Dave Drayton Reviews Carmine Frascarelli and Mark A Peart

Posted on October 24, 2016 by Dave Drayton

Sydney Road Poems by Carmine Frascarelli
Rabbit Poets Series, 2016

The Great Eastern by Mark A Peart
Rabbit Poets Series, 2016


In the nonfiction poetry issue of Axon that she co-edited with Ali Alizadeh, Jessica L Wilkinson highlights the impact that Jordie Albiston’s The Hanging of Jean Lee had on her as an undergraduate in 2001. Albiston’s collection is a poetic biography of Lee, the last woman to be executed in Australia. Wilkinson would later be influenced by Susan Howe – whose practice both informed and was a focus of Wilkinson’s doctoral study – to found Rabbit: a Journal of Non-fiction Poetry in 2011; however, a line can be traced from the early impact of Albiston’s book, to the journal, and on to the fledgling Rabbit Poets Series, which began with Albiston’s XIII Poems in 2013.

In January I found The Hanging of Jean Lee in a secondhand bookstore in Hornsby, and find my thoughts returning to it again and again whilst reading Mark A Peart’s The Great Eastern (#5 in the Rabbit Poets Series): a long poem drawing on witness deposition and proposing a poetic defense for a man known by the titular name, ‘who perambulated the streets of Collingwood and Fitzroy in women’s dress during the early 1860s soliciting men for sex.’ In Peart’s introduction are assorted pronouns – ‘they’, ‘her’, ‘his’, ‘she’, ‘he’ – and, interestingly, this fluidity remains evident even in the condemnatory contributions from The Great Eastern’s lovers and patrons. James Morris reports: ‘if you observe that / woman walking / in Victoria Parade / remember it’s a man’. John James knows the prisoner ‘by the looks of him. / he was dressed as / a man or a woman.’ The striking out of words replicates those struck out in the record of the Victorian Supreme Court case of The Queen v. John Wilson (1863), used by Peart alongside court and newspaper archives, as the source material for the poem.

The above examples are indicative of the purgative poetics in the poem’s deposition sections. These appear throughout the collection in pairs, perhaps a presentation of the doubled existence of John Wilson / The Great Eastern. Those on the left are composed from the words of witnesses – Morris, James and other Johns (Jones, Morgan and McKeevor); Joseph Wheeler; Edward Turner; and Bartholomew O’Donnovan. Distanced by Peart’s voice from the questions that prompted them, their origins obscured from judge, jury and reader, the men’s answers gain some odd strength. In isolation they become more sinister, they become statements; no longer a response but an attack. They lead the charge. This affect reflects the poem’s beginning, where Morris offers yet more antonyms for our subject – Ellen Maguire, and, more distressingly, ‘the prisoner’. Each repetition of the latter in subsequent pages feeds our unease towards the fate of the Great Eastern, in spite of what is known to be an inevitability.

Pages on the right offer the voice of The Great Eastern, unbound by the constrictions of attribution and occupying multiple perspectives. Unsurprisingly, the voice here treads over gender innocuously. On the first such page we see ‘a woman walking / musth the parade’; musth, from the Urdu mast (‘intoxicated’), refers to the reproductive hormonal rush that turns elephant bulls bellicose. This is no hagiography: at least two punches are thrown (and three received), kneecaps are kicked, cunts are called just that, and there’s no effort made to conceal a taste for tipple. Despite this, it feels short on the biographical front. Where Albiston traced Lee’s life from childhood to chair, Peart’s timeframe is tighter, little more than two years, but offers glimpses of the self, shouted out.

The Great Eastern’s version of events accompanying deposition VI is particularly revealing about the collection as a whole. Turner, Morgan and James are in a house on Young Street, late December, 1863. As the two Johns wait downstairs Turner plays the role of one overhead:

turner’s fat little cock
jams in. he moans
like a lamb in distress
his face a hawk
convulsing between the two

With Turner taking the parts of lamb and hawk the ‘prisoner’ is neither perpetrator nor prey, but witness, an elephant in the room. By contrast, Carmine Frascarelli’s turn as witness feels less triumphant. Elsewhere in her Axon paper, Wilkinson contends that, ‘through poetry and experiment, narratives of the past might be enlivened to meet those characters and events in writing more uniquely and appropriately than may be encountered through more traditional historical modes.’ Despite the assortment of non-fictional bumf that informs and (re)enforces Frascarelli’s Sydney Road Poems (#7 in Rabbit Poets Series), it does not amount to that which we so often presume or expect from any non-fictional writing: the/an answer.

In the author’s statement appended to the collection we gain some insight into the questions that prompted this assorted response; a plurality of contesting truths. Looking at our precarious civility and the roots of violence running deep in our history, Frascarelli asks:

Will we learn without confronting it?
Can we learn by confronting it?
How do you outrun,
                                           how do we beat history as we become it?

Earlier in his statement is an offhand remark about the physical fights – ‘we’d hit each other, smash things’ – between he and an ex-partner. This prompts another, difficult question: in asking how we beat history, is the desire to defeat it or to strike it? Sydney Road Poems depicts the ‘desperate chaotic design underlying most of what stretches out beneath us’, and doesn’t flinch at the seediness the poet rightly expected to unearth with research. As an investigation into the roots of violence in this country, however, it feels too distanced from the guilt expressed and acknowledged in the afterword.

Wilkinson (that is, Jessica) is not the only J Wilkinson to contribute in some part to Carmine Frascarelli’s Sydney Road Poems. The poem ‘#26’ stamps business names and proprietors thickly atop one another, and among the cacophony of ink can be spotted J Wilkinson, printer, 1885. There is yet another Wilkinson who has contributed in more oblique ways to the collection; Thomas Wilkinson owned and occupied the lone house from which the City of Brunswick was born. It is Brunswick for the most part in which Frascarelli, as flaneur, walks and writes. The trio of Wilkinsons could simply be coincidence, but it is these and similar seemingly unconnected contributions – to place, to poem – that aggregate and create something akin to Walter Benjamin’s Arcades Project, or Kenneth Goldsmith’s Capital (inspired by the former), in abridged form. To paraphrase Frascarelli in poem #36, we ‘get an idea of the particulars lost in the quantity / setting the bulk.’ Where Peart shows how someone may occupy and operate within a space, Frascarelli presents the two entities – person and place – as inseparable, and this ecological framing seems to attempt an immunity for the acts of the individual.

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Kelly Malone Reviews Chris Price and Hera Lindsay Bird

Posted on October 24, 2016 by Kelly Malone

Beside Herself by Chris Price
Auckland University Press, 2016

Hera Lindsay Bird by Hera Lindsay Bird
Victoria University Press, 2016


‘Beside’, for starters, is a clever position for Price to situate her writing and the speakers in this collection. The ‘performance’ carried out by these multiple speakers occurs in varying densities of poetic language. Theatricality is created by a play between subversion of, and adherence to conventions; and between Price’s writing and carefully selected illustrations by Leo Bensemann (including the cover and frontispiece, ‘Mask’). Additionally, Bensemann’s illustrations link to other literary texts, including a reference to Wallace Stevens in the title of the illustrations, Fantastica: Thirteen Drawings. They are used as a resonant structural device: as well as the immediate content of Price’s text, conversations develop between the sections of Beside Herself and Bensemann’s images.

This effect allows Price’s otherwise eclectic poems to form a coherent collection of representation and otherness within oneself. Furthermore, the way she has used Bensemann’s illustrations shows she has not approached the concept of performance glibly. Actually, Price doesn’t do or say anything glibly. The opening quotes reflect her attempt to express the multitude of selves one performs (and is performed by) in language. For instance, Price quotes Frederick Seidel’s ‘Prayer’: ‘But we are someone else. We’re born that way.’ Certainly, our otherness occurs when we enter language, but in this collection Price addresses how we are performed in language, why some selves float to the top and not others.

Resplendent with references and imagery to epitomise these ideas of otherness, ‘Abandoned Hamlet’ is hidden away, like the id, in the midst of the book’s first section. Here the question is asked, via the Russian ending of Hamlet (‘The rest is silence’): how are left with ourselves? The following poem, ‘A natural history of Richard’ continues references to Hamlet. It plays on a Tarlton jest-like Hamlet talking to Yorick’s skull, whose bones seem to be exhumed from a winter of discontent, ‘ready to talk’ before ending with, ‘Read the script.’

One aspect of the poems’ form that I particularly enjoyed, is Price’s use of square brackets in the title poem. [The shift from third person in the collection’s title, to second person in the poem’s title, shows the shift from outside the collection to inside it]. The opening line is an imperative: ‘Step sideways’; and the next section [after the first set of square brackets facing the text but positioned where an asterisk would otherwise be] commands, ‘Step aside’. Such play is not enjoyed at the price of craft. It would be easy to overdo the aside [as I already have done] but Price gets us onside with strictly disciplined wordplay, only giving enough to add, not detract, from the work. And if you think about the purpose of square brackets [added information from another writer or speaker to clarify] then what we have here, are other speakers clarifying the ‘original’ speaker. As ‘Abandoned Hamlet’ says, ‘I / am every character — / every, every character.’

Surely this latter and somewhat sore point of craft is alluded to by ‘The New Cuisine’. Its opening line, ‘But excellence had left the old recipes’, points to those fad-poets who have ‘con[ned] the locals / with the pallid mash … / in fancy language.’ Price may be playing with language but she is clearly positioning her writing within the craft of a tradition, ‘What all of us once knew / was hoarded in the snowy alpine province / of the few.’ Nevertheless, Price complicates the poet-as-self-identity, and acknowledging these selves as many in the one.

Poetry is seldom confessional, for how is language truth? Price knows language is a construction, but she still manages a persona who does intimately share itself without offending the reader’s sensibilities. There is a day in the life of a Price persona, in ‘Tango with mute button’, where a dance lesson is narrated from a stationary bike at a mundane gym. The scene becomes an extended metaphor for that V S Naipaul-esque, half-lived quandary of where the grass is greener. The brilliant and subtle humour continues in ‘My friend Flicka’, which takes the standard rite-of-passage known to any young girl who has loved horses, and merges into a more serious turn towards those close and intimate relationships that take work, yet work. In the latter part of this poem, the horse has become a human partner, who asks a seemingly harmless question – about what the word ‘trope’ means. What follows is the humorous response of a wordsmith, and a creative writing teacher: ‘tripwire and rope’.

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Michael Aiken Reviews Monty Reid

Posted on October 12, 2016 by Michael Aiken

Meditatio Placentae by Monty Reid
Brick Books, 2016

Composed of nine distinct sections, Canadian poet Monty Reid’s Meditatio Placentae is more like a collection of chapbooks than individual poems. Most of those nine sections have previously appeared as separate publications, and each certainly works as a discrete sequence. The whole is loosely held together by a combination of mundane subjects and a nightmare-like, alien perceptiveness; rather than building a continuous collection, the sections create a context of transition from one mode to another.

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Owen Bullock Reviews Murray Edmond

Posted on October 12, 2016 by Owen Bullock

Shaggy Magpie Songs by Murray Edmond
Auckland University Press, 2015


Murray Edmond is a New Zealand poet of long-standing achievement. He published the first of twelve previous collections, Entering the Eye, way back in 1973 with Caveman Press; the most recent was Three Travels (Holloway Press, 2012). He is a dramaturge, with a career ranging from the experimental Red Mole Theatre Company to the present Indian Ink Theatre Company. He was co-editor of the 2000 anthology Big Smoke: New Zealand Poems 1960-1975, which restored marginalised voices from the 1960s and 1970s, especially women poets such as Anne Donovan, Kathinka Nordal Stene and Christina Beer. He is now editor of Ka Mate Ka Ora: A New Zealand Journal of Poetry and Poetics.

The front cover image of his most recent collection, Shaggy Magpie Songs fits its tone beautifully. A busker with an acoustic guitar and capo sits on two cushions balanced on a milk crate. Money is collected in an old paint tub. Behind him, an umbrella is attached to a microphone stand. The busker’s head is that of a magpie, looking upwards, purposively. He’s perched on the waterfront below Ponsonby near the Auckland Harbour Bridge. Insofar as the title acts as a premise for the collection, it’s a convincing one, as its thirty-four poems testify.

You can’t mention magpies in the context of New Zealand poetry without thinking of Denis Glover’s famous ballad ‘The Magpies’. In Edmond’s latest collection, the cadences of Glover are evident in ‘Mister Wat’ and in ‘Conversation with My Uncle’, even before the reference to Glover, or before encountering the back cover’s nod to this literary heritage. Edmond is not just making a reference but embracing elements of Glover’s style, rough-edged and profound.

Placing the concept of song lyric firmly in the centre of the collection sets up certain expectations but also aids the broader exploration of what might constitute a lyric, since the poems which have a less formal structure are read for their similar or different qualities to the others. In the rhyming poems, a firm pattern to the rhyme is not always detectable, but, importantly, the rhythms are compelling On the whole, the rhyme does not control the poem to the expense of all else. There are funny and original rhymes, such as ‘rode the railroad tracks of his undos’ with ‘choose’ and ‘shoes’ (‘Clown on Skates’); and there are elegant stanzas:

cook was scraping bones
(thin soups are the best)
for every Greek that groans
there’s one who groans in jest

(‘Swing Your Tiger’)

One is conscious of the rhyming sounds as simply another set of playful possibilities, rather than the rhyme becoming irritating because it is obvious or controlling, which is an all too common fault even in much published rhyming poetry.

Much of the book celebrates the ordinary. Ordinary moments, real or imagined, are shaggy ones, for example, graffiti described as being in ‘a young and scrawny scrawl’ in the poem ‘So-So Street (A Soliloquy)’. They recall Edmond’s quoting of Guy Debord in Then It Was Now Again – Selected Critical Writings (Atuanui Press, 2014), in which Edmond suggests that the poems in the Big Smoke anthology ‘constitute “fleeting moments resolutely arranged”’. They are fleeting here, too, and might go unnoticed but for the poet’s noting the situation. The understated ending to ‘With Jean-Paul Sartre on the Banks of the Waikato’ celebrates the ordinary even in the midst of a surreal scenario, as well as introducing ‘characters’ in a manner that reflects an understanding of dramatic potential. The poem ‘Painter Looking at Painting’ describes in the most pragmatic terms the way painter and painting form a relationship, and is beguiling in its mysterious ability to evoke an essential connection. ‘National Standards’ takes a satirical view of what I assume to be the proposal in New Zealand for single, unified courses for each subject at tertiary level, a kind of one-world curriculum; there’s something ominous and chilling about the poem which reflects one’s anticipation of such an homogenised educational strategy.

By contrast, the collection is not averse to something like the mystical, as these lines suggest:

your cousin tells you he knows a hole
you can slip through to take a short cut
it’s a portal to the thing you cannot imagine but know is there
and the very idea of ‘short cut’
causes you to burst into relief for the relief it promises

Is this merely childhood play, or something more serious? Is mystical too strong a word? The text accepts each situation without judgment and suggests that the human spirit has ‘a certain flounce that never was seen before / in this universe’ (‘In the Purple Mists of Last Evening’); if anything is mystical or transcendent it’s us.

‘Forty-two Boxes’ focusses more purely, and adventurously, on language. Its diction is tight from the start, Curnowesque in its compression, but more playful:

dragon silk corn powder
jade Buddhas with a gift
for laughter green black
and red phials of infused herbs

The poem is full of unusual words and connections, a microcosm of the whole, a time capsule. It’s not a poem to understand necessarily, but one with which to savour the aesthetics of language.

It is not only about language, of course; there is too much variety here, too much lyric and examination of the lyric that remembers song as close cousin and rhapsodises it, albeit in a suavely detached manner. In fact, one imagines the voice of many of the poems as shaggy, but in a nice jacket (‘a certain flounce’, above, suggests this thought most clearly). The poems embrace repetition, its use varying through a range of refrains, including one that could easily have come from the pen of A A Milne: ‘she points her little pinky oh she points her pinky / and points that pinky at the likes of you and me’ (‘Matataki, 1822’).

The extended sequence ‘Tongatapu Dream Choruses’ is a group of nine poems whose structures – from a loose prose poetry to short, haiku-like stanzas – showcase the diversity of musicality that well-arranged words can bring. Edmond has a penchant for hyphenated composite terms, for example, ‘reflected apocalyptic dreaming / from the One-and-Only-Will’ and the ‘Only-Lonely-Lonely-Only Ones’ (‘A Train Wreck in the Universe’). The compounding of the nouns has the effect of forming descriptions as well as musical jinglings which are refreshing, and show some daring in their arrangement of language in less familiar forms. The grammar of the poems often strays from correctness in useful ways, helping evoke the demotic, an element counterpointed with the prosaic, and sometimes with an unexpected sophistication. For example, in ‘Road Song’, the lines ‘now tell us who you are / now justify impetuosity’ contrast sharply with the everyday diction of the preceding stanzas.

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Review Short: Marietta Elliot-Kleerkoper’s A Perfect Distortion

Posted on October 5, 2016 by Roxanne Bodsworth

A Perfect Distortion by Marietta Elliot-Kleerkoper
Translated by Joris Lenstra
Hybrid Books, 2016

The poems in this collection are provided in the original Dutch with an English translation; two languages and cultures that are intertwined in the poet and in the poetry. The mirroring effect of the parallel texts moves the reader beyond English language egocentricity, providing a continual reminder that language is constructed and understood in a variety of ways. Continue reading →

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Review Short: David Gilbey’s Pachinko Sunset

Posted on October 5, 2016 by Siobhan Hodge

Pachinko Sunset by David Gilbey
Island Books, 2015

David Gilbey’s long-standing connections with Japan take centre stage in Pachinko Sunset, a collection that embraces simple, direct form to explore a layered series of issues linked with this relationship. The titular ‘pachinko’ refers to a popular Japanese game akin to pinball, in which a cascade of small metal balls are released to strike pins and be channelled off into different locations, with different prize implications for each. This image is a fair comparison for the text as a whole, as Pachinko Sunset delivers a sequence of poems in constant activity, heading in numerous directions at once, yet intrinsically caught up in the anxieties and ironies of travelling, translating, and relating Australia to Japan.

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Review Short: Lorne Johnson’s Morton

Posted on October 5, 2016 by Nathanael O'Reilly

Morton by Lorne Johnson
Pitt Street Poetry, 2016

Morton is Lorne Johnson’s first published collection. However, Johnson’s work should be familiar to avid readers of Australian poetry, since it has been published and commended in prizes for over a decade now. Johnson’s poetry has been published in many of Australia’s leading journals, including Mascara, Wet Ink, Island, Meanjin, Rabbit and Regime. Continue reading →

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DALIT / INDIGENOUS AUSTRALIAN Editorial

Posted on October 1, 2016 by Mridula Nath Chakraborty

A language gives a unique world view and no two languages have the same world view.
–Ganesh Devy


This special issue of Cordite Poetry Review has its roots in a project Mridula Nath Chakraborty has been working on for the last three years: Literary Commons: Writing Australia–India in the Asian century with Dalit, Indigenous and Multilingual Tongues. It publishes twenty-five Indigenous Australian and twenty-six Dalit and tribal Indian authors and their poems in the original language and in translation. Each Indigenous Australian poem is translated into an Indian language, offering a glimpse of the twenty-two official languages of India and some not-so-official ones. Each official Indian language is represented in a poem by Dalit and tribal poets. All the poems published here feature across two pages: the translation appears first, followed by the original on a second page. Forty translators were engaged to work on this special issue.

Dalits and tribals constitute roughly 25% of the population of India and are also spread widely across the rest of South Asia. Dalit is the political term of self-identification and choice for those once deemed ‘untouchable’ within the caste hierarchy of Hinduism. Derived from the Sanskrit word दलित (dalit), which implies ‘downtrodden’ or ‘broken’, this word was used to distinguish and discriminate against those who lay outside the Brahminical order. Though predating the twentieth century, the word ‘Dalit’ has now been reclaimed as a political category, denoting the struggle and the assertion of identity and dignity of those marked by it. It came into prominence through the reformist efforts of Dr B R Ambedkar, jurist, economist and politician, who is also credited as the architect of the Indian constitution. Ambedkar and his ‘Ambedkarite’ philosophy features in many of the poems published here. The roots of Dalit literature can be traced back to the eleventh century, but it came into contemporary prominence in the 1960s and is a significant aspect of South Asian literature.

Tribals are distinct from Dalits in that their cultures predate and sit outside of Hinduism. They comprise the autonomous and heterogenous ethnic and indigenous minorities of the Indian subcontinent. Known as आदीवासी (adivasi / adi = original vasi = inhabitants), each of these groups is autochthonous people of a given region and their existence has been particularly vulnerable to the effects of resource exploitation, urban encroachment, and environmental and ecological degradation caused by modernisation.

There are important and incommensurable distinctions between Dalits and tribals, but their writings have remarkable affinities with Indigenous Australian writing. It has sometimes been argued that Indigenous Australian literatures have more in common with tribal literatures of South Asia, but as can be seen in this special issue, the concerns raised by Dalit poets too resonate powerfully with the assertions of identity and sovereignty of Indigenous Australians.

In early 2016, a roundtable was held at the first Blak & Bright: The Victorian Indigenous Literary Festival. At it were representatives from the Australia Council for the Arts, members from the First Nations Australia Writers’ Network (FNAWN), and various industry professionals from literary organisations, publishers and libraries. The raison d’être of this roundtable was, ostensibly, to open up a discussion and then foment some overarching tactics for increasing both the visibility of Indigenous Australian literature and its readership, in a manner that reflects the actual (ample) Indigenous Australian presence in Australian letters today. Some publishers and organisations wrung their hands, claiming that Indigenous Australian authors were hard to find: ‘How do we make connections with them, where do we find them’? FNAWN plays an excellent and necessary role in facilitating exactly this sort of connection. Cordite Publishing Inc.’s Kent MacCarter stuck up his hand and stated that it wasn’t at all difficult to ‘find’ Indigenous Australian literature and authors. In short order, with the same amount of research that an editor would do for any anthology with a distinct cultural or topic focus, we had many more exciting names than we could possibly publish. Indigenous Australian authors have been out there, ‘findable’ and writing and telling for aeons – they always will be – but the primary problem is getting the whole of the Australian reading audience to care or enlighten them on what they’re missing – and, as an extension of that, to foster a publishing culture that both acknowledges this imbalance and dismantles the barriers. Publishers must do more. Organisations like FNAWN, Blak & Bright are leading this effort, and this special issue, among all else, is a celebration of that vision. International readers are very interested, Australian readers will be too. But this is far from just a commercial exercise.

The World Conference on Indigenous Peoples (WCIP) at the United Nations High Level Plenary Meeting in September 2014 highlighted the claims of indigenous peoples around the world vis-à-vis their lands, languages, identities, territories, resources, rights and priorities. While the definitional frameworks and locational nuances of Global Indigeneity are actively contested, what remains unquestioned is the capacity of this conceptual category to throw into relief unequal power structures, histories of marginalisation and ongoing (neo)colonial exploitations. Underlying the emancipatory potential of ‘indigenousness’ is the recognition of the astonishing fact that, despite relentless persecution, repression, negligence and attempts at genocidal assimilation, indigenous communities around the world have not only survived (in the face of ongoing colonial fantasies) but have held steadfast to their belief systems and their strategies of resilience. Despite concerted attempts the world over to wipe out indigenous peoples, they have persisted; their reality complicates familiar narratives of modernisation and progress and informs notions of citizenship.

A crucial feature of indigenous resilience resides in the way indigenous knowledges and technologies are transmitted over multiple generations and disseminated over diverse geopolitical expanses. These knowledge narratives share common threads around the world and attest to the ways in which the survival of the species and the sustainability of the planet are intimately connected to storytelling traditions. Poetry is an integral and continuing part of these traditions. Whether it is in the languages of India, in standard English or the poetic inflections of Aboriginal English in Australia, these powerful poems carry the message of creativity and continuity for a sustainable and equitable world.

Dalit literatures are written mostly in the official languages of the states in which they are found, as well as some which have not achieved official status. Tribal literatures are written both in the state languages – as well as English – due to histories of Christianisation in the regions where they have lived. It is a particular pleasure in this issue to be have been able to include some of the not-as-yet-official languages of India – Dehwali, Kunkana and Chaudhari-Bhili – where first-generation tribal poets are eloquently articulating their dreams and desires in poetry. While Nepali is a recognised language spoken and taught in India, the Nepali indigenous poet included in this issue is from Nepal. This issue also carries a remarkable language poem by Indigenous Australian poet Lionel Fogarty. While the initial intention of this special issue was to translate each Indigenous Australian poem into a different Indian language, some languages have been repeated, notably Bangla, Hindi and Punjabi.

This special issue could not have come together without the faith and trust of the poets and translators who contributed so generously to it. The vast majority of Indigenous Australian authors readily responded to the invitation to contribute to this collaboration. Writers from all states and territories are represented herein. In India, some individuals have been critical to the endeavour of identifying and inviting Dalit and tribal poets to this special issue. We owe an immense debt of gratitude to Rajamanickam Azhagarasan, Rupalee Burke, Mannarakal Dasan, Gopika Jadeja, Kynpham Sing Nongkynrih, Alito Siqueira and Prakash Subedi for their unstinting advice and guidance and prompt responses to repeated queries and requests for clarification.

We hope this special issue whets your appetite for more indigenous poetry from across the world.

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7 Works from Venkat Raman Singh Shyam: Pardhan Gond Artist and Story-teller

Posted on October 1, 2016 by Venkat Raman Singh Shyam


Venkat Raman Singh Shyam | Dare

The Gonds are one of the largest indigenous peoples of India and are spread throughout several central states of the country. Gond paintings were initially executed only on the walls of dwellings as an expression of religious beliefs, a record of daily life and local festivals, and to depict the surrounding environment and creatures. Gond artwork is characterised by the use of natural symbols such as trees and animals, with meanings rooted in animistic folktales and the culture of the Gond people.

Venkat Raman Singh Shyam (b.1970) belongs to the tradition of Pardhan Gond art inaugurated by the legendary Jangarh Singh Shyam, his uncle. The Pardhan Gond community is traditionally one of musicians who used to receive patronage from the Gond Rajas. With the impoverishment and weakening of the social order of adivasi (adi=original, vasi=inhabitant) communities, first by colonial apparatuses, and then the administration of independent India, patronage to the Pardhans eroded. With the practical significance of their story-singing gone, they turned to agriculture and labour to sustain themselves. Jangarh’s art arose from this imaginative background and created a new means of expression for members of his community. Jangarh developed the method of pointillistic detailing, which is the transformation of Pardhan music into visual form, known as Jangarh Kalam.

Venkat began drawing with pencil and charcoal from the age of ten. Since charcoal is considered inauspicious among the Gonds, he was discouraged by his community. Through his uncle, Venkat was initiated into the Jangarh Kalam style. After apprenticing with Jangarh in the 1990s, Venkat worked on a range of jobs – including as house painter, screen printer and signboard artist. He was also fortunate to be guided by the pioneering, and one of India’s most influential artists, Jagdish Swaminathan. Since Jangarh’s untimely and tragic death in 2002, Venkat has pursued a full-time career in art despite facing several hurdles. While working as a professional signboard artist, he was exposed to Bollywood film-poster style of painting. In his early years in Bhopal, Venkat developed a visual language comprising vivid colours and broad bands of diagonal shading divided by narrow black-and-white striped bands known as lahr and lahrdaar – ‘waves’ and ‘choppy waves’. Venkat also uses acrylic colours for his paintings.

Venkat has honed the ability to draw figures that aspire to realism: the elephant may look quite real, but drunk on mahua, it flies, and it is adorned with flowers. In him, the contemporary global world, and the demands it makes, have learnt to cohabit with a sensibility that invokes a primitivism that is at once modern, and reminds us of the world we all come from. He has experimented with ink and paper too, retelling Gond myths and stories of deities like Bara Deo and Dharti Dai. He describes the evolution of the media used in Gond art and its increasingly urban existence in an interview: ‘Earlier, we used mice hair in place of a brush, while limestone or charcoal were our colour mediums. Now, we use thin brushes and special pens to draw, and water, oil and acrylic mediums as colours.’

Art, for Venkat, is both an escape from, and a grappling with, the harsh realities that have become a part of our existence. Even as he remembers myths and legends that are being overrun by the surfeit of information in this electronic age, he reminds us that the world has barely changed, that time is not linear, that art can still produce magic. Venkat was awarded the Rajya Hasta Shilpa Puraskar by the Government of Madhya Pradesh in 2002. He is the coordinator for an animated film on a Gond folktale made by Tara Douglas, which won the Tallest Story Competition Trophy at the Inverness Festival in Scotland, 2007.

In April 2009, Venkat did a solo exhibition at the Indira Gandhi National Museum of Mankind in Bhopal. Having subsequently travelled and exhibited widely in India, Australia, Canada, Europe, New Zealand and the USA, Venkat has been exposed to a wide range of arts practices which have influenced his sensibility. In 2013, Venkat’s works were exhibited at Sakahàn: International Indigenous Art at the National Gallery of Canada, in Ottawa. Called the ‘largest-ever global survey of contemporary indigenous art’, Sakahàn, meaning ‘to light [a fire]’ in the language of the Algonquin peoples of Canada, featured artworks by more than 80 artists from sixteen countries and six continents who interrogated the theme of what it means to be ‘indigenous’ in the present world.

In 2015, Venkat was one of the artists who participated in the Kalpa Vriksha: Contemporary Indigenous and Vernacular Art of India project at the Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art (ATP8) at the Queensland Art Gallery. Kalpa Vriksha considers some of the most exciting and experimental artists working with the knowledge of these traditions today, capturing how traditional iconography and techniques have developed and how artists are using new styles to explore contemporary issues. In 2016, Venkat was one of the 12 Dalit and tribal participants in Literary Commons: Writing Australia-India in the Asian century with Dalit, Indigenous and Multilingual Tongues.

Venkat’s graphic autobiography, Finding My Way, was published in April 2015.

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Posted in ARTWORKS | Tagged

Blasphemous Lines for Mother | Ki Kyntien Bym Ïaroh Na ka Bynta I Mei

Posted on October 1, 2016 by Kynpham Sing Nongkynrih

Translated from the Khasi to the English by the writer

R. K. Narayan is dead.
Tonight he sits pensive
in his bamboo chair
talking of a “very rare soul”.

Suddenly I’m seized by a desire
to vivisect my own “very rare soul”
from end to end.

Let me begin by saying my mother is more
“plain-dealing”, more “truth-telling” than Narayan’s.
My mother is retired, toothless, diabetic and bedevilled
by headaches and a blinding cataract. In short,
she is a cantankerous old woman.

I remember the time when she was a cantankerous
young woman. When she took an afternoon nap,
she was tigerish: “You sons of a vagina!” she
would snarl, “you won’t even let me rest for a moment,
sons of a fiend! Come here sons of a beast! If I
get you I’ll lame you! I’ll maim you! … Sons
of a louse! You feed on the flesh that breeds you!
Make a sound again when I sleep and I’ll thrash you
till you howl like a dog! You irresponsible nitwits!
how will I play the numbers if I don’t get a good
dream?1 How will I feed you, sons of a lowbred?”

And this fiery salvo would come hurtling
with wooden stools, iron tongs and bronze
blowers, as we ran for our lives and she
gave chase with canes and firewood,
her hair flying loose, her eyes inflamed
and her tongue lashing with a mad rage.
And we being but children would never
learn anything except becoming experts
at dodging her unconventional weapons.

I remember how, having no daughter, she would
make me wash her blood-stained rags. Refusal
was out of the question. So, always I would pick
them with sticks and pestle them in an old iron bucket
till the water cleared. But mind you, all this on the sly.
Seeing me not using my hands would be lethal.
Those days in Cherra we never knew what
a toilet was. We never had a septic tank
or a service latrine. We simply did our job
in our sacred groves.2 But sometimes
my mother would do her job in a trash can.
Then it would fall on me to ferry the cargo
to a sacred grove. Refusal was out
of the question. So, always I would sprinkle
ash upon it, top it with betel-nut peels
and things and do my best to avoid nosy
neighbours and playmates. Those who
have seen Kamal Hasan in Pushpak3
will understand my stratagems.

I could cite a thousand and one things
to demonstrate how cantankerously
rare my mother is. And I decline
to tell you anything good about her.
I’m not a Narayan and I decline
to tell you how she suffered when
my bibulous father was alive; or how
she suffered when he died; or how
she suffered rearing her two sons
and her dead sister’s toddlers
in the proper way. There’s only one
thing commendable I will admit about her:
if she had married again and not been
the cantankerous woman that she is,
I probably would not be standing
here reading this poem today.

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Posted in 76: DALIT INDIGENOUS | Tagged

Slumber | Muktrui

Posted on October 1, 2016 by Chandrakanta Murasingh

Translated from Kokborok (Roman script) to English by Saroj Chaudhury

I am now deep in silent sleep.
Like a child suckling, nestled at its mother’s breast,
Like a tired face buried deep in the beloved’s tresses.
Yet my thoughts, my anxieties haunt me even in slumber.
Now and here, like our blood and our indifference,
My sleep and myself run crimson through our hearts.
Our learned intelligentsia
Parrot the tutored words from within the party-cage,
In much of my words the tune of sleep echoes likewise.
As the coronet of power, pride and wealth
Fits well the ministerial heads,
My sleep sits on my head as a golden crown,
Making me a king.
I traverse the hilly track,
The roadside shrubs lean onto the path.
The extremists tread and run over them,
Proud boots of security men also tread over them.
The corpses are carried along this road.
This dead face seems known.
Kutungla’s wife had assuaged her hunger
With boiled weeds and a marsh frog. She died.
Watuirai passed away from enteritis or dysentery.
And again, they say,
Someone has died in an extremist shooting,
Somebody’s son has died in the crossfire.
He was a customer of our bank, rather garrulous,
Had married a few days back.
Whenever he met me on the road he would ask
‘Where to?’
At first I used to reply—
Then ignored the question.
Why should I tell him where I’m going?
And how far do I know my own destination?
Am I really going someplace?
Or simply flooding the road with the glow of my crown?
Only my sleep knows. Sleep is my life.

My father does not approve this sleep of mine.
My mother gets irritated, my wife gets angry.
Yet there are some, who join the festivals in earnest,
Casting a furtive look at my sleep and me.

They earn money at cockfights,
Sit by the stars and laugh out loud.
Here, slumber lies on my breast, caresses, kisses,
With face flushed in ecstasy.

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Posted in 76: DALIT INDIGENOUS | Tagged ,

Sky Song | Taleng Nitom

Posted on October 1, 2016 by Mamang Dai

Translated from the Adi to the English by the writer.

The evening is
the greatest medicine-maker
testing the symptoms
of breath and demise,
without appointment
writing prescriptions
in the changing script
of a cloud’s wishbone rib
in the expanding body
of the sky.

We left the tall trees standing.
We left the children playing.
We left the women talking
and the men were predicting
good harvests, or bad
that winged summer
we left, racing with
the leopards of morning.

I do not know
how we bore the years.
By ancient, arched gates
I thought I saw you waving
in greeting or farewell
I could not tell,
when summer
changed hands again
only the eastern sky remained;
one morning
flowering peonies
swelled my heart with regret.
Summer’s bitter pill
was a portion of sky
like a bird’s wing
altering design,
a race of fireflies
bargaining with the night.
Attachment is a gift of time,
the evening’s potion provides
heaven’s alchemy
in chromosomes of light
lighting cloud-fires
in thumbprints of the sky.

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Posted in 76: DALIT INDIGENOUS | Tagged

जादूनगरी? | Wonderland

Posted on October 1, 2016 by Samuel Wagan Watson

Translated from the English to the Hindi by Subhash Jaireth

मैं इस देश में जन्मा, ड्रीमटाइम से पोषित; परिदृश्य ऐहिक कथाओं से
गुंजित; मिथकीय लोगों और अन्य अलौकिक जीव​-जन्तुओं से रचित-बसित …
बस ऐसी है यह मेरी जादूनगरी ।

दक्षिणी गोलार्द्ध का सबसे साफ-सुथरा देश … इतना मांजा-चमकाया हुआ कि बस​
खुश और मदहोश अंग्रेज़ ही टेलीविजन पर देखे और माने-मनाए जाते हैं …
बस ऐसी है यह मेरी जादूनगरी?

मैं आज़ाद हूँ, पर जनवादी अधिकार बस नामभर के हैं । शासक वर्ग के लिए मैं बेहया
बला-आफत बन गया हूँ; ऑस्ट्रेलिया में स्वागत है … बस ऐसी है यह मेरी जादूनगरी ?

ईसाई सिपाही आए, हमला करते, धर्मयुद्ध करते, और मेरी धरणी-धरती आतंक पीड़ित
बन गयी, देश जेल बन गया, ऊंची दीवारों के पीछे बन्द हो गया …
बस ऐसी है यह मेरी जादूनगरी?

यह जेल अब अपनी दीवारों के बाहर भी कैदी रखता है … शरणार्थी
बिना मीआद की कैद में …

अब जब मृत्यु-पक्षी चीखता है
और दारोगा हुक्म चिल्लाता है,
बत्तियाँ सब बुझा दो!

बस यही है ऑस्ट्रेलिया …
अजीबो-गरीब जागीर …
हम आदिवासियों का कैदखाना …
यह नया नरसंहार …

बत्तियाँ सब बुझा दो!
यह मेरा घर​-घरौंदा …
मैं इसकी सुन्दरता से चकाचौंध हूँ, पर इसके झुलसाए चेहरे के दर्द को
भूल नहीं सकता ।
बस ऐसी है यह मेरी जादूनगरी …

परिशिष्ट
प्साल्म​ 68:6 परमेश्वर अनाथों का घर बसाता है; और बन्धुओं को छुड़ाकर भाग्यवान करता है;
परन्तु हठीलों को सूखी भूमि पर रहना पड़ता है …

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Posted in 76: DALIT INDIGENOUS | Tagged ,

পেনেলোপে রে কোবি (অপহৃত শিশু) | Penelope Rae Cobby (The Stolen Child)

Posted on October 1, 2016 by Ali Cobby Eckermann

Translated from the English to the Bangla by Seemantini Gupta

দরজার গোড়ায় জড়োসড়ো হয়ে দাঁড়িয়ে, আমি
অবিশ্বাসী আর্তনাদ, আমি
গাড়ির মধ্যে জবুথবু, আমি
বিষাদের রহস্য-স্পর্শ, আমি-ই।

যে কাঁথাটি কখনও ব্যবহার করা হলো না, আমি সে
বা খালি, ধুলো-জমা পেরামবুলেটারটা
টেডি বিয়ার ভর্তি ওই খালি বিছানা
আর নীরব চোখে নীরব অশ্রুধারা।

কোনও বাচ্চার হাত পড়েনি, এমন সব পুতুল
কেকহীন কোনও জন্মদিনের পার্টি
বা নামহীন কোনও মুখ
‘কেন’, এই প্রশ্নের মধ্যে লুকনো ফিসফিসানি।

আমি সেই পাপ, যার কোনও পরিত্রাণ নেই
আমি সেই অনুচ্চারিত ভর্ৎসনা
আমি সেই বেদনা, যার কোনও শেষ নেই
আমিই সেই শিশু, কলঙ্ক গিলে খেয়েছে যাকে।

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Posted in 76: DALIT INDIGENOUS | Tagged ,

I Have Seen Words | لفظ کو دیکھا ہے مَیں نے

Posted on October 1, 2016 by Jayant Parmar

Translated from the Urdu to the English by Gopika Jadeja

I have seen words in the rain
Retreating into the jute shelter
In the queue for kerosene
Withering in the eyes of
Unhappy children.
Standing empty stomach
Drinking tea out of a broken cup
Next to a dead buffalo
I have seen words in a temple
In innocent Yellamma’s heart
I have seen words crying in bloody tears
In the scream of a whip on the back
I have seen words
Walking away in exile from themselves
Hating themselves
I have seen words

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Posted in 76: DALIT INDIGENOUS | Tagged ,

Snails | Shaamuk

Posted on October 1, 2016 by Anupama Basumatary

Translated from the Bodo to the English by Pradip Acharya

Those days I picked the upturned snails
from among the stalks of growing grain
and filled my creel till the neck.
It was fun removing the shells
and watching their recoiling tongues
before I boiled them.
As I sucked the sap and threw the shells
they lay creaking on the floor
in a certain strange rhythm
that hid the agony of their dying.

Now I crawl around the sea-shores
clamber about on land and water
to look for the roots of that strange note
as the marauding waves
draw me back and fling me away.
Strangely, an unseen hand picks me up
sucks my sap and leaves me empty.
The shell of my body creaks
in the agony of the heart breaking
and makes the strange measure of a sad strain.

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Posted in 76: DALIT INDIGENOUS | Tagged ,

My Poetry | મારી કવિતા

Posted on October 1, 2016 by Sahil Parmar

Translated from the Gujarati to the English by Gopika Jadeja

My poetry
dressed in its dirty clothes
poor like me
still awaits acceptance
from the silky pages
of magazines
Still seen thorough critical eyes
Unseen
Unheard
it lies half conscious

My poetry
Rustic like me
stands at the threshold
of Indian literature
Still prohibited entry
for its different clothes
Copper red
like my angry face
it stands at a distance
Alone
Excluded

My poetry
Mad like me
wanders in the street
neighbourhood, crossroads
and dirty lanes
Like the backward village
neglected by the feudal bureaucratic
civilisation

My poetry
Like my tongue
is uncivilized
And like me
it is untouchable
Relegated to the margins
by the sterile civilized
critics

My poetry
Forgotten
Disregarded

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Posted in 76: DALIT INDIGENOUS | Tagged ,

ବାର୍ତାବହ ପକ୍ଷୀର ଗୀତ | Song of the Messenger Bird

Posted on October 1, 2016 by Siv Parker

Translated from the Lepcha to the English by Basudev Sunani

ମୋର ସୁନା ପୁଅ !
ଆଜି ଶୋଇବା ପୂର୍ବରୁ
ମୁଁ ତୋ ପାଇଁ ଚିଠି ଟିଏ ଳେଖି
ମୋର ଅତୀତ ବଖାଣିବାକୁ ଚାହେଁ

ଦିନେ ଗରାଖକୁ ଅପେକ୍ଷା କରି
ମୁଁ ବସିଥାଏ ଛତାତଳେ
ଏକ ଚୌକିଉପରେ

ରାସ୍ତାରେ ଅତ୍ୟଧିକ ଧୁଳି ହେତୁ
ମୁଁ ଆଖିବୁଜି ଦେଇଥାଏ,

ମନେପକା ତ’
ଏ ଦୃଶ୍ୟ ଦେଖି ତୋତେ କେମିତି ଲାଗନ୍ତl !
ହୁଏତ ତୁ ହସି ହସି କହନ୍ତୁ
ବାପା !
ତମେ ଶୋଇପଡୁଛ ଯେ !
କେମିତି ଦେଖିପାରିବ ତମ ଗରାଖକୁ !

ରାସ୍ତା ଆରକଡରେ
ଅତି କୋମଳ ଭାବରେ ଠିଆହୋଇଥିବା
ଗଛ ମାନଙ୍କ ପାଖରୁ
ଆଖି ବୁଜିଥିବା ଅବସ୍ଥାରେ ମୁଁ ଶୁଣିଲି ତା’କୁ,

ଏଥିପୂର୍ବରୁ
ମୁଁ କେବେବି ଶୁଣି ନଥିଲି ଏଭଳି ଗୀତ,

ମୁଁ ଆଖିଖୋଲି ଦେଖିଲି

ବିଚାରୀ ! ମ୍ରିୟମାଣ ଦେଖାଯାଉଥାଏ
ଅତି ନରମିଆଁ , ହାଲୁକା
ସତେ ଯେମିତି ନିଆଁ ର ଶିଖାରେ ଭାସି ଭାସି
ଜଳୁଥାଏ

ମୁଁ ଡାକପାରିଲି
“ ମା’ ତୁ’ ଚାଲି ଆ’ ଏବଂ କ୍ଷଣେ ବିଶ୍ରାମ ନେ’
ପ୍ରଥମେ ଆସ୍ତେ ଆସ୍ତେ
ପରେ ସାମାନ୍ୟ କ୍ଷିପ୍ରବେଗରେ
ସିଏ ନିରୋଳା ରାସ୍ତା ଡେଇଁ ଆସିଲା

“ମୋ ସାଙ୍ଗେ ଟିକେ ପିଉନୁ !
ମୋ ରୁଟିରୁ ଖଣ୍ଡେ ନେ’
ଆଜି ରୁଟି ଟିକିଏ ଶୁଖିଲା ଅଛି,
ଯାହାହେଉ
ଏହାକୁ ଚା’ ରେ ବୁଡେଇ ଖାଇପାରିବୁ”

ସିଏ ପ୍ରକୃତିସ୍ଥ ହେବାଯାଏ
ମୁଁ ଅପେକ୍ଷା କଲି,
ପରେ ଗରମ ଚା’ ଓ ବାସୀ ରୁଟି ଆଣିଦେଲି,

ସିଏ ମୋତେ ନିରେଖିଲା,
ମୁଁ ଯେମିତି କଲି, ସିଏବି ସେମିତି କଲା,

ଟାଣ ରୁଟି କୁ ଖଣ୍ଡ ଖଣ୍ଡ କଲା
ଏବଂ ଚା’ ରେ ଡୁବେଇ ନରମ କଲା,

ଓହୋ !
ସିଏ ଭୋକିଲା ଥିଲା ।

କହିଲି
“ ମୁଁ ଖୁବ ଆନନ୍ଦିତ ଯେ
ତୋ ପାଖରେ କିଛି କ୍ଷଣ ବସିବାର ସୁଯୋଗ ପାଇଲି”

ମୋତେ କିଛି କହିବା ପୂର୍ବରୁ
ସିଏ ମୁଣ୍ଡକୁ ଏପଟେ ସେପଟେ କଲା,
ମୁଁ ତା’ କଥା ଶୁଣିବା ପାଇଁ ଅର୍ଦ୍ଧନିମିଳିତ ହେଲି,
ଅତି ଆନନ୍ଦରେ ଶୁଣିଲି:

“ ମୁଁ ସେଇ ଜାଗାରୁ ଆସିଛି
ଯେଉଁଠି କେହି ଗୀତ ଗାଆନ୍ତିନି,
ଆମ ପୂର୍ବଜ ମାନେ
ବାର୍ତାବହ ପକ୍ଷୀର କାହାଣୀ ଶୁଣଉଥିଲେ,
ଲୋକେ ପକ୍ଷୀର ଗୀତ ଆଗ୍ରହରେ ଶୁଣୁଥିଲେ,
ଗୀତ ଶୁଣି ଖୁସିରେ କୁଣ୍ଢାକୁଣ୍ଢି ହେଉଥିଲେ
ନିଜଭିତରେ ଆଲୋଚନା କରୁଥିଲେ,
ଭୋଜିଭାତ କରି ଖାଉଥିଲେ,
ସତେ ଯେମିତି ଏଇଟା ତାଙ୍କର ଶ୍ରେଷ୍ଠ ଦିନ
ଏଭଳି ଖୁସିର ଦିନ ହୁଏତ ଆସି ନପାରେ
ଆସିଲେବି ୟା’ ଠୁ କମ ହୋଇପାରେ ।

ଏଭଳି ଅନୁଭବ କରି
ଗଭୀର ନିଦରେ ଶୋଇଯାଉଥିଲେ ।

ମୁଁ ଆଖି ଖୋଲି ତାକୁ ଅନେଇଲି,
ସିଏ ଅତି ଗାଢ ଓ ଚିରନ୍ତନ ଦେଖାଯାଉଥିଲା,

କହିଲି
“ ମାଁ ! ଆଉଟିକିଏ ଚା’ ଦେବି ?”
ମୋର ମନେ ଅଛି,
ସେଇ ଦିନ ସକାଳେଇଁ
ତୋର ମାମୁଁ ଆଣିଥିଲେ ତଟକା ମହୁ ମୋ ପାଇଁ,

ମନେ ଅଛି ନା !
ସେଇ ସୁନ୍ଦର ବଗିଚା, ଯେଉଁଠି ତୁ ଖେଳୁ ଥିଲୁ
ଏବଂ ମଜା କରୁଥିଲୁ ?
ତୁ ଯେ ତାଙ୍କର ମିଠା, ସୁନେଲି ମହୁକୁ ଭଲ ପାଉଥିଲୁ !

ସିଏ ଖାଇଲା,
କାହାଣୀ ପୁଣି ଲମ୍ବେଇବା ଆଗରୁ
ଆଗ ଅପେକ୍ଷା ଆଉ ଟିକିଏ ଅଧିକ ପିଇଲା,
“ ନୁଆ ଯୁଗ ଆସିଲା
ପିଲାମାନେ ବୁଢାମାନଙ୍କ କଥା ଏଣିକି ଶୁଣୁ ନାହାନ୍ତି,
ସେମାନେ କରୁଣ କାହାଣୀ ଶୁଣିବାକୁ
ପସନ୍ଦ କରୁ ନାହାନ୍ତି,
ପକ୍ଷୀର ଗୀତକୁ ଭୁଲିଯାଇଛନ୍ତି,

ଲୋକେ ବି ପକ୍ଷୀମାନଙ୍କ ଠାରୁ ଦୂରେଇଗଲେଣି
ପକ୍ଷୀ ଉପରକୁ ଟେକା ଫୋପାଡୁଛନ୍ତି,
ହତ୍ୟା କରୁଛନ୍ତି,
ବଡ, ସାନ, ରଙ୍ଗୀନ, ସାଦା
ସବୁ ପକ୍ଷୀଙ୍କୁ ଭୟ ଦେଖାଉଛନ୍ତି
ଅତଏବ ପକ୍ଷୀମାନେ ଗାଇବା ଛାଡି ଦେଲେଣି,

ସମୟ ବଦଳି ଯାଇଛି
ଏବେ ମା, ବାପା ପିଲାମାନଙ୍କୁ ତାଗିଦାକରୁଛନ୍ତି
ବନ୍ଦ କର !
ଗାଅ ନାହିଁ
ତମେ ଆଉ କ’ଣ ପକ୍ଷୀ ହେଇ ରହିଛ ?

ପିଲା ମାନେ ହସି ହସି କହୁଛନ୍ତି
“ ପକ୍ଷୀ ମାନେ ଗୀତ ଗାଆନ୍ତି ନାହିଁ “

ୟା ପରେ ମୋର ଅତିଥି
ତାଙ୍କ ବାଟରେ ଚାଲିଗଲେ,
ଏବେ ରାସ୍ତା ପୁଣି ନିରୋଳା ହେଇଗଲା,

ଭାବୁଛି !
ଆଜିଭଳି ଦିନରେ ତୁ ଭଲା
ଏ ପକ୍ଷୀର ଗୀତ ଶୁଣିବାକୁ ରହିଥାନ୍ତୁ !
ଅଥଚ ତୁ ବହୁ ଦୂରରେ,
ଯଦି ପକ୍ଷୀ ପରି ତୋର ବି ଡେଣା ଥା’ ନ୍ତା
ତୁ ଏଇଠିକି ଉଡି ଆସିଥାନ୍ତୁ !

ଏକ୍ଷେଣା
ମୁଁ ଖୁସିରେ ଶୋଇବାକୁ ଯାଉଛି
ପ୍ରାର୍ଥନା କରୁଛି
ତୁ ଯେଉଁ ରାସ୍ତାରେ ପାଦଦେଇଛୁ
ତୋର ଚଲାପଥ ସୁଗମ ହେଉ ମୋର ସୁନା ପୁଅ !
                    ବାପା ।

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Posted in 76: DALIT INDIGENOUS | Tagged ,

Twi | Water Drops

Posted on October 1, 2016 by Jim Everett

Translated from the English to the Kokborok by Chandrakanta Murasing

bolong bahai borobsai phayw watwini twyo sujagwi chwngsakhe ha
boyarbai tai waisa bebak phuranna bagwi

kwthwi ranprajak bolongni langma kwtalkhe sichayasak
kubun kubun phaising thngw twi

****

phiya haywngo twi kwrwi hinkhe twino twywi sabo le swinai ?

joto langmani twi nangw joto langma-no twi lena twi twi-no lena hamarima

twi kwthar-bo twi twi-no kwthar phola

thui bisingtwi twi botok nok khungsani phayw bwrwi chwla
thui bisingtwi jaiti solai kurunglaijak borok joto mang bwphang waphang
yarung nanglaijak o takhuk bukhukrog

twi nokhao chwngjak twi langmao pungjak
chwng lekhawi paiya twi biyang busuk nwng i kok puitu thangyakhe sadi
minamatani twiyo kuphungjak harungo

watwi thop busuk kwlaikha bisi 1803 ni simi ?

watwi thop thop kulaima joto thumwi mankhe
aa ongwi thangma khamun chwng le.

nokbar twi sal tal mai-waksa khartwi twijlang laywi thangw
sal tungsawi nokbarni chubachu bai twi sakao bumul kholw yapri bwthai bwthai
tai mwnak tailamtwi nwgw hakor kuthukmarog
bumul kochogwi thangw ha laywi haywng phaising
watwi ni twibai thuiduk botok langma bising bising

mwnakma twi

nogo kiphilwi takhumsarog yapha khoroptwi bwkrang bwprawi twi jariwi khibw
twijlang bomjak kwchwng pilithai sakao twirem kayatwi katwi kaslewi kwlayw
kotono kholobjagwi tongw bukchaywng kuthukma

sal tai-bo kuchugo kawi paima kwrwi lam phunwgtwi twyo
tai o lama pohorni simi chengma ulo
nongkhorwi thangkha twyo swnamjak hakor mwnak kuthukmao
o hakor twijlangni swlai kuthuk aro pohor hapya mwnakni lam laywi
aro riawarrawa thuwi tongw twi mwtaini mwnakma nogo

tal

sampili bumul hor sal swlaijagw nokhao thungma bising
nokhani twi nokhano swnamw poder podkhe suwi kwbagw jorani chumuino
chumuirog thang phai ongw khon khonlaywi nokni lama phaising
eba talbai twiphil bai baksa himna tongthogwi

sal

awan hai phungsaw twi mokol kwbangma bwskango
nokbar khawi kobonwi thangw satungo tungsogwi
sakao thangwi chumuio nangkhe pherwi thangw sakmang bini
paima kwrwi twi-mangpili haikhe watwini ulo sal tai waisa phaikhe
lama khonwi himw kwtalkhe
twi kuphungjak tungsawi siyari pantwi ongw oro uro
jephuru chumui kotorma budul budul somsawi kholobw salno
pherang chirigw nokhano chirwi baywngni horo jilik jilik
aboni ulo siring sorop haywng tukujak watwi twyo
ha kisio sichasaw langma kwtalni bahai motom
bumul kaisini chokhreng chogsai tai waisa sal kaw

watwini twi ransai kobonsai pherangbai kudijagw
tai muktwi kupulwng kabwi tongw nokha kosomni nogo

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সেলাম জানাই কৃষ্ণকালো লোক | Palya Palya Dha’lan Djani

Posted on October 1, 2016 by Lionel Fogarty

Translated from Lionel Fogarty in language to the Bangla by Avishek Rath

হাতকয় পিছে পায় পায় চলে
জংলা জংলি মন হতে চায়
ভাতার নয় রে মরদ রে মুই
যোনিতে, পায়েতে, পায়ের পাতায়
মাটির স্বপ্ন দাউ দাউ জ্বলে
ঋতুস্রাবের আগুন তলে

মুই কান পাতি, নীচে খাড়া হয়
শুলসম যোনি মাঝে যেতে চায়
হুহু হাওয়া বয়, চোখে চোখ রয়
মিলনের সাধ চোখের ভাষায়
দূর হয়ে যা রে, তুই চোর ওরে
পুলিশ পুলিশ পুলিশ চেঁচায়

ছায়ামানুষ রে, সাবধান হ’রে
খালের পিশাচ ওই
রক্তের শেষ, ভাই চলে যা রে
আত্মীয় ন’স তুই
ঠাক্‌মা, দিদিমা সেলাম তোদের কৃষ্ণকালো মুই
আমি বরং মাটির টানে দেশেই ফিরে যাই।

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Anti-love Poem

Posted on October 1, 2016 by Mona Zote

Not translated. Written originally in the English by the author, a native Mizo speaker.

This is not a poem for lovers or those whose heartlines are as fruitful as orchards across the easy plain of their contentment.

It is not a poem for the boys lying in the shade of the fig tree, bronze objects provocative in their naked idleness; though a smile passed between us like an iron flower and they must have returned home with blood and leaves on their chests.

It is not a poem that will by any stretch of the imagination create an asylum for migrants, painters and guitar players, polite romantics stumbling at an uncivilised hour through the corridors of a smudged hotel. Nor for the bureaucracy of minor passions.

It is not a poem for the organza girl, fatal as a newly purchased knife, succulent as the sugarcane she peeled with her teeth, the languorous glance of whose intentions only the somnambular blue windows of her house can interpret. We all have known a moment like this.

It will not salute the solitary waiters dancing in the milky green smog of cheap tube lights, homeless as crumbs on the tables they have wiped all day, despised – though freshly barbered – by our girls who in another place, if they were another race, would not tolerate such loneliness in men without doing something about it. Send this report to the missionary who fell in the river and later fell into the lake of his zeal for a land and a woman until the hard rain of exile washed him away and he died, as much a fool as when he began.

It is not a poem for Jacob who loved but for Esau who was hated, who was not far-sighted, who we remember as a Neolithic gunslinger, bottle-sucker and hairy forerunner of malcontents who now trawl the epiphytic roots of cyberspace searching for the penultimate good bomb.

This is not a poem to be stuffed in the tinfoil of an aborted ideology, stuffed into zippered bags and manhandled at airports and international boundaries like a potential terrorist, stuffed in a fat yam leaf and digested along with television spume and academic chins.

It is not a poem that heroically claims to revive the dead, convert the tattooed, feed the pigs, do the laundry waiting at the start of day and search for the perfect button with fatherly perseverance. Thread and needle at the ready.

It will not commemorate the last noisy supper of pop songs and salted beer on a black hill disgorged of its warm minerals.

Nor is it a poem dedicated to alien super grass, tropical markets overloaded with avocados and caterpillars, French saints carved from soap – those who have pressed from the metal tub of phrases and historical bad behaviour such wine that it shamed the honey-making stones. It is not for them.

Nor will it take its stand with those who protest at the oiled guns of democracy and those who think they park in a free speech zone and those who denounce the stockpile of mass ethics polished in antiseptic factories of faith; because only birds are democratic, free and possess faith.

Nor is it a poem whose location can be found in calendars, whose trajectory calculated by the speed of solar wind and the congruent angles in a Gregorian month where reality and desire can meet.

It is a poem celebrating the impossibility of arrival and the necessity of violence, because these too are constants of the whole sad untelevised truth.

It is a poem that has agreed to conspire against itself

For to write a poem against love you must first have written a poem about love

You must have sought beyond yourself a moment’s refuge from your own life, you must have leaned to smile at a sudden reflection in the bruised glass

Above all this poem is not for you or about you

even though I am jealous of the widowed city that holds you in her embrace and surrounds you with her calm ambitions, her talent for disguise, her politic summers

It is not a poem that will speak of the things for which we have no remedy:
time unclassified vertebrate, linear, possibly pitiless
            distance when unpinned from gravity, repents the tyranny of maps
the body’s betrayals

I know what this string of jasmines and these overturned chairs want to tell me
I know if I should kiss you
                                                  your mouth would taste of love and whiskey.

Posted in 76: DALIT INDIGENOUS | Tagged

Satha Didi Bhuiini Takot | Seven Sisters Strong

Posted on October 1, 2016 by Dylan Coleman

Translated from the English to the Nagamese by Dolly Kikon

Moikhan toh guti sopona laga rushi te nisena,
Sopona beshi maiki laga.
Kunba guti beya hoishe, kunba toh jaijai shea,
Holibi rushi takot ase.
Aro itu ki rushi ase?
Satha didi bhuini laga sopona.

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Who … are we? | આમે … કિડેએ …

Posted on October 1, 2016 by Mansinh Chaudhary

Translated from the Chaudhary-Bhili language of Adivasis to the English by Rupalee Burke

Dwellers of forests and hills
True owners of forests and rulers of hills
Inhabiting forests since primeval times
Cultivating crops from the depths of the Earth
Sustainers of the world
Consuming fruits and flowers forests offer us
Drinking water from rippling brooks
With self-respect we live and let live
Like tigers in the forest we live with self-pride
Resisting slavery with all our might
Sleeping on empty stomach rather than begging
Foraging food from forests and hills
To keep ourselves alive
Since Nature gives us our daily bread
It is for us most divine
Where food we get there is our shrine
Who gives us food, who cares for us, our deity is
Thus are forests and hills our deities
The tiger, our deity, protects us in the forest
So is the cobra who fends the crops in our fields
Supporting us and our fields, the river is our deity
We depend on Nature for sustenance
Not on the pity of others
Head held high we live in Mother Earth’s lap
Head held high we die in Mother Earth’s lap.

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Chandalini’s Poem | চণ্ডালিনীর কবিতা

Posted on October 1, 2016 by Kalyani Thakur Charal

Translated from the Bangla to the English by Sayantan Das

I leave behind these marshes and jungles,
The people of the jungle,
Leave behind the river
The forest trail
Far away to my own people
Who shed blood and sweat
I go
To the malnourished children
Of our fallen, battered forefathers,
To my brothers and sisters
I shall leave behind this land
Of four rivers and five settlements
Stretched out beside the blacksmith’s furnace
I have been privy
To the argument of the hammer and the iron
I have become the plough
And travelled far, riding on the farmer’s shoulder
Tilled the vast expanse
So that the field teems with crops
Just to fight the pangs of hunger
Still I have to witness Amlasol1
I have to feed my family ant-eggs
That look like white grains of rice
That is enough to sustain the children
They take up their bows and arrows
And even without caring for
The true meaning of revolution
Bare their chests in front of the barrel of the gun

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