Editorial: March 2008

March 03, 2008 We can also now read the very impressive Nontsizi Mgqwetho, active in the 1920s, “one of the greatest literary artists ever to write in Xhosa, an anguished voice of an urban woman confronting male dominance, ineffective leadership, black apathy, white malice and indifference, economic exploitation and a tragic history of nineteenth-century territorial and cultural dispossession.” Nor to be missed is Mazisi Kunene, said to have reconstructed the identity of the African continent, and Rustum Kozain, an accomplished prize-winning young poet.

The Indian issue features love poetry: five poets grappling with the clichés of their respective literary traditions. In  Ruth Vanita’s poem ‘Ends’, writing and relationships entangle, “This began/A valediction forbidding love/Lest loss ensue, but in the writing/Lost its way, and found its end in you.” C. P. Surendran’s poems are described as “sly, mercurial animals” : impassive, laconic and yet tender.

I had just fought this war and come back,
Minding my own business and drinking beer.
Then I met this girl at Joe’s
Who wrote poems on the back
Of napkins with ketchup.
Show me your heart, she said.
Don’t have one, I said.
She said hearts were what made her go.

Finally, I dug up the old, dark thing.

And she said, oh, but this is a grenade.

I told you, I said, and bit the pin.   (‘Enemy’)

Gagan Gill’s poems are intense lyrical experiences, film-maker Gulzar’s are direct and unpretentious, Nirendranath Chakravarti’s show a sophisticated urban sensitivity. Something for every taste, then.

Two important voices, Eiléan Ní Chuilleanáin and Matthew Sweeney, join the Irish stable. Patrick Cotter interestingly suggests Ní Chuilleanáin’s work uses folklore because “it allows her to approach subjects from an oblique, non-confessional perspective.” I read not just folklore but a broader sense of mythology in her poems, an encounter with classical forms, whatever objective facility it might give her:

There was plenty of time while the sea-water
Nosed across the ruinous ocean floor
Inquiring for the ruinous door of the womb
And found the soul of Vercingetorix
Cramped in a jamjar
Who was starved to death in a dry cistern
In Rome in 46 B.C.

Do not expect to feel so free on land.   (‘Letter to Pearce Hutchinson’)

Cotter writes of Sweeney, “[his] tendency to write outside the main Irish poetic tradition and the Northern Irish ‘well-made poem’ style (whose reactionary hegemony has practically disintegrated in the last decade in any case) has often led to his absence from canonical anthologies at home, but all his other qualities have made him a popular choice for translation.” Matthew Sweeney’s entries include audio files so you can listen to him reading, and there is a video clip of ‘The Return’ (see Clip of the Month).

New works from Georgia can be heard too. Three poets who performed at last year’s Poetry International Festival are now finally online. Here’s a passage from ‘Microscope’ by Maya Sarishvili:

What melancholy. What spell-casting.
Silent film seen under the microscope.
It’s as though
God calls up something for your eyes
But still won’t tell you the main thing.

I also recommend her husband, Shota Iatashvili’s ‘Ode to Clothes’ and Rati Amaghlobeli’s untranslatable, virtuouso ‘Sequence’ – listen to the audio file rather than reading the translation. Georgian poetry kicks ass.

The Dutch section previews works by  Maria Barnas who will perform at the forthcoming festival in June. ‘Just To Make Sure’ which references the 7/7 London bombings, is fantastic on the City theme. If you have any thoughts on urbanisation and poetry and you’d like to contribute to the City/Country discussion, please visit the PIW forum on Facebook.