Some more Roque Dalton for us to enjoy. I have shared his work in a previous post with a small biography from Wikipedia. His poetry was very important for Latin American writing and for revolutionary cultural producers from all over the world. His time was cut short by an assassination by his ex-comrades and El…
Category: Social Justice
Poetry for the Peeps! Roque Dalton
It’s a hot September day. Unseasonably so. Weather extremes are being felt more and more frequently, affecting millions and millions around the globe. Stewardship of the land and waters that sustain us has fallen by the wayside. Hunger is a global disgrace. And even poets– not economists or think- tanks, were able to pin-point the…
Nonsense Verse for this Metaverse!
I’ve been under the weather and tried reading some silly stuff to cheer myself up! Here I share Lewis Carroll’s poem, one of so many worthy of both nonsense and great sense! Little Birds is from Sylvie and Bruno, a rather peculiar and rambling story, but dotted with some good poems! Enjoy… Little Birds are…
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…
Now That I am a God…
On April 28th, one of Cuba’s outstanding women poets, among many, Fina Garcia Marruz, celebrated her 99th birthday. This writer was part of the cultural and literary circle of the Origenes magazine in the pre-revolutionary period and remained committed to the spirit and ideals of Jose Marti, making her home in Cuba after the 1959…
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…
Who’s Your Troubadour? Fifty Years of Chico Buarque
More than fifty years ago, a young singer songwriter burst on to the exciting and boundary breaking music scene in Brazil, a country grappling with the legacy of cruelty, colonization, migration, and above all, enslavement. Burgeoning movements for racial and regional equality, along with student and feminist movements, workers, and small peasantry, found themselves clamouring for…
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…
Ear to the Ground 