Today’s post is a poem I wrote after taking stock of the current situation; the inhuman destruction of Gaza and Lebanon, the destabilization of the region and indeed the world, the deadly embargo on Cuba, not even lifted for humanitarian purposes as the island is battered by blackouts, hurricanes and earthquakes, the de facto U.S….
Category: translation
Going Up the Mountain!
Ya Taleen, performed by Dana Salah An old song from the Galilee, it’s believed that Palestinian women used to sing it as they visited their loved ones in prison. Through the seemingly confusing lyrics, the women would convey subversive messages, perhaps informing their loved ones that they would soon be liberated by freedom fighters. This…
Poetry for the Peeps! Gloria Fuertes
Gloria Fuertes, Spain, 1917- 1998 (English Translations, Kaushalya Bannerji, 2023) Gloria Fuertes, says Wikipedia, was a Spanish poet, author of children’s literature, and regular participant in children’s television shows. She was part of the post-war literary movement of postismo, and a member of the Generation of ’50. Her work focused on gender equality, pacifism, and environmentalism. HAGO VERSOS, SENORES! Hago versos señores, hago…
Poets and Artists Against Occupation
Again I share the words and art of Palestinians. In this upside down world where to call an end to slaughter is to be silenced! More eloquently than I, the poets and visual artists I have been sharing, lay out the daily costs of expulsion, occupation and hope for liberation. “Don’t stop talking about Palestine”,…
Poetry for the Peeps! Palestine in Poetry
Watching the invisibilizing collusion of mass media and the Israeli state vis a vis the media blockade on Gaza shows us not only the weaponizing of the internet but of everything necessary for the maintenance of life. Add to that, the genocidal bombing under the cover of absent eyes. Peoples around the globe have called…
Poetry for the Peeps! Mahmoud Darwish
I’ve been aghast at the news of what is amounting to ethnic cleansing in Gaza and the repetition of the Catastrophe of 1948. I am saddened and enraged by the absence of a real international outcry. We truly live in a inhumane world. Some antidote to the despair I have been feeling is found in…
Poetry for the Peeps! More Dalton!
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…
Poetry for the Peeps! Cesar Vallejo
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…
Children’s Books and my Father: A Remembrance
Culture and memory share a root, like branches of the same plant. That root is us, human beings, in our most creative and unself-conscious renditions. Once again, after the whirlwind of systemic violence and structural upheaval engineered through the COVID19 pandemic response, the time has come to honour the memory of those we love who…
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…
To the Land of the Maroons! Commemorating Georgina Herrera
Dear all, it is with a heavy heart that I am letting you know Georgina Herrera has passed on yesterday. She was an inspiring and much beloved poet whose glittering sparseness was a counterpoint to the Spanish classical flowery formalism of older Cuban writers. Her personal story centers Afro-Cubanhood as the location, from where, and…
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…
Poetry for the Peeps! Georgina Herrera
I’ve been a bit slow on the translation front. I’ve been working on a selection of poems from Cuba’s Georgina Herrera. This writer really captivated my interest when I was studying in Cuba for my doctoral research. Her slim paperback volumes were on display at UNEAC in the Vedado and my favourite poetry bookstore in…
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…
Ear to the Ground 