Poet of the Month 049: ADELAIDE IVÁNOVA

ADELAIDE IVÁNOVA
c 2000

 

 

 

for laura

 

in 1998 when they found
the gay body of matthew shepard
his whole face was bloodied
but for two stripes
perpendicular
where his tears
had flowed
that day the cyclist
who found him did not
call the police right away
because the body of matthew
was so disfigured
that the cyclist thought he'd seen
a scarecrow

 

last saturday in são paulo
a group of men
and two Military Police killed laura
not without first
torturing her laura
was seen still alive
by some guy
who recorded
and posted the youtube video
of a laura disorientated
and who wouldn't be
blood spewing from the mouth and from the back
of the dress?

 

laura has a body
and a name that belong to her
laura de vermont (presente!)
was murdered
by men
by the state
and by our indifference
aged 18
on a saturday.

 

 

 

date unspecified

 

 

 

 

 

 

Translated by

 

FRANCISCO VILHENA

 

 

 

 

 

 

The following biographical statement appears on the website of The Poetry Translation Centre.  [It is re-posted here for information purposes only and, like the poem re-posted above, remains its author's exclusive copyright-protected intellectual property.]

 

Adelaide Ivánova is a Brazilian poet and artist (b. Recife, 1982).  She lives between Berlin and Cologne.  Her first poetry collection, O Martelo [The Hammer] was published in 2016.  Her work has been featured in English in Clinic and Alba Londres. 

 

 

 

Use the link below to read another poem by Brazilian poet and artist ADELAIDE IVÁNOVA:

 

 

 

http://poetrytranslation.org/poems/guerilla-bitchcraft

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

You might also enjoy: 

 

 

 
Poet of the Month 034: ZAID SHLAH

 

 

 
Poet of the Month 032: JENNIFER DENROW

 

 

 
Poet of the Month 028: CORAL BRACHO

 

 

 

Last updated 13 April 2021 

 

The Write Advice: CARTOON 007

© Charles M Schulz

 

You might also enjoy:

 
The Write Advice: CARTOON 005 

 
The Write Advice: CARTOON 003 

 
The Write Advice: CARTOON 002

Think About It 038: LAURA RIDING

It is very sad then that so many children are hurried along and not given time to think about themselves.  People say to them when they think that they have been playing long enough:  'You are no longer a child.  You must begin to do something.'  But although playing is doing nothing, you are really doing something when you play; you are thinking about yourself.  Many children play in the wrong way.  They make work out of play.  They not only seem to be doing something, they really are doing something.  They are imitating the grown-ups around them who are always doing as much instead of as little as possible.  And they are often encouraged to play in this way by the grown-ups.  And they are not learning to be themselves.

Four Unposted Letters to Catherine (1930)


 

Use the link below to read more about the life and work of North American poet, critic, novelist and essayist LAURA RIDING (1901–1991):

 

https://jwa.org/encyclopedia/article/riding-laura

 

 

You might also enjoy:

 
Think About It 026: GORDON LIVINGSTON

  
Think About It 020: WISLAWA SZYMBORSKA

 
Think About It 014: DOROTHY ROWE

The Write Advice 109: CLAIRE MESSUD

As a writer, I subscribe to Chekhov’s world view: 'It’s not my job to tell you that horse thieves are bad people. It’s my job to tell you what this horse thief is like.' The more accurately one can illuminate a particular human experience, the better the work of art.  I’m not an autobiographical, or biographical, writer, except in some abstract sense.  If I had to summarize, most broadly, my concerns as a writer, I’d say the question 'how then must we live?' is at the heart of it, for me.  It can only be addressed in the individual, not in the general; each of us on this planet must come to terms with this question for him or herself.
      As a reader, I’ve long felt passionately about fictions that articulate anger, frustration, disappointment — from reading Dostoevsky’s Notes from the Underground, in high school, when I thought, 'my God, fiction can do this? Fiction can say these unsayable things?' to reading Beckett or Camus or Philip Roth’s Sabbath’s Theater to Thomas Bernhard — these are all articulating unseemly, unacceptable experiences and emotions, rage prominent among them.  Because rage at life and rage for life are very closely linked.  To be angry, you have to give a shit.

An Unseemly Emotion: Publisher's Weekly Talks with Claire Messud [29 April 2013]


 

Use the link below to read the full 2013 interview with North American novelist CLAIRE MESSUD:

 

https://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/authors/interviews/article/56848-an-unseemly-emotion-pw-talks-with-claire-messud.html

 

 

You might also enjoy: 

 
The Write Advice 096: JOSHUA JENNIFER ESPINOZA

 
The Write Advice 079: ANTON CHEKHOV

  
The Write Advice 059: KRISTINA HAYNES 

Poet of the Month 048: AMRITA BHARATI

AMRITA BHARATI
c 2000

 

 

 

DEEP IN THE STILLNESS

 

He threw me away
like a clod of earth.
He didn't know
I was a thing with a soul.
He didn't know
I was alive.

He kept on throwing me
like a clod of earth
out of his way ––
onto that neglected path
that happened to be mine.
And so I kept travelling
along my own way.
Each time some fragment broke off ––
some infatuation, some addiction to happiness,
some earthly hope,
some dream squandered on man.
Each time some fragment of my being
would break off.
And now it was my turn.
The world was already left behind ––
like a desert in a sandstorm,
like an ocean in a hurricane,
like a desolate city.
Man, step by step descending, 
was already left behind.
And now it was my turn.
Standing on the last patch of earth
I gathered myself into a whole thing
and hurled myself into the stillness.
This was my silence ––
pervasive and expansive.
Now the world was either a dream
or a sea-flower
imagined at the end of the ocean.
Deep in the stillness.
Only the sound of my footsteps.

 

 

date unspecified

 

 

 

 

 

Translated by 

 

LUCY ROSENSTEIN

 

 

The following biographical statement appears on the website of The Poetry Translation Centre.  [It is re-posted here for information purposes only and, like the poem re-posted above, remains its author's exclusive copyright-protected intellectual property.]

 
 

Amrita Bharati (born 1939) is one of the most gifted and prolific female poets of her generation: she has written seven books of poetry and a volume of prose. Yet her name has no currency in Hindi poetic circles, or in western scholarship: there are no studies of her poetry and some of her collections are out of print. 

 

This sentencing to silence seems astounding to anyone who has encountered Amrita Bharati's unique poetic world.  Her poetry is a witness to a complex spiritual journey which takes her from a land of intense existential angst, agony and anger to a refuge of serenity where ‘the mind stops' and the anguished protagonist finds herself and ‘Him'.  The visionary power of her poetry is all the more astounding as she treads totally new ground.  Unlike her main predecessor –– Mahadevi Verma  –– whose poetic 'I' is a stylised, idealised image of the eternal woman in love, a product of the poet's imagination rather than a reflection of her experience –– Amrita Bharati has the 'courage to probe into [the] inner world, and to make it public property.'

 

 

Amrita Bharati's poetry is undoubtedly informed by her studies of Sanskrit (she did an MA and a PhD in Sanskrit at Benares Hindu University) and her intimate knowledge of Sri Aurobindo's work (she has translated several of his poems in Hindi). Her poems contain numerous references to Vedantic ideas, Tantric images and Krishna bhakti. 

 

The critic Nirmal Verma said of her, 'Amrita Bharati is probably the most alone signature on the slate of contemporary Hindi poetry.  Alone and unique.'

 

 

 

 

Use the link below to read more poems by Indian poet AMRITA BHARATI:

 

 

http://www.poetrytranslation.org/poems/it-happens-again

 

 

 

 

 

 

You might also enjoy:

 

 
Poet of the Month 043: BEJAN MATUR

 

 

 
Poet of the Month 038: EWA LIPSKA

 

 

 
Poet of the Month 011: FATMA BEN MAHMOUD

 

 

 

 

 

Last updated 13 April 2021

 

The Write Advice: CARTOON 006

© 2007 Debbie Ridpath Ohi

Use the link below to visit the website of Canadian writer, cartoonist and illustrator DEBBIE RIDPATH OHI:

 

http://debbieohi.com/ 

 

 

 

You might also enjoy:

 
The Write Advice: CARTOON 001

 
The Write Advice: CARTOON 002

 
The Write Advice: CARTOON 003 

 

Think About It 037: THICH NHAT HANH

If you pour a handful of salt into a cup of water, the water becomes undrinkable.  But if you pour the salt into a river, people can continue to draw the water to cook, wash and drink.  The river is immense, and it has the capacity to receive, embrace and transform.  When our hearts are small, our understanding and compassion are limited, and we suffer.  We can’t accept or tolerate others and their shortcomings, and we demand that they change.  But when our hearts expand, these same things don’t make us suffer anymore.  We have a lot of understanding and compassion and can embrace others.  We accept others as they are, and then they have a chance to transform.

How To Love (2014)


 

Use the link below to read about the life and work of Vietnamese monk and peace activist THICH NHAT HANH:

 

https://plumvillage.org/about/thich-nhat-hanh/

 

 

You might also enjoy:

 
Think About It 031: DON MIGUEL RUIZ

 
Think About It 008: YASUNARI KAWABATA

 
Think About It 006: MARCUS AURELIUS