Article
Editorial: December 2005
January 18, 2006
New Italian poet {id="3540" title="Andrea Raos"} is also one of the most important scholars and translators of Japanese literature in Italy. His delicately imagistic poems form quiet meditations on memory and loss:
India on the other hand brings multitudes and city noise: no less than six prominent young poets writing in Marathi, accompanied by a thorough essay explaining the background to this particular area of Indian poetry. Their voices are at times provocative, evoking a globalised, highly contemporary world that, in spite of the Mumbai references to logos, ads, brand names, billboards or television shows, is completely recognisable to the Western city dweller. Another contemporary cosmopolitan perspective is provided by Boston-based Gujarati poet, theatre director and journalist {id="2715" title="Chandrakant Shah"}. His work, here taken from the collection Blue Jeans, is funny, chatty and poignant. As our editor Arundhathi Subramaniam writes: “This is denim poetry: informal, conversational, demotic, ready-to-wear.”
Equally versatile is senior poet {id="2718" title="Gieve Patel"}, who writes in English. A doctor, playwright, translator and painter as well as a poet, his output has been small but influential over the years. The vulnerability of the human body and its mortality, social inequality, violence and pain, are some of the motives running through his oeuvre. Yet especially in his later work, there is always a sense of the possibility of transcendence (“God or/ something like that/ shot/ through each part of you,/ down/ to your/ small fingernail, well into/ pits and wells/ you /did not know of”), for, as he knows,
And with that, three years and one month exactly after the launch of PIW, it has become time for me to move to pastures new. In those three years and one month, we have published twenty country domains, hundreds of new poets and rather too many poems to count. It has been a pleasure for me to watch this site grow into the substantial monthly magazine that it is now. In no small measure, this is thanks to the often unpaid efforts of our country editors world-wide, who, sometimes under very difficult circumstances, are working to keep the magazine going. Together with our indispensable webmaster, Marloes van Luijk, and consecutive managers Arnolda Jagersma and Madea Le Noble, these editors have ensured that what seemed a ridiculously idealistic project has become a reality. As I hand over the post of central editor to Michele Hutchison, I hope that you will continue to follow this magazine as closely as I intend to do, and with the same enjoyment.
Poetry in the fast lane is what you’ll find in this issue of PIW. “My poetry emerges from long drives, speeding tickets, golf lessons, river rafting, gambling on football in Las Vegas and standing endlessly on the sidewalks of Manhattan. I write while driving. The faster I drive, the better I write,” says Boston-based Gujarati poet Chandrakant Shah. You’ll also find six young new urban Marathi voices, and an Italian poet writing on Japan while living in Paris. Oh, and there’s a brand new country domain.
With Belgium and the United Kingdom already having joined last month, and Japan scheduled for January, PIW proudly announces the launch of yet another country domain on PIW: Ireland. Traditionally famed for its poets and bards, Ireland is such an important country in world literature that its absence on PIW has been something of an embarrassment to us. Fortunately, that has now been remedied with the help of our Irish partner, the Munster Literature Centre. This first issue brings you five previously unpublished poems by {id="3052" title="Paula Meehan"}, and work from Irish language poet, playwright and novelist {id="3051" title="Liam Ó Muirthile"}. Ó Muirthile is associated with the Innti generation of poets that brought the contemporary city and its influences – counterculture, Bob Dylan, jazz – to the traditionally rural poetry in the Irish language.New Italian poet {id="3540" title="Andrea Raos"} is also one of the most important scholars and translators of Japanese literature in Italy. His delicately imagistic poems form quiet meditations on memory and loss:
three crows. take a fluttering
bath in the soaked leaves.
farther off who knows how many sparrows.
India on the other hand brings multitudes and city noise: no less than six prominent young poets writing in Marathi, accompanied by a thorough essay explaining the background to this particular area of Indian poetry. Their voices are at times provocative, evoking a globalised, highly contemporary world that, in spite of the Mumbai references to logos, ads, brand names, billboards or television shows, is completely recognisable to the Western city dweller. Another contemporary cosmopolitan perspective is provided by Boston-based Gujarati poet, theatre director and journalist {id="2715" title="Chandrakant Shah"}. His work, here taken from the collection Blue Jeans, is funny, chatty and poignant. As our editor Arundhathi Subramaniam writes: “This is denim poetry: informal, conversational, demotic, ready-to-wear.”
Equally versatile is senior poet {id="2718" title="Gieve Patel"}, who writes in English. A doctor, playwright, translator and painter as well as a poet, his output has been small but influential over the years. The vulnerability of the human body and its mortality, social inequality, violence and pain, are some of the motives running through his oeuvre. Yet especially in his later work, there is always a sense of the possibility of transcendence (“God or/ something like that/ shot/ through each part of you,/ down/ to your/ small fingernail, well into/ pits and wells/ you /did not know of”), for, as he knows,
It makes sense not
to have the body
seamless,
hermetically sealed, a
non-orificial
box of incorruptibles.
Better shot through and through!
Interpenetrated
– with the world. (…)
And with that, three years and one month exactly after the launch of PIW, it has become time for me to move to pastures new. In those three years and one month, we have published twenty country domains, hundreds of new poets and rather too many poems to count. It has been a pleasure for me to watch this site grow into the substantial monthly magazine that it is now. In no small measure, this is thanks to the often unpaid efforts of our country editors world-wide, who, sometimes under very difficult circumstances, are working to keep the magazine going. Together with our indispensable webmaster, Marloes van Luijk, and consecutive managers Arnolda Jagersma and Madea Le Noble, these editors have ensured that what seemed a ridiculously idealistic project has become a reality. As I hand over the post of central editor to Michele Hutchison, I hope that you will continue to follow this magazine as closely as I intend to do, and with the same enjoyment.
© Corine Vloet
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