Un oiseau passe
éclair de plumes
dans le courrier du crépuscule
VA
VOLE
ET DIS-LEUR
Dis-leur que tu viens d’un pays
formé dans une poignée de main
un pays simple comme bonjour
où les nuits chantent
pour conjurer la peur des lendemains
dis-leur
que nous sommes une bouchée
répartie sur sept îles
comme les sept couleurs de la semaine
mais que jamais ne vient
le dimanche de nous-mêmes
VA
VOLE
ET DIS-LEUR
Dis-leur que les marées
ouvrent la serrure de nos mémoires
que parfois le passé souffle
pour attiser nos flammes
car un peuple qui oublie
ne connaît plus la couleur des jours
il va comme un aveugle dans la nuit du présent
dis-leur que nous passons d’île en île
sur le pont du soleil
mais qu’il n’y aura jamais assez de lumière
pour éclairer
nos morts
dis-leur que nos mots vont de créole en créole
sur les épaules de la mer
mais qu’il n’y aura jamais assez de sel
pour brûler notre langue
VA
VOLE
& DIS-LEUR
Dis-leur qu’à force d’aimer les homes
nous avons appris à aimer l’arc-en-ciel
et surtout dis-leur
qu’il nous suffit d’avoir un pays à aimer
qu’il nous suffit d’avoir des contes à raconteur
pour ne pas avoir peur de la nuit
qu’il nous suffit d’avoir un chant d’oiseau
pour ouvrir nos ailes d’hommes libres
VA
VOLE
ET DIS-LEUR…
———-

Tell them

A bird of bright feather
dashes away in
the message of twilight
FLY
GO
& TELL THEM
Tell them you come from a country
built in a handshake
a country easy as one two three
where night sings
to keep tomorrow’s fears away
tell them
how we’re a mouthful
spread over seven islands
like the seven colours of the week,
but that the Sunday of our own days
never comes
FLY
GO
& TELL THEM
Tell them that tides
unlock our memories
and that the past sometimes blows
to excite our flames
because a people that forgets
no longer knows the colours of its days
but moves through today’s darkness like a blind-man
tell them we use the sun’s bridge
to go from one island to another
but that there’ll never be enough light
to illumine
our dead
tell them our words go from créole to créole
on the shoulders of the sea
but that there’ll never be enough salt
to burn our tongue
FLY
GO
& TELL THEM
Tell them that by dint of loving people
we’ve learned to love the rainbow
and be sure to tell them
that it’s enough for us to love a country
that it’s enough for us to have stories to tell
so as not to fear the night
that to open our wings as free men
it is enough for us to have the bird’s song
FLY
GO
& TELL THEM…

© Ernest Pépin
Translated by Rethabile Masilo with the author’s permission

Please visit http://www.lehman.cuny.edu/ile.en.ile/paroles/pepin.html for the full bio.

1. Did you move into writing poetry gradually, or did any one thing push you over the edge?

Poetry chose me, when I was very young. I’ve been making up poems since before I learned how to write.
—–

2. Please tell us about Migritude. Is it a play? A poem? A monologue?

Migritude is an epic journey, in four movements.

I coined the word Migritude as a play on Negritude and Migrant Attitude. It asserts the dignity of outsider status. Migritude celebrates and revalorizes immigrant/diasporic culture. It captures the unique political and cultural space occupied by migrants who refuse to choose between identities of origin and identities of assimilation, who channel difference as a source of power rather than conceal or erase it.

The four works that make up the Migritude Cycle draw on my Hindu spiritual heritage. They reference the earliest religious teaching imparted to Hindu children: that of the First Four Gods. The Hindu child is taught that her first god is her Mother. The second god is her Father. The third god is her Teacher. The fourth god is The Guest.

Part I, The Mother (When Saris Speak), is a 90-minute spoken-word one-woman theatre show which has toured internationally. It has also been published, in a bilingual Italian-English edition, by Lietocolle, and is currently shortlisted for Italy’s Camaiore Prize. It uses my trousseau of saris, passed down by my mother, to reveal how imperialism and colonialism, in India and Kenya, were – and continue to be – enacted on the bodies of women.

It explores what diasporic daughters receive and reject from their mothers; delves into the relationship of migrants to the motherland, the mother tongue, the severing of those relationships and the forging of new transnational identities. Letters from my mother form an important part of the script, bridging the spaces between generations and continents.

Part II of the Migritude Cycle addresses the second archetype in the Four Gods theme: The Father (Bwagamoyo). It will have its world script premiere on June 3rd, in Uppsala, Sweden, where I am currently in residence as African Guest Writer at the Nordic Africa Institute.

It explores constructions of masculinity and race under colonialism. It will examine how the architecture of Empire is codified on the bodies of men: brown, black, and white. It covers a wide range of territories, from the island of Pemba where my father was born and raised, to Kenya’s post-election violence, to the modern Swedish cinema of Ingmar Bergman!

The working title of the show is Bwagamoyo – drawn from two Swahili words: Bwaga – to dump, and Moyo – heart. Bwagamoyo was the original name given to two specific locations on the Swahili Coast: the town in Tanzania where slaves were brought from the inland and held for shipping, and a small island in the Zanzibar archipelago that was a holding prison for slaves. Both are now known as Bagamoyo.

The original Bwagamoyo was a chilling admonition to the kidnapped human beings to literally dump their hearts, meaning their humanity, at these spots, since they would no longer use or need them once they left as slave cargo. Bwagamoyo is an equally apt metaphor for the socialization of boys into the kinds of manhood shaped by colonial power.
—–

3. Poets spend a lot of time perfecting their craft, and then perfecting each piece. So, where’s the money?

When I find out, you’ll be the first to know
—–

4. What makes you write? Is it more natural for you to write about specific themes, or does anything go?

Anything that moves me – to rage or laughter, to joy or grief or wonder. Anything I find beautiful, and want to capture and convey to others.

Big questions that I don’t have answers to. Writing is my way to explore them.

Silence. I’ve always been called to break silences – silences of history, silences within families or communities or countries. I always notice whose voices and stories are not being heard in a particular space. My mission as a poet is to make any platform I’m offered larger for all silenced and marginalised voices.
—–

5. What advice do you have for Poéfrika readers who might start wanting to get published?

1) Finish your pieces.
2) Edit them. Make them the best they can be, without getting bogged down in perfectionism.
3) Put them out into the world! Set yourself a do-able goal, like submitting one poem a week, or one story a month, to journals and competitions, and meet it.
4) Find a writing community, where you can share your work, ask questions, gather information, and make connections to other writers. It could be online, if you don’t live in a place with other writers around.
5) Keep doing 1) to 4). Don’t get stuck waiting for results, or paralysed if your stuff isn’t accepted immediately. Think of the thousands of miles a runner logs in their training, or the thousands of hours of practice put in by a dancer. You’re not a writer when you get published. You are a writer every day that you write, and work your craft, and take the next tiny step towards your larger goals.
—–

6. What role do politics play in your writing? Your poem Eater of Death comes to mind. Or your stance against the use of the term “ethnic cleansing” during the post-election violence in Kenya at the beginning of last year.

Politics is essentially about power – who has it, how they wield it, who doesn’t. Two quotes sum up the role it plays in my writing:

Arundhati Roy: “…once you see it, you can’t unsee it. And once you’ve seen it, keeping quiet, saying nothing, becomes as political an act as speaking out. There’s no innocence. Either way, you’re accountable.”

Chinua Achebe: I do think decency and civilization would insist that the writer take sides with the powerless. Clearly, there’s no moral obligation to write in any particular way. But there is a moral obligation, I think, not to ally oneself with power against the powerless. I think an artist, in my definition of that word, would not be someone who takes sides with the emperor against his powerless subjects.

Chinua Achebe, 2008, foreword to Africa: Altered States, Ordinary Miracles by Richard Dowden
—–

7. You are to encourage poetry students to write a poem. Please come up with a “writing prompt” out of your own experience, or out of something else, using anything that invades your mind right now. Very short and simple.

My voices hide in…
—–

8. I don’t know whether you speak KiSwahili or another Kenyan language besides English. If you do, do you draw from that language’s related culture, sound, etc?

Migritude II: The Father, is subtitled Bwagamoyo – drawn from two Swahili words: Bwaga – to dump, and Moyo – heart. I draw on Kiswahili in several of the pieces in this work, and in other poems, such as “Drum Rider”.

One of my best-known poems is “Dreaming In Gujurati”, in which I explore reclaiming voice and language.
—–

9. Where do you write? And why there?

Wherever the words come. I’ve written poems on table napkins, the backs of receipts, the margins of magazines on airplanes. I’ve written standing under street lamps, against the walls of telephone booths, standing in lines for the bus. I’ve even typed lines into my cellphone when I’ve been caught without paper or pen, and saved them as notes or sent them as texts to myself.

Right now, I have the enormous luxury of an office (shared with other guest researchers) at the Nordic Africa Institute. My desk is next to floor-to-ceiling windows, which look out on the main street of the city, and I get lots of natural sunlight, which I love. It’s such a privilege to have a fixed place to write, a large computer screen, all the tools I need within reach, that it’s hard to leave each night — I feel like I’m losing precious writing hours.
—–

10. Here’s an on-going poem. Please continue it.

They stood before me that night
With clenched fists and blown pupils,
Shadowed by leafless branches of a cotton tree,
The moon as bright as the moon and no metaphor

For which image can serve? What simile
Makes sense enough? The ghosts that guard
The tree nod yes, though I’ve not said a thing.
One shade uncurls and crooks a bony finger, calling me.

The voices rise up like be-headed trees
I stumble forward fear at my heels
How did this night arrive and where is wisdom’s heed
“Gone my child is your clothes — face now this thing.”

So strip off your nudity, and learn to be naked.
Release your fears as branches drop leaves
and let yourself see.

_______________
Kenyan poet, playwright and theatre artist, Shailja Patel is also the creator of Migritude. She is author of Migritude I: When Saris Speak, and two collections of poetry: Dreaming In Gujurati, and Shilling Love. Her work has been translated into eight languages.

Shailja is 2009 Guest Writer at the Nordic Africa Institute. CNN describes her as an artist “who exemplifies globalization as a people-centered phenomenon of migration and exchange.” The Gulf Today (United Arab Emirates) calls her “the poetic equivalent of Arundhati Roy.”

Patel is an active member of Kenyans for Peace, Truth and Justice, which works towards a just and equitable democracy in Kenya.

LINK: http://poefrika.blogspot.com/2009/05/poefrika-interview-with-kelwyn-sole.html

LINK: http://poefrika.blogspot.com/2009/04/poefrika-interview-with-pam-mordecai.html

LINK: http://poefrika.blogspot.com/2009/04/1.html

LINK: http://poefrika.blogspot.com/2009/04/interview-with-geoffrey-philp.html

The Poet Laureate of Lesotho: a dream of mine that Rose clearly knows about. I’m a chapter in her book. Thanks, Rose.

Je suppose que le monde soit une forêt. Bon!
Il y a des baobabs, du chêne vif, des sapins noirs, du noyer blanc;
Je veux qu’ils poussent tous, bien fermes et drus, différents
de bois, de ports, de couleur,
mais pareillement pleins de sève et sans que l’un empiète
sur l’autre,
différents à leur base
mais oh!
que leurs têtes se rejoignent oui très haut dans l’éther
égal à ne former pour tous
qu’un seul toit
je dis l’unique toit tutélaire…

from “Et les chiens se taisaient”, 1997

TOMORROW

I take the world to be a forest. Right!
There are baobabs, lively oak, black fir, the hickory tree;
I want them all to grow, strong and dense, each different
by wood, aspect, colour,
but equally filled with sap and with none encroaching
on another,
different at their base
but oh!
may their heads meet yes high up in the ether
equivalent to forming for all
just one roof
I say the only protective roof…
© Aimé Césaire
translated from the French by Rethabile Masilo

As usual in such cases, I beg Mr Césaire’s pardon for attempting to translate his words. May he rest in peace. I encountered several difficulties in translating “Demain” from the original French into English, but the main one is perhaps the poet’s use of the word toit, which means “roof”. In French, toit (roof) sounds exactly like toi (you). They’re pronounced /twa/. And so

égal à ne former pour tous
qu’un seul toit
je dis l’unique toit tutélaire…

is at once

equivalent to forming for all
just one roof
I say the only protective roof…

and

equivalent to forming for all
just one you
I say the only protective you…

I have not been able to find a way around this, and therefore opted for the literal roof meaning at the expense of the you meaning embodied by sound alone. Any ideas around this?

RICHARD OF YORK GAVE BATTLE IN VAIN
for Barack Obama

The world has been cut
into pieces with the knife
of greed: this new one
lives in all worlds with
his skin, and has been sent
to turn us into
one separate thing,
fit the colours into
the prism once again,
so that there’s light;
this new one knows
folks in a mansion,
knows others in prison,
oboe or shimmering blade
in their colourless hand.
He has seen places where
for many desert days men
lived under other men,
has heard their message
and seen their faces, painted
in the book of love. Men
lamenting themselves and
wanting life, the cry of
a baby that’s being born.
This one has fallen
like a meteor amongst us.
The slavery gong has sounded,
calling off the master and
his dogs, getting the world
going again; on this black hole,
light that was held back
has now been set free again.
© Rethabile Masilo

NB: Get a load of this, this and this, too.

Daffodils, the native and the not,
sway in tune with your name;

narcissus psuedonarcissus,
the sign says;

you resist the urging
to reach down beside the trail;

their petals know you,
and that is enough.
© Phil Rice