The Times (London)
June 16, 2012 Saturday
Edition 1; Ireland
‘Poets are the tramps of literature’
Simon Armitage tells Ben Hoyle about his ‘hopelessly ambitious’
Olympic poetry summit – and we meet five writers taking part
by Ben Hoyle
No one could accuse the organisers of Poetry Parnassus of lacking
ambition. The weeklong event at the Southbank Centre complex later
this month promises to be the largest global gathering of bards.
Almost 150 poets, spoken-word artists, singers, rappers and
storytellers will perform in at least 50 languages and dialects,
including Wolof, Amharic, Haitian Creole, Maori and Kazakh, with a
further 150 contributing work to the festival.
At the launch event in April, Jude Kelly, the artistic director of
Southbank Centre, called it “a monumental and unique happening which
will make world history”. Even Simon Armitage, Southbank’s deadpan
poet-in-residence and the curator of the festival, says that he “can’t
think of anything bigger and better than this”. They’ve come a long
way together, Kelly says, from the “very significant cup of tea” they
shared a couple of years ago, when Armitage first brought it up. “It’s
always been a hopelessly ambitious idea,” he says. “It’s a kind of
fantasy that it’s actually happening.”
During the last week of June there will be more than 100 free events
among the recitations, activities, workshops and spontaneous
happenings and, you suspect, at least a few fierce literary arguments.
The Poetry Parnassus anthology of 204 poets’ work promises to be an
extraordinary artefact, and for the Rain of Poems on June 26, 10,000
poems by 300 poets will be dropped from a helicopter over Jubilee
Gardens as the sun sets. Off limits to the public, but visible through
a glass wall (“you can come and watch the poets eating!” says
Armitage), will be an Olympic village for poets, built under the
Southbank Centre, featuring a library for all the books they will
bring and a bar (“let’s get our priorities right”).
Among confirmed performers are two Nobel prizewinners, Seamus Heaney,
representing Ireland, and Wole Soyinka from Nigeria, as well as a
former Miss Beirut, a former Sandinista revolutionary, a Senegalese
rapper and Jang Jin-Seong, the former court poet to Kim Jong Il, who
escaped into China across the Tumen River with 70 of his poems
strapped to his chest in 2004.
Putting the line-up together has been like programming a music
festival, Armitage says. “You are looking for a rich variety of voices
and traditions. You want your headline acts and new voices, and a
spread of different kinds of genres. You want plurality and you want
surprise.” He admits that he didn’t know “the vast majority” of the
poets, but says that they’ve all passed a quality test. “Fifteen years
ago, without the internet, this project would have been very difficult
to organise. That’s how we tracked these people down, watched them
giving readings, and read their work.”
He says poets are the “tramps of literature”, often living in the
shadow of other writers but blessed with a greater freedom. “That’s
the beauty of what we do. It is, on paper, very simple: it’s just a
person reading or a person speaking. It makes it an incredibly
democratic art form. I can’t imagine that there could be a culture
without poetry. Whether it’s written or spoken word or singing, there
will always be something you can point to and say: that is poetic.
There’s that old cliché that poetry is what gets lost in translation,
and all that’s true, but if there weren’t any mixing of traditions
then poetry would be stale and hermetic. There would be no Chaucer,
for example, if there weren’t a Decameron – or there might be Chaucer,
but it would be very different.”
Having said that, he does not think that the poetry world “feels like
a global community”He says: “Poetry tends to do its best work within
its own language because it is compressed, pressurised and intense
language.So the movements that it makes and the signals that it gives
are often nodding and winking within that language system. The more
mature and sophisticated a language becomes, the more subtle those
nods and winks become.”
What, then, would constitute a successful festival for him?
“Enjoyment, that the poets get something out of it, either new ideas
or new relationships or new readers, and that the same number of
people are there at the end as at the beginning. I think that would be
a triumph.”
The Poetry Parnassus, Southbank Centre, London SE1, 08448 750073, June
26 to July 1. All poems will be published in The World Record
(Bloodaxe, June 26) Cambodia Kosal Khiev, 32, a poet and tattoo
artist, was born in a Thai refugee camp in the aftermath of the Khmer
Rouge genocide. He and his family then fled to the US. At the age of
16, Khiev was involved in a gang shoot-out and charged with attempted
murder. He discovered spoken word poetry from a Vietnam War veteran
while serving 14 years in prison. In 2011, the US Government deported
him to Cambodia – a country he’d never been to – where he lives,
performs and teaches.
“Poetry saved my life. In prison I spent a year and a half in solitary
confinement. That place almost broke me but, about eight months in, I
woke from a nightmare and I went to the sink and thought: Is this it?
Is this all that your life’s going to be? I made a conscious decision.
I started writing and reading. I got out of the hole. I went to
maximum security level four and ran into some poets who had a poetry
class every Wednesday. I felt I had found home. I was scared beyond
belief about coming to Cambodia but it’s opened its arms to me.
There’s maybe three poets here but I’m trying to start something. I
want to be part of Cambodia rebuilding herself.”
Why I Write by Kosal Khiev An excerpt… i write to the few hoping i
get trickled down to the masses i wanna spark the world and get reborn
in its ashes i wanna unfog their glasses and make em see the sons and
daughters they abandoned to be bastards know that we grow like
molasses …
Uganda
Nicholas Makoha
Makoha, 38, is a writer from Uganda, whose family fled Idi Amin. He
lives in London and has a one-man show, My Father and Other
Superheroes, describing how pop culture took the place of his absent
father in his youth. He directs the Youth Poetry Network, providing
workshops to businesses and schools.
“I’ve been writing poetry from the age of about six. When I was eight
I tried to write a book of poems. I just assumed everyone did it. When
you live in another one’s country there’s two languages inside you all
the time: the part of you that’s always reflecting back to this place
that you are no longer part of that you call home and then the part of
you that’s always trying to fit in to somewhere else even though you
never quite embrace it. In my rhythm [of writing], things that I think
are really original turn out to be things that a lot of Ugandan poets
are doing already, so I think poetry is my best way back to my Ugandan
roots. I have lived in Kenya and Saudi Arabia, and there’s a part of
me that always feels like my life is in a suitcase. What I’ve learnt
is that it’s more comfortable to embrace myself as a citizen of the
world. I remember Wole Soyinka did a lecture about how to write from
the origins of what you know, and that’s not specific to place.
There’s a part of me that wants to set up roots. It’s good to have a
place to belong and for now, it’s London. London accepts a lot of
difference. So many communities weave themselves into the fabric in a
comfortable way.”
Who do they Say I Am? by Nicholas Makoha They say that I am Three
words short of a proverb.
Two beliefs less than a religion.
One god less to believe in. They say that I am Three tribes short of a
people. One heart less of a couple Two breaths closer to death They
say that I am Three friends short of Judas. Two betrayals less of
Brutus. One wisdom short of Confucius. They say that I am Three sins
over temptation. Two generations behind emancipation. One prayer
beyond frustration. They say that I am Three tears short of a river.
Two waters deep of leaders. One hope less of a believer. They say that
I am Three chains left of a slave. Two victories short of the brave.
One coffin right of the grave.
Saudi Arabia Ashjan Al Hendi Dr Hendi is from Jeddah but has a
doctorate from the School of Oriental and African Studies, University
of London. She has published three volumes of poetry and a book of
literary criticism. She is an assistant professor in the Arabic
department at King Abdulaziz University, Jeddah.
“I talk about life as it is now: feelings, love, war, peace,
everything. Somehow it connects to the great tradition of poetry in
Arabic over hundreds of years, but I’m trying to find my own special
way of putting myself in my exact place and time. Poetry in Saudi
Arabia is very popular – new media is helping it to play a bigger role
in society. Facebook, Twitter and YouTube mean that everyone now can
interact with it and reach it. It used to be limited to poets who had
published books – now anyone can get their work heard.
“Women have established a unique place in Arab poetry. We have freedom
of expression. I have published three collections of poems and I have
always said everything I want to say in them. I don’t hide any
thoughts. Poetry is like a horse that runs and runs. It’s not easy to
catch, to control it. The Arab Spring has inspired a lot of poets
recently but it’s not new to talk about politics in Arabic poetry. It
has always happened. I hope that this is a great time for Arabic
poetry. Some people say that it is now the time of the novel. But I
don’t think so. Poetry is poetry. It’s the soul of any society.”
In Search of the Other by Ashjan Al Hendi Isabella She searches for
someone else every day; and finds me And I search for someone else;
but find her It is said: that East and West shall never meet but
Isabella and I Meet every day on our trip in search of others.
Isabella is a German girl who was a member of the organising committee
in charge of the Arab delegation guests participating in the
International Frankfurt Book Fair in 2004. From Gathering the Tide: An
Anthology of Contemporary Arabian Gulf Poetry, edited by Patty Paine,
Jeff Lodge, and Samia Touati (Ithaca Press). Translated by the poet El
Salvador Claribel Alegría Born in Nicaragua to Salvadoran parents,
Alegría, 88, has been exiled from both countries. She has written 40
books of poetry, fiction and nonfiction and been translated into more
than ten languages. Her most recent volume of poems, Saudade [Sorrow],
is an exquisite record of her grief after her husband’s death. She
lives in Nicaragua.
“Poetry has been the major reason of my life. I’ve been writing since
I was a very young child and I think I’m going to die writing poetry.
There are people who say that some of my poems are political but I
don’t see it like that. I see them as love poems for my country.
Actually, two countries: Nicaragua and El Salvador. I call them my
patria, El Salvador, where I grew up, and my matria, Nicaragua, where
I was born. In Nicaragua in particular there’s a great deal of
interest in poetry.
“We moved to El Salvador when I was nine months old [her parents were
exiled for their human rights work]. I went all over the world
denouncing what was happening in El Salvador [during the civil war]
and they forbade me to go back. I was an exile for about 11 years. I
went back with my husband in 1996 and it was very moving. When I was
very young I wrote poems about myself but after the Cuban Revolution I
understood that there are other things besides me. Right now I’m
writing a book of nature poems.”
Flowers from the Volcano by Claribel Alegría An excerpt Fourteen
volcanos rise in my remembered country in my mythical country.
Fourteen volcanos of foliage and stone where strange clouds hold back
the screech of a homeless bird. Who said that my country was green?
Translated by Carolyn Forché. From the book Flowers from the Volcano,
reprinted by permission of the University of Pittsburgh Press Armenia
Razmik Davoyan Armenia’s most prominent living writer, Davoyan, 72,
has published 17 collections of poetry, four children’s books, three
prose works and one novel. Translations of his work are published
throughout the world. He has also edited a literary magazine and
served in government as Advisor to the President of the Republic of
Armenia, “in charge of cultural issues, education, ethnic minorities
and NGOs”.
“Armenian poetry has a tradition of thousands of years. Our nation is
known as the nation of poets and we have had wonderful poets from the
days of oral poetry. Today, though, it is not central to life. I have
lived in two very different social systems: the communist and the
capitalist, and both of them were extremely unsuitable for poets. In
the socialist era there was the worst form of censorship but the
people were great readers. There was a secret pact between me and
them, it was enough to say ‘cold November’ and readers would
understand that you meant the Bolshevik revolution. Today, nothing
matters to anyone any more. But poets are necessary for humankind
irrespective of the system. Their creations have a healing effect on
people.”
Yessenin by Razmik Davoyan An excerpt There is sound in suffering And
there is light in sound And there is spirit in light And within the
spirit you stand alone As the troubadour of some endless army.
With kindness, as a brother, you tell me to live, May the storms never
get you, May the winds never strike you, may no whip ever hit you, May
no one ever hire you As a slave.
Sergei Yessenin (1895-1925): Russian poet who committed suicide in a
hotel in St Petersburg (then Leningrad) a few years after the Russian
Revolution. From Whispers and Breath of the Meadows, Arc Publications,
2010. Translated by Armine Tamrazian
Kim Jong Il’s court poet escaped to China with poems strapped to his chest
‘Facebook and Twitter allow everyone to reach poetry’