READING TONIGHT AT THE RAILWAY CLUB, VANCOUVER

I will read tonight from the Splintered Face Tsunami Poems at the Railyway Club, 579 Dunsmuir, in Vancouver. The Railway Club is a very agreeable place for a drink and a poem. The evening begins about 7 pm with a number of poets and writers each on for 15 minutes. I will read around 8 pm. For those of you in the Vancouver area, do come!

ON CONTEMPORARY LATIN AMERICAN POETRY: A LECTURE

I will deliver a lecture on contemporary Latin American poetry at the American Centre on Galle Road in Colombo, on Wednesday January 23rd at 6 p.m. Some months ago I was invited to a gathering on poetry in the Americas and I have for some time thought about the idea of seeing Latin American poetry from the vantage point of its Northern neighbor. I will post the lecture here in due course.

For the moment, let me leave you with the first paragraph

Midnight has passed and I wonder still how to speak about the backyard. How could I have let the grass, weeds and bracken grow so thick? There must be all sorts of insects, butterflies and rodents flying and scampering about...rivers with mysterious Indian names: Orinoco, Amazon, Parana...gold, shawls and quixotic guerrillas with masked faces...a few Nobel Laureates as well celebrated on birthdays and prize days and in some houses on ordinary Sundays. How to speak of people, squat and brown in highlands, where the air fails to deliver oxygen to the bones, and tall and bronzed on the beaches of Rio and on the cobblestones of Cartagena. How to speak of a continent which I know through poems and fictions, where I have set foot in just a few places, Mexico, Argentina, Chile, Uruguay, Brazil, El Salvador. "

-- from Beyond The Backyard: Reflections on Contemporary Latin American Poetry c) 2008 Indran Amirthanayagam

DECREE NISI: A POEM BY VIVIMARIE VANDERPOORTEN

The Galle Literary Festival has finished, but with a wonderful sense of hope, and a drive to keep metaphors and stories flowing throughout the days and weeks ahead until the time comes round to gather up writers and readers again in the Fort in 2009.

I was pleased to leave with a strong book of poems in hand, Nothing Prepares You, by Sri Lankan poet Vivimarie VanderPoorten. It's a first book full of poems written with a deft storyteller's ear, fine in their apparently casual rhythms, but carrying potent emotional punches to heart and head for those moments when the reader starts to think more about the words just consumed.

Here is Decree Nisi which means "the provisional order indicating that the court is satisfied that the ground for divorce has been established."


Today a judge in a musty courtroom
Will decide that
we can no longer live together,
you and i.
He will declare our marriage
Terminated,
Transform us into strangers. Again.

You are brave to be there.
Solicitous girlfriends-
lawyers-
told me Not to Go.
So, hiding away
from lecherous glances
(surmising, behind hands over mouths)
and out of sight of
invasive State,
I have time to recall
some good times we had.

Countries visited, miles driven, wild life watched in still
forests
meals shared, moments of tenderness,
some laughter, even.

But enough of that.
Now, since I cannot desert you maliciously,
And adultery is no longer a crime we can commit,
Perhaps we could be friends again.


--Vivimarie VanderPoorten, c) 2007, Nothing Prepares You

SERGIO ASTORGA, PINTOR, POETA

Este cuadro se titula El Abrazo, el poema abajo, Algun Diseno. Vienen de mi amigo, poeta y pintor, Sergio Astorga.

Conocí a Sergio en una plaza en la Ciúdad de México en 1999 donde exponía sus obras.

Ahora, se los ven en mi casa, en las casas de mis padres y de mi hijo.

Sergio pinta en Portugal. Ay compañero, te agradezco tu abrazo.

Algún Diseño

Algún diseño de tulipa
hoy la tarde tiene.
Incurables sauces
abandonan sus dolencias,
y aquellos huérfanos paisajes
de la sierra dejan su plegaria trunca.

Algo que no eres tú se esfuma
solitario a contra luz por la ventana,
y hueca y desabrida, una lluvia
moja las calles caminadas.

Bermejo es hoy el caracol del frío.
Yo espero que la niebla cenicienta
despeine, al pronunciar tu nombre,
esta helada embriaguez de estar sin nada.

Sergio Astorga

FORGIVENESS: A POEM BY ADAM ZAMEENZAD

Adam Zameenzad has published six novels and received the blessings of readers and critics. He is a good friend whom I visit at Shant Cottage, Kent as I write these lines. He is also a poet, unpublished for the most part, with manuscripts of wit that explode aorta, ventricle and vessel like heart grenades I love his unforgiving dedication to questioning all received wisdom.


FORGIVENESS

I find no difficulty in forgiving
man,
and woman,
though that
can be somewhat
exacting,
on occasions.

BUT
only if,
every molecule of my skin
turned to dust
before my very eyes,
dust
that would cover
the shame of centuries:

only if,
the pungent waters of my sweat
flood out to disinfect
and wash away
the pain infested streets of history;

only if,
my tainted blood
became flesh,
meat everlasting
for subhumans of the world;

only if,
I died
each minute
of the day
that someone nicer than I,
had life,
and love,
and good looks too,
redeeming my ugliness;

then,
perhaps,
I might,
forgive God.


-- Adam Zameenzad c) 2008

REGALO, UN POEMA PARA LAS MUJERES POETAS MEXICANAS

A mis poetas compañeras de Mexico, les invito a participar en esta convocatoria (www.mujerespoetasdemexico.blogspot.com). Espero pronto volver a saludarles en México. Con un abrazo. Indran


REGALO

Quieres que te regale un poema,
original, hecho con las arrugas
de estas manos, con las distracciones
que me asedían cuando empieza
el día. Eres una de ellas,
que hace que mi corazón
salte de su lecho y mi cuerpo
se llene de una savia dulce,
como el sabor de ti
cuando regreso a la alcoba
de pronto y te encuentro,
cabellera negra sobre piel
de aceituna, olor de rosas.


--c) Indran Amirthanayagam, de El Hombre que Recoge Nidos (Resistencia/Conarte 2005)

FOR THE LOVE OF BUSES, A POEM

FOR THE LOVE OF BUSES


Stand on the street
if you’d like to learn
how this poem was made,
and wait for the M-4 bus.

First, you’ll see
four M-1’s pass by
every five minutes,

and you might say,
let’s take a break,
get some coffee, a burger,

and as you sip,
there she goes,
an M-4,
and as you bite,
another M-4 sallies
off into night;

and at the register,
just seconds away,
damn, lost again…

Out on the street
hardened by meat
and drink, you spy
another M-1, then
the M-104, off course,
What’s it doing down here?

(And then it begins)

The Strange Sight
of a man stood
up by a bus—

the way he circles,
the way he opens
his coat to the cold,
the way he speaks
in tongues
until he falls
into silence,

and buries his rebuff
deep within him,
to sprout only
at the next chance
encounter with a poem.



Indran Amirthanayagam, waiting for the M-4, mid 80s, Upper West Side, New York, c) 1987, renewed 2008