This week, our editors from around the world report on an international poetry volume in support of human rights, an author talk between two Salvadoran poets, and an online exploration of the history of Jerusalem that includes a wealth of Palestinian literature. Read on to find out more!
Peera Songkünnatham, Editor-at-Large, reporting from Thailand
Five Thai poems got a chance to shine in the company of poems in English, Spanish, Portuguese, French, and Swahili. On June 15, the Human Rights Defenders Poetry Challenge, organized by Protection International together with its partners from ProtectDefenders.eu and the University of York, concluded with an awards ceremony and a booklet launch. As part of the #StayWithDefenders campaign, the challenge called on “all creatives, activists and advocates for human rights” to submit poems honoring those who “have suffered, succeeded, fought and fallen.” The top three winners were announced from a pool of thirty finalists, five from each of the languages. You can read the booklet here; every poem not originally in English is accompanied by an English translation. How nice it is for poets to slip through the political and poetical confines of their countries into an ad-hoc international space, at least virtually on Zoom and in translation.
“To be a poet in this country is like being in a cage,” stated Mek Krueng Fah about Thailand upon winning third place overall. His poem “Remember, we’re all by your side” (โปรดจำไว้.. เราต่างอยู่ข้างเธอ) manages to console even as it stares into an unrelenting bleakness: “On the road of fighters that will know no end, / The ones who came before lie dead, uncovered; / Their bodies caution ‘watch your step, my friend,’ / And nightly, to protect, their spirits hover.”
First place went to “The Full Truth” (Ukweli Kamili) by Martin Mwangi from Kenya. The poem deftly impersonates the flippant attitudes of shrewd politicians who speak in half-truths: “Welcome, it is here that we will give you vegetable rice while we eat pilau rice / then if you complain we’ll say be thankful at least you ate. / However, for how long shall you live with these half-truths of at least? / I don’t know, answer that yourself.” Second place was awarded to María del Campo from Uruguay, whose “To Those Afraid of Windmills” (A quienes les temen los molinos) will make human rights defenders—“those who slip through the cracks and pose a threat to the wall as bridge, brick, step, door”—feel seen and touched.
(Side note: those who have read Duanwad Pimwana’s latest novel ในฝันอันเหลือจะกล่าว: นิยมนิยายอันเหลือจะบรรยาย (In an All-too-impossible Dream: A Fiction Much Too Implausible to Fictionalize), which takes a critical look at Thai protofascists who fancy themselves to be Quixotes and Sancho Panzas, may object to this poem’s romantic take on the fight with windmills. The Uruguayan poem pairs well with another piece in the same booklet, “Madhumans Who Dare To Dream” by Songphon Sonthirak, which also affirms the madman’s dream of justice, but with a crucial difference: it insists on uncovering the truth as the very reason for the dream.)
Of the five Thai finalists, three are written in standard rhymed quatrains, attesting to the enduring appeal of traditional forms to emerging poets. But most stimulating is one in free verse: “To Little Sia” by Jakraphong Soungchomphan. This eleven-line poem describes a mouse’s play with moonlight on a prison windowsill. Its cartoonish overtones—made hilariously clear in the audio recording—at first hide but later reveal the deceptively “polite ladylike” approach to the theme #StayWithDefenders. The little mouse, in her mischievous act of “loitering in the moon canal,” makes the world a less desolate place, one moonbeam at a time.
Nestor Gomez, Editor-at-Large, reporting on El Salvador
“Poetry in two voices” is a Miami Book Fair virtual series that brings pairs of writers together for intimate one-on-one conversations about their writing craft and work. The virtual series recently featured a session with two Salvadoran writers, Roxana Méndez and Jorge Galán.
Galán opened the conversation by commenting about how he and Méndez grew up in the same district of the capital city, San Salvador. Galán knew of Méndez’s early work and asked about Méndez’s introduction to poetry. She recalled being fascinated by the poems her mother read to her before bedtime: their music, their rhythm. She laughed when she remembered that she would wake up in the middle of the night to recite poetry: the music and metaphors are what stuck with her and kept her awake.
Galán pointed out that her enthusiasm for these elements continues to appear in her work. When Méndez was fourteen, she published one of her first poems in a popular Salvadoran newspaper; as Galán eagerly recalled, it was a metric poem, an alexandrine, one of the first examples showing off Méndez’s writing skills. As a child, Méndez spent a lot of time at her grandparents’ house reading books from their library, where she found a book of free verse poems and couldn’t make sense of them. They frustrated her so much that she felt compelled to translate the free verse into meter.
Continuing the conversation, Méndez asked what Galán’s first experiences with writing were. Galán confessed that he had no interest in literature when he was younger. However, at sixteen he was introduced to literature through the novels of Agatha Christie and Mario Vargas Llosa. The following year, he discovered poetry in the works of Gustavo Adolfo Bécquer and Pablo Neruda, especially Neruda’s El hondero entusiasta (The Slingshot Enthusiast) and Veinte poemas de amor y una canción desesperada (Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair). Galán’s earliest attempts at writing were imitations of Bécquer and Neruda, and in those early days of his writing career, when he didn’t know what he was doing, the process felt more like moving around in the darkness.
Méndez and Galán shared a few poems with each other: Méndez read her “Una Chica” (A Girl), and Galán read his “Habitante” (Resident). Both writers reflected on how much they are influenced by Anglo writers: Méndez is influenced by Emily Dickinson, Sylvia Plath, and William Carlos Williams, while Galán draws from T.S. Eliot. Similar imagery and metaphors from these Anglo writers appear in both Méndez and Galán’s work, but each has a distinct voice, tone, and metric composition, infused with the culture and memories of the writers.
Carol Khoury, Editor-at-Large for Palestine and the Palestinians, reporting from Palestine
Stories fill our lives: stories of people; stories of events; stories of things; stories of place; stories of almost everything and anything. The latest story being celebrated this week by Palestinians is somehow different from the usual ones they’re accustomed to. It is a story of a city—and what a long and entangled story it is.
For Palestinians, each Palestinian city has its own soft spot in their hearts—but none beats Jerusalem, naturally! Reasons are as various as can be. The further a Palestinian is from Jerusalem, the more attached they become. The harder it is for a Palestinian to access the city, the more determined they become. There is in fact a Jerusalem Syndrome, though it is associated with tourists and pilgrims only. But trust me, there is another, as yet undiagnosed syndrome—one that might more suitably be called “East Jerusalem Syndrome.”
Intrigued to know why? Well, that is exactly what “Jerusalem Story” is all about. Launched last Saturday by the Arab Center for Research and Policy Studies (ACRPS), the website “aims to tell the Jerusalem Story through a less-known lens—that of the Palestinian community of the city.” Since the team behind the initiative is aware that it is “a complex story,” they worked for three years to “distill it down to the essence.”
The English-language site explains almost everything about Jerusalem, recounting the history of the city and its residents from the 1948 Nakba War until the present time. Opting to not categorizing the material per traditional fields (e.g., culture, economy, politics, history, etc.), the website nonetheless has it all. It is a feast! And at feasts, tastes differ. To me, the crème de la crème is the “Jerusalem Notebook”—that’s where all the meaty nuggets hide. But feel free to savor other, “heavier” sections, such as the “Big Picture.” At any rate, don’t miss the Jerusalemite literary icons such as Khalil Sakakini, Ghada Karmi, Aref al-Aref, Bandali al-Jawzi, and many other and much more.
Bon appétit—that is, if you don’t mind the East Jerusalem Syndrome!
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