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Archive feature: A timely look at Poetry International’s “Poets’ diaries” series
The everyday lives of the poets
18 november 2015
The range and breadth of these “Poets’ diaries” – of how these poets account for their “days in the life” – and how unexpected and surprising they can be, show that reading these international poets’ works as representative of any general (national) experience is impossible. Still, the definitions and boundaries we use to articulate the world become clearer, and then can become richer, from considering how the poems engage with and even change the lives and places that give rise to them.
As Colombian poet Nicolás Suescún writes: “I feel how difficult it is to give an objective picture of my country free from all inventions about it.” The “Poets’ diaries,” at least, give us a picture of this difficulty and a chance to weigh the inventions.
As the Zimbabwean “Poets’ diaries” were highlighted alongside Staunton’s look back on her time as editor, we’re giving extra attention here to the other five diaries: from Mersal, Suescún, Australian poets David Malouf and John Tranter, and Moroccan poet Amina El Bakouri. All eight, however, are worth reading again today.
Poets’ diaries:
During Irene Staunton’s tenure as Poetry International’s Zimbabwe editor, she published three remarkable editions of the “Poets’ Diaries,” written by Julius Chingono, John Eppel and Freedom Nyamubaya, which we featured in our carousel a couple weeks ago. Between 2003 and 2005, Poetry International invited eight poets each to keep a weeklong diary, whether they were writing from their small game farm in Mhangura, Zimbabwe, or from Rotterdam during their stay as guest of the Poetry International Festival. These diaries offer exceptional insight in what it means to be an “international poet:” a poet navigating and merging the literary life with motherhood; a poet journeying back to the city in which they grew up and from which they grew away; a poet finding himself constantly in airports; several poets observing what it means to write in a world shaped by 9-11.
“We usually arrive to a new country with an instinctive readiness to be happy,” writes Iraqi poet Iman Mersal in 2003, upon arriving in the Netherlands for the Poetry International Festival. Nonetheless, Mersal notes the ways in which readings in Europe and the U.S. have become “more complicated” in the previous decade:
Apart from reading a text initially not written to be delivered to an “audience” – there was the issue associated with the expectations a Western audience would have from hearing Arabic poetry . . . Therefore, in addition to all the political reasons that would make every Arab these days feel self-conscious on arrival to any Western airport, the expectation in a poetry reading is connected to the image of Arabic poetry in the light of the limited exposure the West has had to Arab literary output.
The range and breadth of these “Poets’ diaries” – of how these poets account for their “days in the life” – and how unexpected and surprising they can be, show that reading these international poets’ works as representative of any general (national) experience is impossible. Still, the definitions and boundaries we use to articulate the world become clearer, and then can become richer, from considering how the poems engage with and even change the lives and places that give rise to them.
As Colombian poet Nicolás Suescún writes: “I feel how difficult it is to give an objective picture of my country free from all inventions about it.” The “Poets’ diaries,” at least, give us a picture of this difficulty and a chance to weigh the inventions.
As the Zimbabwean “Poets’ diaries” were highlighted alongside Staunton’s look back on her time as editor, we’re giving extra attention here to the other five diaries: from Mersal, Suescún, Australian poets David Malouf and John Tranter, and Moroccan poet Amina El Bakouri. All eight, however, are worth reading again today.
Poets’ diaries:
• Jules Chingono (Zimbabwe)
• Amina El Bakouri (Morocco)
• John Eppel (Zimbabwe)
• David Malouf (Australia)
• Iman Mersal (Iraq)
• Freedom Nyamubaya (Zimbabwe)
• Nicolás Suescún (Colombia)
• John Tranter (Australia)
• Amina El Bakouri (Morocco)
• John Eppel (Zimbabwe)
• David Malouf (Australia)
• Iman Mersal (Iraq)
• Freedom Nyamubaya (Zimbabwe)
• Nicolás Suescún (Colombia)
• John Tranter (Australia)
© Mia You
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