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…
Category: poetry
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…
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,…
Poetry for the Peeps! Adam Zagajewski
I’ve been away from the blog for nearly a month this time. I’ve been grappling with flares of chronic health issues and also been feeling somewhat disheartened by the announcement of a surge of covid-19 patients where I live, the increasing shuttering of small businesses, the business as usual approach of capitalist warlords, the rise…
Poetry in a Thousand Tongues! International Mother Language Day
It is International Mother Tongue Day, today, the 21st of February. It’s an important day to celebrate because imperial monopolies of language (English, Spanish, Portuguese, French) have erased so many forms of communication and Indigenous and languages. Only this month, the Mexican government recognized 68 Indigenous languages as national languages alongside Spanish. This took over…
Poetry for the Peeps! Georgina Herrera, Cuba
This is a continuation of my previous blogs in which I present my translations of the AfroCuban poet Georgina Herrera. I find her an amazing poet whose economy of language and simple words belies the deep and complex essence of her feelings and poetry. She balances a righteous anger with a hope for wholeness, with…
Of Feral Cats and Cockroaches!
This week, I’ve been trying to get through the winter blues and the covid blahs by reading some humour. Over a hundred years ago, journalist and humorist Don Marquis created some of funniest free verse around. Wikipedia tells us: Marquis’s best-known creation was Archy, a fictional cockroach (developed as a character during 1916) who had been a free-verse poet…
Poetry for the Peeps! AfroCuban Poetry in Translation
The following three poems are by the contemporary Afro-Cuban poet and scriptwriter, Georgina Herrera, who has graciously given permission to share and translate her work . Author of numerous collections of poetry and radio and television scripts. I have done the English translations you see below. I’ve included a biography from Wikipedia, to give you…
Ear to the Ground 