Fardowsa Mohamed
Us
for my sisters
i.
Mother, you did not expect to find yourself
in this forest of strange trees.
This ground does not taste
of the iron your tongue knew.
in the velvet of the night we heard you sob
in the room next door, our ears pressed to the peeling paper.
we locked fingers and prayed. someone next door
saw braided-head girls in a circle
praying to a peculiar god
and snapped their curtains shut.
ii.
Everyone congratulates me
on the scholarship. Your parents
who have suffered can finally exhale
said the white man at the ceremony.
But I think I hate this degree.
I want to do good and make a difference
but I have no idea
how to be in this foreign land.
iii.
the world broke & crumbled today
— there you go — trying to tape her back
into a perfect sphere,
trying to spit water
on the raging fire.
iv.
know that this earth is your body. your words are
the Pacific Ocean tides that wash & purify
your legs are the Mountains that anchor, your heart —
the Land that gives. every where you stand is your home.
Earth is the African Woman
who gave birth to the first Man.
v.
We were watching late night Al Jazeera, shaking our heads,
when uncle called. A pregnant cousin we have never met has died.
The TV breaks to a Red Cross appeal.
You hold me on the sinking couch
as we mourn those whom we never knew.
The country's longest running poetry magazine has just put out issue 51, an impressive tally in anyone's book. Lynn Freeman spoke to Jack Ross who has edited Poetry New Zealand: Yearbook 2017, featuring new and well established writers. Jack has selected 125 new poems from hundreds submitted internationally, and supplemented them with essays and reviews by other writers keen to get people talking more about poetry.
Duration: 11′ 20″
Poetry New Zealand originated in 1951 and has continued under a range of editors. From this year it is now edited and published by Massey's College of Humanities and Social Science - under creative writing lecturer, Jack Ross.
Duration: 14′ 34″
The Poetry New Zealand journal has had to adapt to survive more than most in its fifty year history. And with the appointment of Massey University lecturer and writer Jack Ross as its new managing editor, more changes are planned. But Jack tells Justin Gregory that his changes should feel more like renewal rather than reinvention.
Duration: 9′ 41″
Jack Ross, new editor of Poetry NZ, will be featured on Radio NZ National this Sunday. Jack is being interviewed by Justin Gregory about his plans for Poetry NZ on “Standing Room Only”, this Sunday (8/6). The programme starts at 12:40 pm. Jack said he will be talking with Justin about his plans to keep the journal at the cutting edge and encourage ground-breaking, even controversial, work. “As the new managing editor of Poetry NZ, I’d like to keep up a sense of excitement in the magazine. My predecessor, Alistair Paterson, was careful to maintain a youth-focus — both with the poets he featured and the work he included. I’d like to be as open as he was to new styles and new poetic approaches. Nor do I have any problem at all with including hard-hitting or controversial work. “Louis Johnson, who founded the New Zealand Poetry Yearbook in the 1950s, refused to withdraw some poems which the funding agencies objected to in the early sixties, and instead paid for the last volume of his yearbook himself! It’s that kind of courage I’d like to emulate. I don’t want there to be anything predictable about what people can expect when they open a copy of Poetry NZ. As the poet Alan Brunton once put it: “Keep the surprise alive!’ “The School of English and Media Studies at Massey University has been generous with a publishing subvention, and I hope that in future this journal can fold into our programme in numerous ways: perhaps principally by providing some of our graduate students with an internship in the world of practical magazine publishing.” Jack himself has published four poetry collections: City of Strange Brunettes (1998), Chantal’s Book (2002), To Terezín (2007) and Celanie (2012).
The interview can be found at:
http://www.radionz.co.nz/national/programmes/standing-room-only/audio/2598858/poetry-new-zealand.
.jpg)
