I realised that there are probably a lot of people who can't read the poems by the Dutch candidates for poet laureate. So I decided to translate Hagar Peeter's submission to the NRC Handelsblad. Apologies to Hagar if I didn't do her justice.
Poem about the year 2008 by Hagar Peeters
Poem without rhyme or reason
Dear dead postman, traffic cop, lady police chief
for me you are the heroes of 2008
you and all the others thanks to whose (my stepfather corrected this)
alertness we can dream
I am a twelve year old girl
my father also died as a result of senseless violence
the man who had beaten him to death said at the trial that if he hadn’t
been fighting but had read my poem instead he would not have killed
my father
when you read a poem you have to pay attention
and maybe you’ll feel a bit emotional
and when you think or feel emotional you can’t be angry anymore
when you’re very drunk you can’t read poems, so first
you have to not be drunk if you want to read this poem
and if you hit people because you’re drunk maybe you won’t hit them anymore because you’re not drunk because you’re reading this
you can also count to ten but counting to ten is boring
everybody who has killed someone without any reason
has probably heard a song once they really liked
a poem is a like a song written down, a song you can like
it is sad when people sing beautiful songs but nobody listens to them
it is sad when people write poems but nobody reads them because
everybody is too busy being so impatient that they want to hit someone
somebody who beats somebody else to death thinks at that moment
that it’s the most important thing in the world
but there are poems that say something that is even more important
I want to give this poem to all the men and women in all the prisons
where they are uselessly spending useless time because they
killed somebody without reason
except that they had nothing better to do
so that they can read my poem because
they’ve got nothing better to do anyway
if they can’t read this I can have it translated for them
because this poem doesn’t rhyme anyway so
it’s easy to translate
it’s a very easy poem that everyone can probably understand
because I am a twelve year old girl and my father was beaten to death
by someone who got up on the wrong side of the bed
Wednesday, January 21, 2009
Poets Laureate 2: a change of heart
After I replied to my friend that I would not be voting for a Dutch poet laureate, he wondered whether I would reconsider if I looked again and more closely at the plans of the candidates for their tenure, should they be chosen. Did I not think, he asked, that Hagar Peeters showed a real social commitment and were her good intentions not worth a vote?
So, back I went. I took a bit of digging, but I finally found the information I was looking for on the page for voting. Here, underneath the pictures, are three clickable options for each poet: vote, find out more, and plans of the poet. Tsead Bruinja has a nice clear five point program, but most of his plans seem to promote poets and their activities. Nothing wrong with that in principle, but it sounds a bit like pissing in their own pot. I very quickly gave up on Joke van Leeuwen, because her language was too official, academic. More an essay than an approach to the common reader. Erik Menkveld ditto, although at least he divides his plans in points. But they are just a little vague. Ramsey Nasr tells a story, he sounds real and his plans sound straight forward and doable. And then Hagar Peeters, the daughter of my friend. Her piece sounds very direct, very personal, but also very personable.
Hagar Peeters sums up her plans as follows: poetry counts, poetry is important and poetry should be socially committed. Her two most important plans are to encourage young people, in schools, to write 'poetry without rhyme or reason', poems from the heart, about their emotions and experiences, to help these youths talk about what is important to them. Her second plan is to edit poetry collections of poems written by immigrants to The Netherlands from Indonesia, Turkey, Marocco, Dutch Suriname etc. with identity as the theme: 'poems about us and each other'. The poems to be printed in two languages: the original language and Dutch. The purpose being, of course, to broaden and deepen understanding.
Hmmm. So. For me a toss up between Nasr and Peeters.
Next I looked at a web page from a Dutch daily (NRC Handelsblad) that encourages readers to vote. Each of the candidates has written a poem for this paper. Reading these clinched it for me. The most accessible, most moving poem was by Hagar Peeters. Her "Poem without rhyme or reason" is written from the standpoint of a twelve year old girl whose father was beaten to death in a drunken brawl. So I changed my mind and voted for her. Go Hagar!!
By the way, as an aside. The Dutch sure are wordy people. Just look at the weblink for the NRC Handelsblad page:
http://www.nrcboeken.nl/nieuws/bepaal-zelf-wie-de-nieuwe-dichter-des-vaderlands-wordt
(the last bit after the last forward slash means: you determine who will be the new national poet).
So, back I went. I took a bit of digging, but I finally found the information I was looking for on the page for voting. Here, underneath the pictures, are three clickable options for each poet: vote, find out more, and plans of the poet. Tsead Bruinja has a nice clear five point program, but most of his plans seem to promote poets and their activities. Nothing wrong with that in principle, but it sounds a bit like pissing in their own pot. I very quickly gave up on Joke van Leeuwen, because her language was too official, academic. More an essay than an approach to the common reader. Erik Menkveld ditto, although at least he divides his plans in points. But they are just a little vague. Ramsey Nasr tells a story, he sounds real and his plans sound straight forward and doable. And then Hagar Peeters, the daughter of my friend. Her piece sounds very direct, very personal, but also very personable.
Hagar Peeters sums up her plans as follows: poetry counts, poetry is important and poetry should be socially committed. Her two most important plans are to encourage young people, in schools, to write 'poetry without rhyme or reason', poems from the heart, about their emotions and experiences, to help these youths talk about what is important to them. Her second plan is to edit poetry collections of poems written by immigrants to The Netherlands from Indonesia, Turkey, Marocco, Dutch Suriname etc. with identity as the theme: 'poems about us and each other'. The poems to be printed in two languages: the original language and Dutch. The purpose being, of course, to broaden and deepen understanding.
Hmmm. So. For me a toss up between Nasr and Peeters.
Next I looked at a web page from a Dutch daily (NRC Handelsblad) that encourages readers to vote. Each of the candidates has written a poem for this paper. Reading these clinched it for me. The most accessible, most moving poem was by Hagar Peeters. Her "Poem without rhyme or reason" is written from the standpoint of a twelve year old girl whose father was beaten to death in a drunken brawl. So I changed my mind and voted for her. Go Hagar!!
By the way, as an aside. The Dutch sure are wordy people. Just look at the weblink for the NRC Handelsblad page:
http://www.nrcboeken.nl/nieuws/bepaal-zelf-wie-de-nieuwe-dichter-des-vaderlands-wordt
(the last bit after the last forward slash means: you determine who will be the new national poet).
Saturday, January 17, 2009
Poets Laureate
A friend from Holland recently sent me a chain letter. The email encouraged me to vote for Hagar Peeters (his daughter as it happens, so understandable) as Poet Laureate for The Netherlands .
Why, I wonder would anyone want to take on such an onerous position? The last British one (Andrew Motion) ended up suffering writer's block after his ten year stint and saw it as a thankless job. Several countries have the institution of poet laureate and each is different, although most expect the incumbent to promote poetry and to write some poems for certain occasions. In some cases there is no salary. The British institution of poet laureate famously paid £100 and 'a butt of sack' (108 gallons of sweet wine) a year, although the last poet laureate Andrew Motion was paid £5000 and 650 bottles of sherry. At least the New Zealand one offers a more reasonable $50,000 honorarium. Otago University held an interesting exhibition on the subject of poets laureate, information on which can be found online. It includes information on the Te Mata Estate Poet Laureate.
I had a look at the Dutch short list and read some poems of each one. Apologies to readers who don't read Dutch. I found I could not vote for any one of them. When I read their poems, I find that they are unnecessarily mystifying and abstruse (I mean, why not just say: puzzling). Their poems remind me of my own early efforts, later not continued.
Lawrence Ferlinghetti, San Francisco Poet Laureate, wrote the following "Populist Manifesto" (as he himself called it) in 1970 addressed to poets:
Poets, come out of your closets,
Open your windows, open your doors,
You have been holed-up too long
in your closed worlds
. . . .
No time now for the artist to hide
above, beyond, behind the scenes,
indifferent, paring his fingernails,
refining himself out of existence.
No time now for our little literary games,
for our paranoias and hypochondrias,
no time now for fear & loathing,
time now only for light & love.
We have seen the best minds of our generation
destroyed by boredom at poetry readings
. . . .
His was a call, he later wrote, "for a universal poetry with ... 'public surface' — a poetry with a very accessible commonsensual surface that can be understood by most everyone without a very literary education." He admitted, however, that if it was to 'rise above the level of journalism, it must have other subjective and/or subversive levels.' (Lawrence Ferlinghetti, San Francisco Poems (San Francisco: City Lights Foundation, 2001, Poet Laureate Series Number 1), pages 17-18).
I find I have developed great appreciation for simple language. There is an art in saying exactly what you mean succinctly and clearly. Poems should do so in a way that leaves you feeling satisfied that there's something more here than meets the eye, or that carries enough meaning to keep you pondering. One poet who did this expertly is Hone Tuwhare (mentioned in a previous blog). The two poets who had been previous poets laureate for the Netherlands also succeeded in this. And the English choices have not been too bad. A good friend of mine, a New Zealand poet, also invariably succeeds in saying beautiful things simply. For example:
Silver and grey
The difference between silver and grey
is a whiff of wind;
between silver and blue,
a thin white mist that hides the sky.
Waters, mirrors, harbour, tides —
my home is a place of watching:
constant change within the constancy
of hills and sea and a house
perched within, above, beside.
It doesn't speak to me:
my presence is a mystery, insignificant;
but if I will, I can see myself reflected,
I can take in the real-world rhythms
of sun and moon and turning earth
that give a true perspective
to the mercurial sensivities of humanness
that in its pleasure seems to touch the stars,
in its despair would sink into the earth;
and at times it seems a whiff of wind
is all it takes to make the difference.
Miriam Richardson, Something to write home about; Dunedin poems (Peninsula Press, 1994), page 28
I wish the yet to be appointed poets laureate for the United Kingdom and for The Netherlands all the best, but it's a job I would not wish on an enemy, let alone on the daughter of a friend. So I will not be voting.
Why, I wonder would anyone want to take on such an onerous position? The last British one (Andrew Motion) ended up suffering writer's block after his ten year stint and saw it as a thankless job. Several countries have the institution of poet laureate and each is different, although most expect the incumbent to promote poetry and to write some poems for certain occasions. In some cases there is no salary. The British institution of poet laureate famously paid £100 and 'a butt of sack' (108 gallons of sweet wine) a year, although the last poet laureate Andrew Motion was paid £5000 and 650 bottles of sherry. At least the New Zealand one offers a more reasonable $50,000 honorarium. Otago University held an interesting exhibition on the subject of poets laureate, information on which can be found online. It includes information on the Te Mata Estate Poet Laureate.
I had a look at the Dutch short list and read some poems of each one. Apologies to readers who don't read Dutch. I found I could not vote for any one of them. When I read their poems, I find that they are unnecessarily mystifying and abstruse (I mean, why not just say: puzzling). Their poems remind me of my own early efforts, later not continued.
Lawrence Ferlinghetti, San Francisco Poet Laureate, wrote the following "Populist Manifesto" (as he himself called it) in 1970 addressed to poets:
Poets, come out of your closets,
Open your windows, open your doors,
You have been holed-up too long
in your closed worlds
. . . .
No time now for the artist to hide
above, beyond, behind the scenes,
indifferent, paring his fingernails,
refining himself out of existence.
No time now for our little literary games,
for our paranoias and hypochondrias,
no time now for fear & loathing,
time now only for light & love.
We have seen the best minds of our generation
destroyed by boredom at poetry readings
. . . .
His was a call, he later wrote, "for a universal poetry with ... 'public surface' — a poetry with a very accessible commonsensual surface that can be understood by most everyone without a very literary education." He admitted, however, that if it was to 'rise above the level of journalism, it must have other subjective and/or subversive levels.' (Lawrence Ferlinghetti, San Francisco Poems (San Francisco: City Lights Foundation, 2001, Poet Laureate Series Number 1), pages 17-18).
I find I have developed great appreciation for simple language. There is an art in saying exactly what you mean succinctly and clearly. Poems should do so in a way that leaves you feeling satisfied that there's something more here than meets the eye, or that carries enough meaning to keep you pondering. One poet who did this expertly is Hone Tuwhare (mentioned in a previous blog). The two poets who had been previous poets laureate for the Netherlands also succeeded in this. And the English choices have not been too bad. A good friend of mine, a New Zealand poet, also invariably succeeds in saying beautiful things simply. For example:
Silver and grey
The difference between silver and grey
is a whiff of wind;
between silver and blue,
a thin white mist that hides the sky.
Waters, mirrors, harbour, tides —
my home is a place of watching:
constant change within the constancy
of hills and sea and a house
perched within, above, beside.
It doesn't speak to me:
my presence is a mystery, insignificant;
but if I will, I can see myself reflected,
I can take in the real-world rhythms
of sun and moon and turning earth
that give a true perspective
to the mercurial sensivities of humanness
that in its pleasure seems to touch the stars,
in its despair would sink into the earth;
and at times it seems a whiff of wind
is all it takes to make the difference.
Miriam Richardson, Something to write home about; Dunedin poems (Peninsula Press, 1994), page 28
I wish the yet to be appointed poets laureate for the United Kingdom and for The Netherlands all the best, but it's a job I would not wish on an enemy, let alone on the daughter of a friend. So I will not be voting.
Sunday, January 11, 2009
Antarctica
Almost a year ago since I last updated this blog. It's summer once again and therefore I am on a reading binge again. This time part of my reading is purposeful. In February I will be going on a month long boat trip to Antarctica and half my reading is centered around this. I have collected a little pile of suitable books, some from the library some I have bought. I started with Jenny Diski's Skating to Antarctica (London: Granta Books, 1997). She visited Antarctica via South America, a much shorter trip than I will make and on a larger boat (with more passengers). Our thirty day sea journey starts from Bluff, on a Russian research ship, with only 48 passengers, plus Russian crew and plus New Zealand naturalist guides.
Diski's reasons for the trip closely match mine. She writes:
I didn’t plan this journey as a pilgrimage of any kind, just a hopeful voyage into whiteness. My motives were as indistinct as the landscape I was wishing to travel to. There was imply an irrational desire to be at the bottom of the world in a land of ice and snow. (p. 125)
Yet, there are some specific things I am hoping to get out of this journey. First of all, we will stop at the Auckland Islands, which I have wished to visit for some years, ever since I came across the book Wake of the Invercauld by a Canadian woman Madelene Ferguson Allen, the great-granddaughter of a man who was shipwrecked on the Auckland islands in 1863. This beautifully illustrated book tells the parallel stories of Madelene's own journey (with a group of family members) to the Auckland Islands to try and retrace her forefather's steps, and the story of her great-grandfather through excerpts from his journal. The Southland Museum in Invercargill has a display about the Auckland islands and includes the story of another wreck, that of the Grafton.
The Auckland Islands are desolate, rain soaked and cold and home to some amazing wildlife, and a great many birds, among them the royal albatross. Also quite strange plant life, adapted to the harsh environment. I don't consider myself either a bird watcher or a botanist, but I love to see albatrosses and I do feel a strange attraction to bleak places. They don't come much bleaker than the Auckland Islands.
The second reason why I am keen on this trip is my desire to be among icebergs. Having read Diski, I am looking forward to it even more, because she reassured me that photos, films and other representations do not dull the amazing experience. She wrote in Skating to Antarctica:
Then in the evening the first iceberg floated by. The iceberg emerged before my lazy gaze at the window, like a mirage, a dream appearance, a matt white edifice ghostly in the misty grey light and falling snow. A sudden, smoothly gliding event in the great empty sea under the great empty sky. I blinked at it. There was none of the disappointing familiarity of something seen too often on TV or in picture books. This startled with its brand-new reality, with its quality of not-like-anything-else. (p. 218)
At the moment I am reading The Worst Journey in the World by Apsley Cherry-Garrard, one of the youngest men on the Scott expedition of the Terra Nova 1910-1913, the one where Scott and his crew died on the way back from the pole, after Amundsen got there first. The Cherry-Garrard book is quite an amazing story of amateurism and blundering about and cheerful perseverance. Authors who have described this expedition in these terms have been severely criticised by admirers of Scott. But the question remains why Amundsen seemingly almost effortlessly reached the pole and returned a month before Scott, without loss of life and with dog teams still alive and functioning. And yet, Scott is the more famous and the more admired, at least in the English speaking world. Some light is shed on this conundrum by Francis Spufford's cultural history of our fascination with polar exploration and with the sublime, titled I May Be Some Time (Faber and Faber Paperback, 1997).
Cherry-Garrard's story is one of cheerful endurance. The men are 'bricks' about frost bite and hunger, hold sing-alongs and tell stories. This had become a tradition of naval explorers and seems to have been first recorded by Sir William Parry, who explored the Arctic in the 1820s, after first serving under Ross. Spufford has this to say about it:
While darkness grew, and the thermometer dropped, the crews of his Hecla and Fury did calisthenics, danced to a barrel-organ, read a shipboard newspaper, and watched amateur theatricals. As well as being adopted by the Admiralty as a standard morale-boosting ploy, this image of tenacious jollity proved irresistible to the public. Strangely snug, paradoxically homely, it seemingly made parlour games a way of defying the elements. (p. 50)
The boat I will be travelling on is well protected against the elements and the thermal gear we, as passengers, will be wearing will not give us the chance to have to endure the cold these explorers endured. So I hope we will not have to resort to parlour games and jollity. Although I would not be adverse to a game of bridge.
Several of the expeditions were accompanied by professional photographers, the most famous of whom are Frank Hurley, who took amazing pictures of the famous Endurance expedition with Shackleton (the web link tells the story, accompanied by Hurley's photos). There's also a series of Hurley photos on Flickr. Scott's expedition was accompanied by Ponting, who took wonderful pictures, of which this is one of the more famous ones:
Wilson created amazing water colours
during Scott's polar expedition. I have purchased a book with photographs by Hurley and a book with Ponting's photographs. Both reissued about five years ago, with accompanying stories and extra photos. I won't be attempting too many photos myself, with such an amazing record. But I will take a few 'snaps' to prove I was really there.
Diski's reasons for the trip closely match mine. She writes:
I didn’t plan this journey as a pilgrimage of any kind, just a hopeful voyage into whiteness. My motives were as indistinct as the landscape I was wishing to travel to. There was imply an irrational desire to be at the bottom of the world in a land of ice and snow. (p. 125)
Yet, there are some specific things I am hoping to get out of this journey. First of all, we will stop at the Auckland Islands, which I have wished to visit for some years, ever since I came across the book Wake of the Invercauld by a Canadian woman Madelene Ferguson Allen, the great-granddaughter of a man who was shipwrecked on the Auckland islands in 1863. This beautifully illustrated book tells the parallel stories of Madelene's own journey (with a group of family members) to the Auckland Islands to try and retrace her forefather's steps, and the story of her great-grandfather through excerpts from his journal. The Southland Museum in Invercargill has a display about the Auckland islands and includes the story of another wreck, that of the Grafton.
The Auckland Islands are desolate, rain soaked and cold and home to some amazing wildlife, and a great many birds, among them the royal albatross. Also quite strange plant life, adapted to the harsh environment. I don't consider myself either a bird watcher or a botanist, but I love to see albatrosses and I do feel a strange attraction to bleak places. They don't come much bleaker than the Auckland Islands.
The second reason why I am keen on this trip is my desire to be among icebergs. Having read Diski, I am looking forward to it even more, because she reassured me that photos, films and other representations do not dull the amazing experience. She wrote in Skating to Antarctica:
Then in the evening the first iceberg floated by. The iceberg emerged before my lazy gaze at the window, like a mirage, a dream appearance, a matt white edifice ghostly in the misty grey light and falling snow. A sudden, smoothly gliding event in the great empty sea under the great empty sky. I blinked at it. There was none of the disappointing familiarity of something seen too often on TV or in picture books. This startled with its brand-new reality, with its quality of not-like-anything-else. (p. 218)
At the moment I am reading The Worst Journey in the World by Apsley Cherry-Garrard, one of the youngest men on the Scott expedition of the Terra Nova 1910-1913, the one where Scott and his crew died on the way back from the pole, after Amundsen got there first. The Cherry-Garrard book is quite an amazing story of amateurism and blundering about and cheerful perseverance. Authors who have described this expedition in these terms have been severely criticised by admirers of Scott. But the question remains why Amundsen seemingly almost effortlessly reached the pole and returned a month before Scott, without loss of life and with dog teams still alive and functioning. And yet, Scott is the more famous and the more admired, at least in the English speaking world. Some light is shed on this conundrum by Francis Spufford's cultural history of our fascination with polar exploration and with the sublime, titled I May Be Some Time (Faber and Faber Paperback, 1997).
Cherry-Garrard's story is one of cheerful endurance. The men are 'bricks' about frost bite and hunger, hold sing-alongs and tell stories. This had become a tradition of naval explorers and seems to have been first recorded by Sir William Parry, who explored the Arctic in the 1820s, after first serving under Ross. Spufford has this to say about it:
While darkness grew, and the thermometer dropped, the crews of his Hecla and Fury did calisthenics, danced to a barrel-organ, read a shipboard newspaper, and watched amateur theatricals. As well as being adopted by the Admiralty as a standard morale-boosting ploy, this image of tenacious jollity proved irresistible to the public. Strangely snug, paradoxically homely, it seemingly made parlour games a way of defying the elements. (p. 50)
The boat I will be travelling on is well protected against the elements and the thermal gear we, as passengers, will be wearing will not give us the chance to have to endure the cold these explorers endured. So I hope we will not have to resort to parlour games and jollity. Although I would not be adverse to a game of bridge.
Several of the expeditions were accompanied by professional photographers, the most famous of whom are Frank Hurley, who took amazing pictures of the famous Endurance expedition with Shackleton (the web link tells the story, accompanied by Hurley's photos). There's also a series of Hurley photos on Flickr. Scott's expedition was accompanied by Ponting, who took wonderful pictures, of which this is one of the more famous ones:
Wilson created amazing water colours
during Scott's polar expedition. I have purchased a book with photographs by Hurley and a book with Ponting's photographs. Both reissued about five years ago, with accompanying stories and extra photos. I won't be attempting too many photos myself, with such an amazing record. But I will take a few 'snaps' to prove I was really there.
Subscribe to:
Comments (Atom)
Posts
