The British issue features three very different poets – David Harsent, Peter Porter and Pauline Stainer, chosen by guest editor Fiona Sampson. She looked for outstanding talent and selected three resiliently independent, ground-breaking writers. Scanning the poems for references to city or country I came across ‘The Hut in Question’ by David Harsent, a description of what sounds like a walker’s refuge. It’s beautiful; pastoral turned existential:
I see, now, by that light. Rain finally coming in, the day
falling short, adrift in shades of grey,
and nowhere to get to from here, or so I guess,
with distances fading fast,
with the road I travelled by a thinning smudge,
with all that lay between us bagged and sold,
with voices in under the door that are nothing more nor less
than voices of those I loved, or said I did,
with nothing at all to mark
fear or fault, nothing to govern loss,
and limitless memory starting up in the dark.
Traditionally, pastoral poetry described a romanticised rural life, an ideal of the countryside. In the classical period it figured dialogues between herdsmen or shepherds in Arcadia, a real region in the Peloponnese peninsula of Greece which later came to represent the ideal of nature, something which has become culturally ingrained. Nature as indicative of meditation and tranquility — or as “a small, knowledgeable palliative” — is something former Israel editor, Lisa Katz, considers in her virtual tour of the rural and the urban in poetry featured on the site. She doesn’t believe city and country can be separated in the poet’s mind but instead jointly form the idea of the Outside. The Outside forms a point of access to the Inside, the poet’s emotions.
Australian Laurie Duggan also examines the bucolic, here in ‘Pastoral Poems’ :
The sky reflects the wilderness.
There are miles on the map without
“interesting features”,
the blank spaces Dorn talks about
& which are usually somebody’s home;
places I know nothing of
save those blanknesses,
colour of highways, unfathomables
suggesting more from less.
A kind of geography
which isn’t, finally, a nationalism
– isn’t a wallchart for a mining company –
announces there’s more out there
than we can take in.
It’s a poem which ends memorably with the proposition - “what they call ‘identity’/ a failure of imagination”: is he talking about the limitations of geography, landscape or history? Note the reference to the late American poet, Ed Dorn, whose geographical poems written in the 1960s and 70s emphasized the inseparable relationship between humans and place. As I gather my own thoughts on the City and Country theme, I see that this might well be the crux of what matters about place in poetry, or at least a way of getting a handle on it. Although nature and the countryside feature heavily in contemporary poetry, have we abandoned the idyll of Arcadia? Does the destruction of our natural environment have an effect on the mind, on poetry, on art? As our cultural hubs — cities — take over the countryside, Arcadia might well be sought in a sparrow. If you’d like to contribute to this debate yourself, please post your comments within our Facebook group.
Finally, as requested by many readers in our survey last year, we’re including an article, The Art of Poetry Translation, in which I talk to four translators whose work is on the site. Next month we’ll be reporting live from the festival and, sadly, it will also be my final issue as Editor.
© Michele Hutchison
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