Cesar Vallejo lived between 1892-1938. He was born in Peru but died in France, not on a Thursday as in this poem presaging his own end, but on a Good Friday, I believe. His grandfathers in the Andes where he was born were both Spanish priests, and his grandmothers, Indigenous women. This early experience of…
Category: Art
Into the Throat of Summer
I took the name of this blog post from Jenny Xie’s (USA) “Chinatown Diptych”, one of her travel poems set in a summer in New York’s Chinatown. And allthough set in summer, many of these poems are melancholy, rather than frothy Hallmark tidings. I decided to share some poems of a rather random selection of…
Let’s at least, leave Flowers! Let’s at least, leave, Songs!
It’s been more than a year since I have been away from this blog and writing, generally. Words seem rusty and disused, and the world outside has twisted and contorted itself in ever more lexicons of cruelty.Humanity has been turned into soundbytes and fleeting visual catastrophes that seem to lead to no impact with regards…
Learning to See: The Art of Oswaldo Guayasamin
I’ve been inspired lately by the paintings of Oswaldo Guayasamin. Although he is well-respected in Latin America, I rarely see the type of eulogizing that over him that is so common with Frida Kahlo, whose identity as a mature and political artist has been submerged in a depoliticized portraitist school of thought that is…
National Poetry Month with Chabuca Granda!
María Isabel Granda Larco (3 September 1920 – 8 March 1983), known as Chabuca Granda, was a Peruvian singer and composer. She was a trailblazer as a woman lyricist and composer, drawing on Peruvian Criollo music, as well as Afro-Peruvian rhythms, which were much devalued in high society of Lima at the time. It was…
Questions of War
Kaushalya Bannerji March 2022 getting us ready?for a flag that is a lielike all flags? getting us ready?for a war that is a lielike all wars? getting us ready?to lovethe executioner more than ourslves? getting us ready?to watch agape and twisted,inside knowing there issome other way Questiones de Guerra, Kaushalya Bannerji, marzo 2022 preparándonos? por…
World Poetry Day! Songs in Bleak Times
Speak out!, Faiz Ahmad Faiz, (1911-1984) Pakistantranslated byMustansir Dalvi Speak out!Your words are free.Speak up!Your tongue is still your own.Your body remains yoursramrod, erect.Speak out!Your life is still your own. Look!How in your smithy’s forgeflames soar;iron glows red.How the lockshave opened yawsand every chain,unlinked, now spreads. The short time left to youis enough. Speak up,before…
Rich Man’s War, Poor Man’s Blood: Poetry Against War
I didn’t think that yet another outbreak of war would be the only response in a world reeling from the impact of pre-existing wars and the covid19 pandemic. But here we are, in a bizarre lexicon of words and media where everything seems stripped of meaning and context, like a tsunami of global anomie. And because…
All of Us or None! A Belated Return to the Virtual World
It’s been ages since I have posted on the blog. Pandemic fatigue and the onset of winter and lock-downs have exacerbated SADness and made writing a difficult chore. While I have been doing some drawing, I haven’t mustered up the focus to write. This blog, pays homage to the work of two poets, February birthday…
The Close and Holy Darkness! Winter Solstice and the Song of Poetry: A Moment with Dylan Thomas
Every few years around this time, I read or see or hear a version of Dylan Thomas’ A Child’s Christmas in Wales. Such a beautiful prose poem where the words sing like the wind and the sea herself. This year, I drew to a reading of the piece, as I found the very LP record…
Season of Verses
I haven’t been on the blog for quite a while. 2021 is proving to be a year of elusive concentration, spiralling exhaustion, sadness, and intense physical pain. I have re-acquainted myself with some drawing, although I have been reading about the state of the world and am often disturbed by what I see our little…
The Real People
I see the chaos being fomented in Cuba, Mexico, Peru, Chile, Colombia… All places where I have had the fortune to travel and the misfortune to read the news of those countries forever after… They are locked in my heart like the humble pleasures of nostalgia for friends in my country of origin. Yet health…
Our Eyes See the Blood on the Red of Your Flag
I’ve slowed down on my blog due to health and other very important circumstances. But I have not stopped… I have been, like so many of us in Canada, overwhelmed by the physical forensic evidence of a genocide so recent that it is actually on-going. Kamloops Residential School, Cowessess First Nation Marieval Residential School, and…
Intersecting Pride and Resistance
Happy Pride Month! It’s been strange to be as fragmented as the LGBT community has been even before covid19. But lack of face to face contact has in particular been hard for LGBT people, especially young people who may be living with homo/transphobic or disapproving family members. So it’s a month to honour our many…
Our Uncomfortable Dread: From George Floyd to Henry Dumas
It’s been 6 weeks since I have been on the blog. I have been watching the state of the world with eyes that want to look away, but can’t. It seems we are on a collision course with hopelessness and destruction, vaccine or no vaccine. Human rights are being violated and lives taken with impunity,…
Ear to the Ground 