Editorial: September 2004

18 januari 2006 These lines, taken from ‘Memo’ by French poet {id="2043" title="Michel Deguy"}, neatly summarize not only his work, which is highly experimental, but also the task of the poet in general. Deguy "stretches the very concept of poetry," writes our French magazine, and it is precisely this task that each true poet performs with every new, individual poem he writes. "The poem is of things coming/ Which need to be fetched", writes Michel Deguy in ‘Memo’. And fetch he does.

Renowned Slovenian poet {id="5045" title="Tomaž Šalamun"} puts it this way in his famous poem ‘Folk Song’:

Every true poet is a monster.
He destroys people and their speech.
His singing elevates a technique that wipes out
the earth so we are not eaten by worms.

Šalamun, who practically kick-started the Slovenian poetic avant-garde movement in the 1960s, is possibly the most widely-known Slovenian poet internationally, with work translated into thirteen different languages. His work, characterized by the playful, the absurd, the surreal and irrelevant, is "lined with dark laughter," as our editor Iztok Osojnik writes, but never loses its edge. As Osojnik says, "Nothing is lost on him."

Definitely concept-stretching is our new poetry clip of the month by Dutch sound poet Jaap Blonk, whose poem ‘Frictional. Phonetic étude nr. 2 for voiceless fricatives’ is nothing if not monstrous, destroying speech and elevating by singing!

Furthermore, seven other new Dutch poets are presented this month in the Dutch magazine: Mark Boog, Lloyd Haft, Ramsey Nasr, Willem Jan Otten, Kees Ouwens, Hagar Peeters and Hans Tentije, all poets who have performed at this year’s Poetry International Festival in Rotterdam, The Netherlands. This selection represents a miniature overview of Dutch poetry in itself, with the youngest generation present (Boog, Nasr, Peeters) as well as more established poets such as Haft, Otten and Tentije. Kees Ouwens, perhaps the least known of Dutch major poets, unfortunately passed away on August 24.

Chinese {id="976" title="Yi Sha"}, iconoclast, polemicist and ardent proponent of a poetry of kouyu shi, common spoken language, finds his inspiration in "common knowledge". The way a girl, on her way home from the swimming pool, tries to shake water from her ears, a boy shooting milk instead of water from his waterpistol, a stroll on a platform for three minutes while the train stops, hot dumplings eaten on New Year’s Eve, these are described by Yi Sha in an unadorned, ‘naked’ poetic language. "Such common knowledge as this/ has helped me find a way into a poetry of essentials", he writes.

From South Africa, we’ve got three very different poets. {id="5381" title="Michael Cope"} who, in addition to being a poet and writer, is also a designer and goldsmith, addresses ecological, social and spiritual issues in his poetry. The work of young poet {id="5375" title="Gabeba Baderoon"} is concerned with "the steady, scrupulous contemplation of questions of identity and meaning", as poet and playwright Sean O’ Brien wrote of her work. Celebrated Afrikaans poet {id="5373" title="Charl-Pierre Naudé"}, who won the prestigious Ingrid Jonker prize for poetry in 1997, has contributed six long, often narrative poems, translated into English by the poet himself. They are published on PIW for the very first time; the Afrikaans versions will appear in print later this year.

Finally, we would like to thank the two editors who this month have presented their last issue for PIW. French editor Jean-Pierre Balpe, and South African Gus Ferguson, assisted by Tracey Walters, were involved with this project from the start, and we are immensely grateful for the enthousiasm, inspiration and discernment they brought to PIW. Their efforts helped to build this site. The French and South-African magazines will be continued by two new local editors.