Uniting the World Through Poetry:The feast of words consumed: intro for the African poetry edition, vol. 2, no. 4

THE FEAST OF WORDS CONSUMED vol. 2, #4, 1993
The universe is made of stories, not atoms.
        —Muriel Rukeyser

It is no longer news that Africa suffers from go-political, ecological, and cultural neglect. Or that of UNESCO's 15 top endangered World Heritage sites with "outstanding universal value to mankind," six are located in Africa. This continent whose writers are imprisoned for acts of terrorism, in South African poet Breyten Breytenbach's terms, is a country "doomed to extinction…gobbled up by the sands of silence—and for the second time. The first time there was the black silence of shame about slavery, now it is the indifferent silence of an unavowed real-politik." He writes: "The feast of words has been consumed/ No one is guilty of innocence." But the poems offered here embody hope & a steadfast faith in Africa's future.

It is said that exiles live in one country while dreaming of another. Africa, a country of families, ironically, is also a borderless continent of exiles where those of the Diaspora write longingly of home. Breytenbach suffers from "an incurable nostalgia..." where "ancient flames infest the unconscious... images scald the eyelids." Like Breytenbach who was nine-years imprisoned, poets whose work is featured here were/are also political prisoners: Abellatif Laâbi of Morocco, Jack Mapanje of Malawi, and Muhammed Afifi Matar of Egypt, to name a few.

Mapanje asks us, "Is it worth assembling another voice?" Paul Dakeyo of Cameroon replies, "Let my breath/ rise from the deepest of dark carth/ upright words/ with only clear vocals/ of my rebellious voice." Here, the griots, the poets are calling us to action—for political commitment towards alleviating Africa's suffering. The Bantu saying, "the strength of the crocodile is water," reverberates in the depth and breadth of the voices presented here.

The noted Nigerian poct Niyi Osundare, who received the 1986 Commonwealth Poetry Prize, wrote in a recent issue of West Africa magazine: " ... there is something essentially universal about the genius of human creativity, no matter what its provenance. No part of the world has a right to lay a monopolistic claim to that genius... Africa needs to discover her own name without making other continents anonymous; she needs to find her center." Kofi Anyidoho of Ghana writes that the legacy of literature is the ability to move the human mind and spirit; a visionary world in which human creativity can overcome the persistent despair blocked by the savageries of life. Tayu Olafioye of Nigeria said, "A mother gives conscience to her child; poetry is the air with which we eat ideas." 

One can ask the age-old questions; for whom do we write, and where is the poem directed? The poet is the eye of time, the historian, the teacher, Olafioye asserts: "African poetry today... is socially conscious, using the pen as a hoe that exhumes..: and exposes... Poetry is the custodian of justice and social conscience in the face of this decadence." He asks, "What is it occupied with now? What new visions, if any, and ideologies might it have experienced lately? Each age occupies its poctry with particular regional or universal interests germane to its thinking but such a preoccupation is not exclusive..." 

Publishing is another problem: after receiving the 1990 Commonwealth Prize, Syl Cheney-Coker bemoaned the fact that in Sierra Leone, “There is no writing industry…manuscripts gather dust in cupboards." He stated Africa's governients "don't give a damn about literature or any aspects of culture.... We live in a country where a capital city hasn't a single decent bookshop or publishing house…We've joined the league of the most despicable countries because of the politics we've had in this country."

The task of gathering the poems for this anthology of African poetry was like reaching for the moon in order to plough the reflections of stars. We are grateful to all the poets who scattered their words through the universe to alight here in the temporary abode of these pages. Tanure Ojaide who single-handedly contacted many of the poets whose work appears in the Mother Earth & African Poetry issues, writes "I have tried to reach the women poets I know. The women writers tend to complain that they are overlooked or neglected." According to Chency-Coker, "The problem of female representation in African poetry is one that feminists would find interesting." In the 1990 Heinemann Book of African Poetry, (ed., Adewale Maja Pearce), out of a total of 22 poets, only three were women!

"I don't think the editor was biased in having so few women in a major anthology. Except for South Africa, few women poets are being published. Unfortunately this situation hasn't changed in the last 30 years." We delayed publication for late-arriving poems in order to include a wider representation of African women poets.

We are especially indebted to Frank Chipasula of Malawi who is the editor of the fine anthology, When My Brothers Come Home: Poems from Central and South Africa. Frank and Stella Chipasula, who are currently editing the first ever anthology of African women poets, and their publisher Heinemann, have graciously agreed to share some of the new poems with us. Mother Tongues: the Heinemann Book of African Women Poets, will be released May 1995. Andrée Chelid writes: "Stir up that word Which does not turn away from men/ But shapes itself towards them." 

Decades ahcad of schedule, the world's population has surpassed the 50-billion mark—a line of people stacked head-over-heels to the moon and back nine times. If the words of these poems were people, would there be enough to reach to the moon? Or beyond! Poems, the moon's children, calling us to arns. Once I dreamed I walked barefoot on African earth. Geographically and culturally diverse Africa, the cradle of civilization, torn and plundered by colonialism, war, and strife, still manages to kep the oral tradition of poetry central to every private and public function of life. May this feast of words consume us.

Maureen Hurley, Co-Editor
Uniting the World Through Poetry

BIBLIOGRAPHY

L' Are Musiol, Tchikaya U Tam'si, Congo Republic Al-Ahran Weekley, Egypt 1991
Al-Kamel, Union of Palestine Writers, 1984
Bird Black South African Poetry
Black & White in Love, Mbella Sonne Dipoko, Heinemann 1982
Of Chameleons & Gods, Jock Mopanje, Helnemann
Dreamseeker on a Divining Chain, Okinba Launko, Kraft Books, Nigeria 1992
The Eye of the Earth, Niyi Osundare, Heinemann, Nigeria 1986
Familiar Ground, I. de Cox, Raven Press, South Africa

The Graveyard also has Teeth, Syl Cheney-Coker, Sierra Leone

Poetry Unites the World by Dr. Andrei Bantaş

from
THE REVIEW OF FOREIGN REVIEWS, ROMANIA LITERATURA
5-21 Dec. 1993,
POETRY UNITES THE WORLD
by Dr. Andrei Bantaş

BUCHAREST—From the Pacific Coast, California, there comes to us a cultural surprise and exceptional reading: a poetry magazine—or rather a tabloid review, like our weeklies. It is not a mere publication meant to convey to readers the latest production of American poets (as many other poetry reviews do) but an entirely uncommon one: a sort of Secolul XX (the 20th century) of the Romanians, yet devoted to poetry alone, in order to spread publications which the public has few opportunities to know.

The first issue of Uniting the World Through Poetry (UWP) is devoted to Soviet Poetry Since Glasnost, a 24-page tabloid, with a similar format to our Romania Literatura, is full of translations from Arabov, Slepynin, Lubenski, Soloviov, Kulle and many others—verses written in the last six or seven years.

With the decoration of the journals—or perhaps it’s pop-art—with press clippings, photos, collages, and vignettes, an entire page is devoted to a poem of Oleg Slepynin’s, printed in the shape of a cross, with the title buried in the center: SYNCHRONIC.

Some general data, with a short excursion into history, and with substantial topicalization, are offered in the essay entitled, “A Poet in Russia is more than a Poet” by the Ukrainian poet of Armenian descent, Oleg Atbashian (who, with UWP editor, Maureen Hurley, did most of the translations).

The general presentation of the themes and aims of the review is made by the two UWP editors, Herman Berlandt and Maureen Hurley. Berlandt is chairman of the National Poetry Association, and editor of Poetry: USA, a quarterly, and after more than 30 lectures on this very theme of uniting the world through poetry, he decided to publish these international anthologies with Maureen Hurley (an educator, graphic designer, photographer, and writer, with poems translated into Spanish and Russian.

She is an initiator of an international conference of writers for the 30th anniversary of California Poets in the Schools (CPITS), tenatively scheduled in San Francisco, in October 1994. An earlier CPITS conference, (the 25th) was joined by more than 150 poets from the U.S. and Mexico.)

The second issue of the review is entitled Mother Earth, with the same internationalist motto as the subtitle “Let the voice of the poet be heard throughout the world”. These 24 pages bring together (in translation, or in the English original) the voices of poets from Bulgaria, China, Poland, Hungary, Holland, Macedonia, India, Pakistan, Italy, Israel, Greece, Great Britain, Argentina, Japan, Korea, South Africa, Zimbabwe, Nigeria, Estonia, Lithuania, Slovenia, Serbia, Croatia, Russia, and—surprise—Romania: Geo Dumitrescu (translated by the late Dan Dutescu with post-translation by Maureen Hurley) and Ana Blandiana (translated by Andrea Deletant and Brenda Walker, as well as by Andrei Bantaş, also with Maureen Hurley). They are accompanied by fine engravings by Victor Brauner and a Romanian stamp.

In the third issue—devoted to East European poetry, Romanian poetry (including Valeriu Matei of Moldova) is represented in over three pages by the same Geo Dumitrescu and Ana Blandiana as well as Nichita Stanescu, Maria Banus, Nina Cassian, Daniela Crasnaru, Carolina Ilica, and Mircea Dinescu.

The translators are the same, with the addition of poet Fleur Adcock, the version being reproduced mainly from Silent Voices: an Anthology of Contemporary Romanian Women Poets, published by Brenda Walker and Andrea Deletant in Britain about 5 years ago (when they also published Mircea Dinescu’s Exile on a Peppercorn—their persons and books were proscribed in Romania—but well-received in Bulgaria!)

Highly valuing these new tokens of appreciation offered by foreign publishers and translators of Romanian poetry (I happen to know of the financial efforts made by these two English women and the editors of UWP), I am taking the liberty of asking two rhetorical questions: What are we doing for ourselves and for our poets, for our literature, as a whole?

Suppose I rounded off my anthology of 20th century poets (Like Diamonds in Coal, Asleep, Minerva Publishers, 1985) with poems formerly banned by censorship as well as with those of Romanian poets abroad, who would publish it? (today, tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow. . . .?





Note Bene: Dr. Andrei Bantaş, with whom I had the pleasure of corresponding, in order to collect Eastern European Poetry, was the compiler of the Romanian dictionary, an eminent translator and a Professor of English Literature at the University of Bucharest, Romania. I had no idea of his fame as I embarked blindly on this translating adventure. Those Romanian stamps we used in the collages were Andrei's. —Maureen Hurley

Uniting the World through Poetry journal, writing to all the poets

25 July, 1993: another Uniting the World through Poetry editing, and paste-up marathon in Bolinas, preparing letters to the poets for the two upcoming UWP issues, Middle East and Eastern Europe.

I’m sending out a raft of letters to world-famous poets, we are now on first name terms with most of them.

And on the homefront, I can’t seem to get any recognition for my own work. This is why I am putting my life’s blood into this poetry venture. Nature abhors a vacuum. This discouragement I have faced is becoming chronic. I know my work strong, but it seems no one else thinks so.

Another rejection letter from the California Arts Council. I did not get the writers fellowship for a mere $2000. Only 20 out of 182 entries were funded and I’ve got to wait another four years for the next round? This is the shits.

The Korean War poems anthology will be delayed again as there is not enough work. Green Fuse is holding hostage three of my poems hostage for final round. Someone gave them poems to give to me from Yugoslavia. Word is out, and poems arrive from all over the world. 

I was just writing to Tomaž Šalamun, whom I had met at Poetry International, lamenting that I wasn’t even sure if my letter would reach him, wondering if there was even mail delivery as he’s living in war-torn Serbia. What of the other poets—are they even still alive? So many poets living in exile these days.

I read some poems from David Charlton, wondering where he was living when he was there, in Dubrovnik? I remember the first time I was in Belgrade, it was a sultry August night, and we ate ice cream with dark cherries in syrup. The best I have ever tasted. On my return trip, my luggage liked Belgrade so much it stayed a couple of months before returning home to me.

The last time I was in Belgrade I bought an upcycled dress made from linen hand towels and the cuffs of fancy embroidered bedsheets (or what I planned to use as a wedding dress). Once I was hopeful about Oleg… Where did the love disappear to? Now burial shrouds are considered a luxury item in a war-ravaged country. My Croatian dictionary is buried under a pile of now obsolete books on Russia. Sigh.

I should keep track of my myriad correspondences with these world-famous poets: Tomaž Šalamun, Dr. Miroslav Holub, Breyten Breytenbach, Ana Blandiana, Boris Xristov, Bella Akhmadulina—How old is she now? Blaga Dimitrova, Sylvia Fischerová, Gulya Kodalini (sp?), Chenjerai Hove, Niyi Osundare, Hawad, and the contributing American poets: Maya Angelou, Gary Snyder, Robert Bly, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Diane Wakowski, Diane diPrima, Maxine Kumin—to just name a few. 

I am keeping the dour, stone-faced postmaster at the Bolinas post office busy, if not entertained. Such exotic addresses. You’d think he’d at least crack a smile once and a while. I walk back the long way to Herman’s place on the Mesa just to clear my aching head.

So far, we have 218 poems in both issues. Plus we also sent letters to every PEN organization in Africa and letters to all our Rotterdam contacts. There are so many unfinished bits and pieces to do before I do a mass mailing.

I’ve got working addresses for a third of the poets, and we still have to send copies out to the translators (many of the poems need additional polishing from English to English). If I can get their addresses that is, and then, send out thank you letters by the bushel. Sometimes I dream I am writing letters in my sleep.

• Letter to Niyi Osundare
• Letters to/from Charles Simic 

UWP journal: poetry files from Vins arrive

13 July. Today I slept late. I’ve been depressed lately, especially yesterday as I dreamed I was still in Amsterdam, and Vins was sitting on the floor, I could see there was a disaster about to happen.

And he said, go home. Sort of like how you tell a dog to go home, the emphasis was on the word go. Cold and deep was his voice, but it wasn’t directed at me. Sure, there was trouble, yes. He was part of it. But he was also shielding me from it. I had no business becoming involved with him. He was telling me to go home out of love, not out of anger or hatred. To protect me from something, I know not what. His own darkness.

Yesterday I finished reading Dracula, it has a quality similar to that, protecting the women folk, especially Mina Leven, though she had a wondrous brain, “like a man’s,” someone said. What catastrophe was about to rain down on Vins’ head here?

I finished my letter to Jan Bogaerts, I’m sure it too is related to my depression. My immobility, my inability to work through the dilemma of both Jan and Vins, childhood friends not speaking to each other—and I was the fulcrum.

Vins says that he loves me, but he is not in love with me, and I know he can’t seem to live with someone. It’s too upsetting for him. Like me, he needs solitude. I leave, give him his space.

Saturday, a letter came with a copy of the poetry files that he had kept. We fought over the phone when I discovered that he went into the private files on my desk. He claimed it was an accident. But I am glad to get the Dutch to English translations. Some poems have gone through the sieve of three languages. Like Marta Manarini: Spanish to Dutch to English.

But it was a wonderful letter particularly adept in avoiding issues of the heart, shedding light on nothing other than I arrived at an unfortunate time. He took his crabbiness out on me.

With Vins, there is no equilibrium between work and people. He feels secure being with a community of teachers, scholars, and writers. I wonder if moving away from friends and lovers, to that of a colleague is the right direction? Then the yes. Our affair had run its course, but we were having trouble letting it go.

There was a very funny story about Vincent van Gogh, buying copiachu, a paint softener, and VO medicine. When Vincent asked if it could be mixed with turpentine, the shopkeeper replied, do you have to destroy your sorry ass even more?

Vincent wanted to give his colors more light and depth, and he used the thinner liberally. Even now his paints aren’t dry And probably never will be. The Potato Eaters and his windmill and trestle paintings are still wet. But the varnish over the top shrank, causing the paint to craze. In 1928 The Potato Eaters was given a new, backing and restorers hot-glued it onto a new canvas. The paint and varnish will remain forever wet.

At Schiphal, all the guards sport machine guns, in preparation for the Israeli Prime Minister’s arrival. Prime Minister Rabin, Dutch Prime Minister Lubin, and the Israeli Embassy are all out to greet the Prime Minister Rabin. Utter chaos.

Jan diagnosed Vins’ hennaed hair as a harbinger of midlife crisis. Maybe so, but it sure was fun slopping what looked like cow shit on each other’s heads, and then washing it out. All green and red.

Unfortunately the henna nested in my hair like a Rastafarian nightmare, and I had to resort to a comb and gobs of cream rinse to coax the last of the henna out. I like my hair hennaed as it’s much thicker and has a red sheen to it. It isn’t all that different from my natural color, but it covers the gray nicely.

Today’s mail brought a parcel from Vinz, half of his birthday roses, because he never bought me flowers, some chocolates, two love, notes, my modem cord, sweatpants, and a wooden Hans Brinker skate. Thawing treasures from the flea market.

UWP journal: Bolinas, Ana Baranova, Blaga Dimitrová

10 July: I awoke repeating the image: lakes and pools are the tongues of the river. I am dreaming of rivers, seeing my homeland from the air. I never finished writing about my flight home, flying over Shasta‘s cone, along the Trinity Alps and Longridge, over Snow Mountain and the Mendocino range, flying along the length of the Russian river, I could see places where I’ve swum in the river—the pool below, Healdsburg and Fitch Mountain. 

Then I actually recognizing the bend of river where home was located, then the mouth of the river. Jenner. Bodega. The Bodega Head hole where a nuclear plant was planned. Dear Rose Gaffney stopped PG&E. Now that’s power. We flew parallel to the San Andreas Fault, and it was a glorious site to see the land of home unfold. I recited the litany of the names of home: Olema, Bolinas, Point Reyes.

I spent July 5-9 at Bolinas, going through Herman’s chaos in order to make electronic the poetry files. It took me a full day of cleaning his house and another day of sorting through drawers to find all the UWP files and put them back in order. He misplaces everything. For how long this order will last, is anyone’s guess.

I answered poet letters, etc. I am a poetry secretary. If I am to do this job right, I’ve got to brace myself for Herman’s perpetual chaos. It may be more than I can take. We’ll see how long this arrangement lasts. As long as I’m paid as well. No way can I get paid for all my work. It’s the principle of the matter.

Making these regional poetry anthologies in tabloid format is utterly grueling work, but I am bitten by the power of editorship, an extraordinary way to make powerful contacts the world over. I’m hooked also, because I like the work, hearing all the voices. Ana Baranova, a poet I met at Poetry International in Rotterdam sent me some superb work. It left me breathless.

We’re constantly upgrading our files and contacts. So far, the anthologies we’ve published were all very well received; people seem to love what we are doing, saying, most of this is really good poetry. How did you get the work of so many famous writers? Luck of the draw, being at the right place at the right time. 

I showed our UWP newspapers to the refugee poets from Serbo-Croatia, and then found out that Blaga Dimitrová is the vice president of Bulgaria! Holy shit! I was in shock. Because as poets we were all equal in vision and passion.

Poetry International journal, CPITS networking

15 Tuesday. I am making more CPITS contacts (Poetry International Director Maartin Mooij invited me because I work with children.) Bert and Thea Schierbeek, Horacio Ferrar, Marjan Meijer (who is working on a kite project), and also Dimitri Prigov (I showed him a poem of his we published in Soviet Poetry Since Glasnost—he was so full of himself, I didn’t want to give him a copy). 

Roberto Juarroz and Bert took the CPITS flyers as did Marjan, so the news is getting out that way. Apparently those of us who teach children how to write poems are a rare breed. I gave Bert one of my Dutch chapbooks, he said he would introduce me to someone who also works in the schools tomorrow. I talked with my photographer friend Jan Bogaerts tonight and he said the Mongol poem was beautiful. I asked him how did he get a copy of that? And he said, a spy.

(PI archives.)

Poetry International journal, a spontaneous combustion of translation

14. June. The Monday evening Reading schedule included Roberto Juarroz, Anne Vetger, Gonzalo Mitlán, Leo Vroman… I missed Yehuda Amichai and Homero Aradjis, two poets I actually wanted to meet, but I wound up doing some spontaneous translations with two poets I met in the hospitality café. Sometimes you just have to go with the flow.

Since I wasn’t feeling up to snuff, I missed two events today, plus the beginning of the evening show. I’m not networking the way I should. I just don’t feel like chasing the stars for photos, to give them my poems, etc. it’s exhausting work, and I’m not up for it. (Not that I have anything to give—but poetry, in myriad tomgues, is the only true currency).

My poetry partner in crime, editor Herman Berlandt also never showed up for the evening event. So I was a little worried about him, but they assured me he was OK, and he was seen earlier today with a young man who must be Ton. 

A Dutch-Argentinian couple sitting at the table next to me and I spontaneously translated a Dutch poem someone left at the table. First he translated it into English and then Andrea helped with the Spanish, because his Spanish was about on par with mine. Still, it was fun to do. This is why I missed the Amichai and Aradjis reading. They won’t read again. I am bummed.  Somehow the process of translation helped to restore my nascent social skills. 

Roberto Juarroz’s work seems fine, but my mind took its own time shifting into Spanish. So I understood the words, but not the poetic sensibilities. I didn’t go to the Bal de Festival because I was feeling funky and that antisocial streak still prevails. Oh well. When it descends like a wet blanket, there’s not much I can do. Pre-party panic syndrome. Sign of a true introvert.

I met a woman from England who bought copy of Soviet Poetry Since Glasnost from me, a Helena Hinn. from England. I took down her address and she said she would send some poems nlater. It seems I am madly collecting poets addresses that the front and the back of my journal is beginning to read like a who’s who in poetry.

As it turns out, a poet I met, Victor Manuel Mendola not only knew John Oliver Simon in Mexico, but he has a copy of our chapbook, Falling to Sea Level. He asked if I was the woman of John. And I answered, no longer. We were not sure if we met at Elsa Crosses’ house in Mexico City. It certainly is possible. 

He’s done many translations of poets that I like including Valerio Magrelli, and Tomaž Reizwicž. I gave him one of our poetry tabloids on Saturday and he said that he’ll give me a book on Wednesday. Poetic reciprocity in action. God, how I love the insane babble of many audacious tongues.

(Revised for clarity—added some connective tissue, but mostly swapped paragraphs)

(PI archives.)

• Letter to Valerio Magrelli, Via Condotti, Roma