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Judith Beveridge

Written by mascara on . Posted in Featured Poet.

Judith Beveridge has published four books of poetry: The Domesticity of Giraffes (Black Lightning Press, 1987), Accidental Grace (UQP, 1996), Wolf Notes (Giramondo Publishing 2003), Storm and Honey (Giramondo Publishing 2009). She has won many awards for her poetry including the NSW Premier’s Award, The Victorian Premier’s Award and the Judith Wright Calanthe Award. In 2005 she was awarded the Philip Hodgins Memorial Medal for excellence in literature. She is currently the poetry editor for Meanjin and teaches poetry writing at postgraduate level at the University of Sydney.

 The Herons

Then the path wound down

to a browner place, to a river

where rain-grey herons slender as rushes

drifted off like camp-smoke.

 

I’ve only seen their colour

in a few opals baked deep in clay country.

When they stared, it was as if

their eyes carried on

 

through emanations.

One stood so peacefully

as if it saw and heard the single

far off, crystal note;

 

slender, rag-thin bird we called

blue Gotama. We crumbled a mushroom—

all we could call

sacred, yet common:

 

but they looked past all hungers.

So we trod quietly back,

left them sitting above the long

brown earthworm of the river

 

and our pile of useless

vegetable soil. They were

beautiful as blue veins in the wrists of monks

fasting for perfection.

 

 

 

The Caterpillars

 

On the headland to the lighthouse,

a brown detour of caterpillars

crimped end-to-end across the road.

 

Poke away the pilot and the line

would break up, rioting,

fingering for the scent.

Put him back, they’d straighten.

You could imagine them humming

their queue numbers.

 

I’ve only seen such blind following

in the patient, dull dole queues,

or old photos of the Doukhobors,

the world’s first march of naked people.

 

I watched over the line for hours

warding off birds whose wings, getting close,

were like the beating of spoons

in deep bowls. I put a finger to the ground

and soft prickles pushed over,

a warm chain of hair.

 

This strange sect, wrapped in the sun

like their one benefit blanket

marched in brotherhood and exile.

 

Later, a group of boys

(their junta-minds set on torture)

picked off the leader.

Each creature contorted,

 

shut into its tight burr.

I could only stand like a quiet picket

and watch the rough panic.

 

I remember them, those caterpillars,

pacifists following their vegetable passion—

lying down in the road and dying

when they could no longer touch each other.

 

 

 

Occasions of Snails

 

1

 

They slide out of the light

leave a chrome stain through shade on the brickpath.

Their excreta are milled like censer ash

as they wander aisles, scented paths,

crawl over ageing grasses,

bask in warm mud like the terribly poor.

They wander the earth

as if looking for St Francis of Assisi.

 

2

 

So many anonymous buds—

a bucketful from the lettuces and roses.

The colour of autumn’s loose litter—

they are aimless, evicted,

itinerant for the velvet luxury

of the orchid and lily.

 

3

 

The evening is cool, a cricket’s call

fills the ground like a slow cistern.

I bend close to the earth, watch a tiny snail

rock in the crib of a leaf.

A trail just visible where spiders are tooling lace.

It works the abrupt edge.

It is a couturier cutting away.

It will quickly feather this leaf.

 

4

 

As a child I squinted for their script.

I searched the vast twin prayeryards

of sunshine and wind.

I watched for their headlines

as if they were notices for the arrivals

and departures of angels;

as if they were the proof—

beautiful and brief—of anonymous flights

scrawled across the house-walls, down ditches,

on uncut grasses, on a splintery fence;

as if they were the tinsels of a local moon.

 

5

 

Now I am a gardener.

I make their landscapes deadly.

I make Golgothas in the garden.

And I have laid my poisons—

the mockery of diced stems.

 

6

 

I have pressed them to the earth.

I have trowelled them into the soil.

I have riveted their pastel to the bricks.

I have denied them soft altars, plush roads,

these trackers of unattainable softness,

these evacuees of needle-thin tracks

who never look back on their painstaking silver.

 

7

 

But look how they go—

beseeching the deities Gloss

and Lightheadedness; how they stroll

amongst mucilage and essences

as if in mystical consortium

with nasturtium and rose—

how they find the sane bewilderment

of a child wandering in her garden

with a rose in her head.

She curses her brothers

who drop them on cactuses,

turn them into sludge

and laugh them into sad weak bubbles.

 

Still, she remembers the hiss

of so many tossed into the ash.

Those winkled from their sockets by twigs.

 

8

 

Sometimes, when I hold them,

when they are immured

and smelling of lavender;

when they turn their dibbled heads

from my palms, I remember

those soldered paths

and this world’s exotic itinerary.

Again, I track their rubbled passages

(to the roses, to the compost).

They have crawled into eggshells

as if into temples, as if into light.

 

 

 

How to Love Bats

 

Begin in a cave.

Listen to the floor boil with rodents, insects.

Weep for the pups that have fallen. Later,

you’ll fly the narrow passages of those bones, but for now—

 

open your mouth, out will fly names

like Pipistrelle, Desmodus, Tadarida. Then,

listen for a frequency

lower than the seep of water, higher

than an ice planet hibernating

beyond a glacier of Time.

 

Visit op shops. Hide in their closets.

Breathe in the scales and dust

of clothes left hanging. To the underwear

and to the crumpled black silks—well,

give them your imagination

and plenty of line, also a night of gentle wind.

 

By now your fingers should have

touched petals open. You should have been dreaming

each night of anthers and of giving

to their furred beauty

your nectar-loving tongue. But also,

your tongue should have been practising the cold

of a slippery, frog-filled pond.

 

Go down on your elbows and knees.

You’ll need a speleologist’s desire for rebirth

and a miner’s paranoia of gases—

but try to find within yourself

the scent of a bat-loving flower.

 

Read books on pogroms. Never trust an owl.

Its face is the biography of propaganda.

Never trust a hawk. See its solutions

in the fur and bones of regurgitated pellets.

 

And have you considered the smoke

Yet from a moving train? You can start

half an hour before sunset,

but make sure the journey is long, uninterrupted

and that you never discover

the faces of those trans-Siberian exiles.

 

Spend time in the folds of curtains.

Seek out boarding-school cloakrooms.

Practise the gymnastics of wet umbrellas.

 

                                       Are you

floating yet, thought-light,

without a keel on your breastbone?

Then, meditate on your bones as piccolos,

on mastering the thermals

beyond the tremolo; reverberations

beyond the lexical.

 

                                       Become adept

at describing the spectacles of the echo—

but don’t watch dark clouds

passing across the moon. This may lead you

to fetishes and cults that worship false gods

by lapping up bowls of blood from a tomb.

 

Practise echo-locating aerodromes,

stamens. Send out rippling octaves

into the fossils of dank caves—

then edit these soundtracks

with a metronome of dripping rocks, heartbeats

and with a continuous, high-scaled wondering

about the evolution of your own mind.

 

But look, I must tell you—these instructions

are no manual. Months of practice

may still only win you appreciation

of the acoustical moth,

hatred of the hawk and owl. You may need

 

to observe further the floating black host

through the hills.

 

 

 

Death

 

Something’s dead in that stand of trees.

 

Vultures circle and swoop.

Flies fresh from the herds

hum around my head.

 

I watch the maggots rise, cooking up.

 

Ants in tiny rows keep convoying

skin, tissue.

 

Even the moon can’t keep itself clean:

soap soiled by a dung-collector’s hands.

 

The carcass is a spotted deer’s.

 

Only yesterday, perhaps,

it was grazing among the trees,

 

its hide so much the colour of the trunks,

it would seem to be hardly there.

 

How many years have I journeyed?

 

Time. So much its own colour.

 

Death in every stand of trees.

 

 

 

In the Forest

 

So long in this forest—I hardly remember

my home. Though sometimes when I see

the pink reach of lotuses—I remember

the underside of my mother’s hands.

And sometimes, when I see a scorpion

 

jack up the green stinger of its tail,

do I think of my father’s lithe thumb,

gesturing. Sometimes the wing of an

insect, weighing no more than two

layers of lacquer, will make me count

 

how often I saw Yasodhara’s face

under the sky’s veneer. I’ve seen so

many lives born outside of reason; little

antennas poking through their cocoons.

Now, a praying mantis strokes the air

 

with a casual feeler, then tenses its legs

against the weather. How long will it sit

folded in upon itself, brave petitioner?

All day I bow to these creatures—

those who wait their cycles out more

 

devoutly than moons. But sometimes,

watching a butterfly emerge, I sense

my own eyelids flutter in the strange

puparium of a dream. O, I don’t know

if I’ll ever wake, changed, transformed,

 

able to lift on viridescent wings.

But as I watch, I feel my mind enter

a vast space in which everything

connects; and a grasshopper on a blade

of grass listens intently with its knees.

 

 

 

The Lake

 

At dusk she walks to the lake. On shore

a few egrets are pinpointing themselves

in the mud. Swallows gather the insect lint

 

off the velvet reed-heads and fly up through

the drapery of willows. It is still hot.

Those clouds look like drawn-out lengths

 

of wool untwilled by clippers. The egrets

are poised now—moons just off the wane—

and she thinks, too, how their necks are

 

curved like fingernails held out for manicure.

She walks the track that’s a draft of the lake

and gazes at where light nurses the wounded

 

capillaries of a scribbly gum. A heron on one leg

has the settled look of a compass, though soon,

in flight, it will have the gracility of silk

 

when it’s wound away. She has always loved

the walks here, the egrets stepping from

the lute music of their composure, the mallards

 

shaking their tails into the chiffon wakes,

the herons fletching their beaks with moths

or grasshoppers, the ibis scything the rushes

 

or poking at their ash-soft tail feathers.

Soon the pelicans will sail in, fill and filter

the pink. Far off, she can see where tannin

 

has seeped from the melaleucas, a burgundy

stain slow as her days spent amongst tiles and

formica. She’s glad now she’s watching water

 

shift into the orange-tipped branches of a

she-oak, a wren flick its notes towards the wand

of another’s twitching tail. There’s an oriole

 

trilling at the sun, a coveted berry, a few

cicadas still rattling their castanets. She loves

those casuarinas, far off, combed and groomed,

 

trailing their branches: a troupe of orang-utans

with all that loping, russet hair; and when

the wind gets into them, there’s a sound as if

 

seeds were being sorted, or feet shuffled amongst

the quiet gusts of maracas. Soon the lights on

the opposite shore will come on like little

 

electric fig seeds and she will walk back

listening to frogs croak in the rushes, the bush

fill with the slow cisterns of crickets, her head

 

with the quiet amplitude of—Keats perhaps,

or a breeze consigning ripples to the bank;

the sun, an emblazoned lifebuoy, still afloat.

 

 

 

The Shark

                                                                                                                                  

We heard the creaking clutch of the crank

as they drew it up by cable and wheel

and hung it sleek as a hull from the roof.

 

Grennan jammed open the great jaws

and we saw how the upper jaw hung from

the skull. We flinched at the stench of blood

 

that dripped on the fishhouse floor, and

even Davey – when Grennan reached in

past the scowl and the steel prop for the

 

stump – just about passed out. The limb’s

skin had already blanched, a sight none

of us could stomach, and we retched 

 

though Grennan, cool, began cutting off

the flesh in knots, slashing off the flesh

in strips; and then Davey, flensing and

 

flanching, opened up the stomach and

the steaming bowels. Gulls circled like

ghouls. Still they taunt us with their cries

 

and our hearts still burn inside us when

we remember, how Grennan with a tool

took out what was left of the child.

 

 

 

Hooks                                                     

                                           

I’m sorting out the hooks in Grennan’s big old tackle box.

                      I pick one from the box. It has a sliced

shank, a rolled-in sports point, a wide gape and long bite.

 

I like the ones too whose points lie offset from their shanks

                      and those with sinkers like fisheyes

moulded onto them. This hook with a corroded point

 

and rusting suicide barb I name wild-beaked bait-giver.

                      This hook looks like the neck

of a little egret when the wind lifts a wisp of feathers

 

from its nape. This hook has a kinked shank and sickle

                      curve, so I call it ibis leaning

over the shallows. These two forged-silver, light-wired

 

bait-holders brazed together beautifully I call greenshanks

                      in flight. I know Grennan and Davey

would think I’m silly naming these old hooks, but what

 

else is there to do when you’re stuck in a boathouse, no fish

                      running, when the hooks’ real names

Sproat, Sneck, Big Bend, Model 20R are just not poetry.

 

 

 

                                                                                                   Appaloosa

                                                                             I have always loved the word guitar

                                                                                                        David St. John

         
I have never been bumped in a saddle as a horse springs
from one diagonal to another,
a two-beat gait light and balanced
as the four-beats per stride become the hair-blowing,
wind-in-the-face, grass-rippling,
muscle-loosening, forward-leaning
exhilaration of the gallop.
 
And I have never counted the slow four-beat pace
of distinct, successive hoofbeats
in such an order as to be called The Walk.
Or learned capriole, piaffe, croupade in a riding school,
nor heard the lingo of outback cattle-cutters
spat out with their whip-ends and phlegm.
 
I have never stepped my hands over the flanks
of a spotted mare, nor ridden a Cleveland Bay
carriage horse, or a Yorkshire coach horse,
a French Percheron with its musical snicker,
or a little Connemara, its face buried
in broomcorn, or in a bin of Wexford apples.
 
I have never called a horse Dancer, Seabiscuit, Ned,
Nellie, Trigger or Chester, or made clicking noises
with my tongue during the fifty kilometres
to town with a baulking gelding and a green
quartertop buggy. Nor stood in a field while
an old nag worked every acre
only stopping to release difficult knobs of manure
 
and swat flies with her tail. And though I have
waited for jockeys at the backs of stables
in the mist and rain, for the soft feel of their riding silks
and saddles, for the cool smoke of their growth-stunting  
cigarettes, for the names of the yearlings
and mares they whisper along with the names
of horse-owning millionaires – ah, more, more even
than them – I have always loved the word appaloosa.

 

Jorge Palma: translation by Peter Boyle

Written by mascara on . Posted in Translations.

Jorge Palma, poet and storyteller, was born in 1961 in Montevideo, Uruguay, where he still lives. For many years he has worked for newspapers and radio stations, and has also run creative writing workshops, both poetry and prose. His poetry collections are Entre el viento y la sombra (1989), El olvido (1990), La via láctea (2006), Diarios del cielo (2006) and Lugar de las utopias (2007).

 

 

  

 

 Peter Boyle (b. 1951) lives in Sydney. His first collection of poetry Coming home from the world   (1994) received the National Book Council Award and the New South Wales Premier’s Award. Other collections include The Blue Cloud of Crying (1997), What the painter saw in our faces (2001) and Museum of Space (2004). His most recent book Apocrypha (2009) is an extensive collection of poems and other texts by a range of imaginary authors.

 

 

Un Rio Ancho Con Sabor A Otoño

Del rojo al verde
se muere el amarillo    
G.Apollinaire

Tú que tienes la precisión
prendida en la solapa:
¿a cuánto estamos hoy?

El olor de la tierra húmeda
trae en los bolsillos
noticias del mundo:
del rojo al verde
se muere el amarillo;
de mi casa       al mercado
se mueren los niños
en el desierto.

Los noticieros hablan
de la guerra
y el cielo avanza.
Los noticieros hablan
de tormentas de arena
en el desierto
y los pájaros emigran
en mi cielo de otoño.

Mientras enciendo un cigarrillo
mientras la ropa
se seca al sol
se mueren los niños
en el desierto.

Del rojo al verde
se muere el amarillo.

Y las casas son abandonadas
por sus dueños,
y las viudas dejan flores
en la mitad de las camas
y se marchan,
se cubren la piel
con sus trapos de viuda
con sus pañuelos de luto
con sus ropas de humo
y caminan
por el borde del cielo
y caminan por las orillas
del mundo.

En mi patio con macetas
caen flores del cielo
y caen también
pájaros atravesados
por el sonido de la guerra,
y se despiertan las madres
bajo otro cielo
y en los mercados
las frutas, los pescados,
los pregones, no tienen
sonidos de luto,
ni hay viudas huyendo
a las fronteras
ni hay temblores de tierra
ni nadie sacude vidrio molido
de las mantas
ni los curas barren los escombros
de las catedrales y las iglesias
ni en mi cielo de otoño
contemplo esta mañana
la inmensa peregrinación
de ataúdes y pañuelos
que en algún lugar del mundo
se desatan; el polvo, la arena,
el desierto abrasador,
donde dicen estuvo el Paraíso
el Paraíso anhelado
a punto de perderse,
donde un niño sueña todavía
que tiene brazos
una familia, y sus piernas
inquietas de doce años
corren por las inmensas
arenas y salta, busca
nubes, desafía las leyes
de la física, soñando
por las tierras de Ur
a la sombra monumental
de las ruinas de Babilonia.

Del rojo al verde
se muere el amarillo.

Entre tu pecho
y el mío
se muere el amarillo.
entre tus alas y mi sueño
se muere el amarillo.
Entre tus piernas
y las mías
se muere el otoño,
a cuatro metros del cielo
por venir
a cuatro gotas de lluvia
o de rocío
a tres días de un disparo
demoledor y ciego
a dos minutos de la gloria
o el fracaso
a un segundo que aguarda
goteando el alba
tu boca de luz
tu llama
para contrarrestar acaso
ese grito que vuela incesante
entre dos ríos que llevan
la muerte
ese aullido que cruza el cielo
las tormentas el calor
un grito que cruza
el desierto, tu pecho
tu morada
y golpea como un puño
de acero
las ventanas de mi cuarto,
aquí, en mi pequeño cielo
de otoño,
demasiado lejos
de los hombres recién rasurados
que no volverán a sus casas,
de las mujeres
que conversan en la puerta
de un mercado
sin saber que esa noche
dormirán con la muerte;
de los que cantaron
en las duchas
por última vez, hermosas
canciones de veinte siglos,
y no supieron nunca
de nosotros y este río
ni del nombre del río
que nos nombra y atraviesa
con su mansa identidad.

Aquí en el Sur,
donde envejecemos
mirando los ponientes.

Wide river with autumn fragrance

From red to green
yellow dies.         
G. Apollinaire

You with the latest essential
glittering on your lapel,
do you even know what day it is?

In my pockets
the smell of damp earth
brings news from the world:
between red and green
yellow dies;
between my house and the shops
children die
in the desert.

The news speaks of war
and the sky moves forward.
The news talks of sandstorms
in the desert
and birds migrate
in my autumn sky.

While I light a cigarette
while the clothes
dry in the sun
children die
in the desert.

From red to green
yellow dies.

And the houses are abandoned
by their owners,
and widows leave flowers
on the middle of their beds
and walk away,
their skin covered
in widows’ rags
in handkerchiefs of mourning
clothes of smoke
and they walk
along the sky’s edge
and they walk by the shores
of the world.

On my patio with its pots
flowers fall from the sky
and birds fall
transfixed by the sounds of war,
and mothers wake up
under a changed sky
and in the marketplaces
fruit, fish,
the cries of people buying and selling,
don’t bear the weight of any
sound of grief,
there are no widows
fleeing to the frontiers
and no earthquakes
and no one removes ground-up glass
from their shirt-sleeves
and priests don’t sweep rubble
out of churches and cathedrals
and in my autumn sky
this morning I don’t contemplate
the enormous journeys
of coffins and handkerchiefs
that in some place in the world
will fall apart; dust, sand,
burning desert,
where they say Paradise was,
the longed-for about-to-vanish Paradise
where a child still dreams
he has arms
a family and legs,
the restless legs of a twelve-year-old child
who runs across immense sands,
leaps, looks for clouds,
defies the laws of physics, dreaming
in the lands of Ur
in the tremendous shadow
of a ruined Babylon.

From red to green
yellow dies.

Between your breast and mine
yellow dies.
Between your wings and my sleep
yellow dies.
Between your legs
and mine
autumn dies,
in four metres of sky
where four drops of rain
or dew
are falling,
three days from a blind
blast of gunfire,
in two minutes of glory
or disaster,
in one second of watching
dawn fall drop by drop
your mouth of light
your cry
to counterbalance perhaps
the scream soaring without pause
between two rivers
that carry death,
this howling that comes to us
across skies
storms dry heat,
a scream that crosses
the desert, your heart
your dwelling place
and like a steel fist
pounds against
the windows of my room,
here, in my small
autumn sky,
too far
from the freshly shaven men
who will never return home,
from women
chatting in a shop door
not knowing that tonight
they will sleep with death,
from those who have sung in the shower
for the last time, beautiful songs
gathered from twenty centuries,
those who never knew of us
and this river
or the name of the river
that names and crosses us
with its gentle identity.

Here in the South
where we grow old
watching the sunsets.

 

 

Tenzin Tsundue In Conversation With Michelle Cahill

Written by mascara on . Posted in Interviews, Reviews/Essays.

Tenzin Tsundue is a poet, writer and a noted Tibetan freedom activist. He won the ‘Outlook-Picador Award for Non-Fiction’ in 2001. He has published three books to date, which have been translated into several languages. Tsundue’s writings have also appeared in various publications around the world including The International PEN, The Indian PEN, Indian Literature, The Little Magazine, Outlook, The Times of India, The Indian Express, Hindustan Times, Better Photography, The Economic Times, Tehelka, The Daily Star (Bangladesh), Today (Singapore), Tibetan Review and Gandhi Marg. His work has also been anthologised in Both Sides of the Sky: Post-Independence Indian poetry in English, and Language For A New Century (Norton)

 

I interviewed Tenzin Tsundue at Rangzen “Freedom” Ashram, Dharamsala in October 2008, some months after he’d been arrested for a march to Tibet. Unfortunately it’s taken a while to present this, but I think Tenzin’s experiences and perspectives are extremely relevant to the political struggles that Tibetans on both sides of the Himalayas continue to face.

In the wake of the recent earthquake in Yushu, Tibet, which has been reported as having occurred in China, as many as 10,000 Tibetans may have perished; the 1300 year old Thrangu monastery has been severely damaged, and many monks have lost their lives. The area has suffered intense political repression since protests broke out across the PRC from 2008 onwards. Being in Dharamsala, witnessing the conditions of Tibetans living in exile and meeting Tenzin was an experience that deeply moved me.

MICHELLE CAHILL

MC:     What came first for you, the impetus for political activism or the impulse to write?
 
TT:     Writing was part of the education that I received from school, but even before that, from refugee camps, the first education, the first awareness that came to me is that our country is under Chinese occupation and that we have to some day go back to our country. This shock and lament of having lost one’s country and therefore one’s dignity of life was a huge disturbance for me from childhood. Writing came much later.
 
My concern has always been from childhood that we have to regain the dignity of life from being oppressed, from being a victim, from being a crying refugee to regaining the Independence of Tibet. I don’t want to be a refugee, here, with, or without money, and say that my country is under somebody else’s control. The sense of dignity is very important and if it is not there because I am not in my own country or my own home, the sense of dignity comes from the fact that I’m in the struggle. I’m in the process of regaining that Independence and the struggle is my identity.
 
 
MC:    I’m interested to hear about your education and how that has shaped your journey?
 
TT:     I realised that only my education would assist me to get involved in the struggle and to do anything useful for the struggle. I didn’t have a proper language, and that was my biggest concern. From school we learnt Tibetan and English and even Hindi, right up to the 8th standard. Most of the subjects were taught in English so we had exposure to the English language. But English is always considered the foreign language, the Other language. There was never the culture of spoken English; it was never the culture so therefore it was always the language that you spoke only in your English class. Even in English classes we hesitated and made fun of each other, but we never really got to speak English properly so the feel of the English language both written and spoken wasn’t there, which I think was huge loss and something I had to work very hard on.
 
In most Asian countries now, there are two or three languages being taught. Sometimes you don’t know what your real language is, the language that you feel comfortable with. Just to acquire a proper language was in itself a huge struggle for me. When I went to Madras I was the only Tibetan student in my whole class of 108 students studying English literature and I didn’t have this language. I didn’t have the fluency, the natural feel of the language. So I worked very hard, writing and re-writing.
 
It was only when I was studying my MA in English literature at Bombay University, that I started to write creatively, finding myself in a very supportive atmosphere. We used to have a small poetry circle of friends sharing writings with each other. That was a huge encouragement for me. Outside of class I used to attend readings by senior poets: Nissim Ezekiel, Adil Jassawalla, Dom Moraes, Dilip Chitre. These Saturday poetry circles were my training ground. My writing seriously started in 1997, when I was 23. 
 
 
MC:    Many of your poems and essays express a manifested hybridity. You speak of being as much an Indian as a Tibetan. How important is hybridity for diasporic identities in our globalised world?
 
TT:    Well I think this multiple identity is the identity now in this hugely mobile world. And I think patriotism is something that is kind of outdated, internationally. For me my country is in a freedom struggle, but at the same time I’m not in Tibet, confronting the Chinese. I’m in India. I’m born here and I think I’m more effective being here. And being here, realistically, I have to deal with the Indian situation. So having been born and brought up here all my orientation is Indian. I feel I am Indian. At the same time, I feel that I have a huge responsibility for the Tibetan struggle, and I’m most willing to do anything required there. So therefore I do have multiple identities, but I know that the Tibetan cause is the most important cause that I want to dedicate my life towards. There are Indians all over the world. And there are Tibetans living in America and Europe who by virtue of the atmosphere in which they grew up are, in a way, European and American but the kind of priorities they keep for their lives makes a difference.
 
 
MC:    What writers first influenced you?
 
TT:    To begin with it was Khalil Gibran. His love poems and political writings in English were a huge inspiration. I’m thinking of books like Broken Wings, Spirits Rebellious, The Prophet. We used to borrow them from the library and keep them within our circle at school in Dharamsala. There weren’t many who knew about this. We used to go right up into the mountains, and read poetry, and feel that we were reading the most important poem. It became a kind of performance in the jungle. Imagine two or three poets lazing around in the pinewoods, reading poetry to each other and sharing candies; (for one rupee you would get ten small candies.) There was a huge excitement about reading, unravelling, the scenario of the Lebanese struggle, and the freedom struggle that he spoke for. We would read his poems as if they were about us and we could identify with the Tibetan freedom struggle. And that’s how the excitement for poetry began for me.
 
Later on, I read Shakespeare, EE Cummings, Robert Frost, Pablo Neruda, A.K. Ramanujan, Arun Kolatkar, Woeser and Tibetan writers in Tibetan whose new writing captures a kind of a rebellious movement in Tibet. They have been a huge encouragement. I continue to read them and enjoy.
 
 
MC:    In 1997 you crossed into Tibet where you were arrested and tortured. The Tibet you witnessed and described was more Chinese than you had imagined. Do you think the Western world still holds a stereotype of an ancient Tibet, a Shangri-La of Western orientalism and Western cinematic representations?
 
TT:    Sure, I think the Western perspective on Tibet hasn’t improved much; the whole romanticised notion about the Dalai Lama and Buddhist monks. But I think what we have been successful in achieving over the past fifty years of living in exile is at least bringing about an awareness of what is Tibet is today. The stereotyping of Tibet as Shangri-La; the land of Buddhas where people lived like angels, levitating and living a superhuman life, I think, was hugely damaging because it immediately recognises Tibetans as not human beings but as interesting characters about whom it is interesting to write about or film.
 
What the Dalai Lama and Tibetans have been able to achieve in the last fifty years is to at least get the West to perceive that Tibet is a parcel of land, whose peoples’ culture is endangered like that of the North American Indians. And so there are tourists who go there and can witness how difficult life is for Tibetans living under the Chinese. This was especially highlighted in 2008 when Tibetans living in Tibet rose up in protest and people in the West were able to see it. So the Western stereotype of Tibet as Shangri-La is shattered. And this is a first success for us. It’s really damaging to look at an entire people and culture as if these are just characters and mythical elements who can be exoticised in cinemas. Films like Seven Years in Tibet, Kundun, do not step beyond the limitations of stereotypes. This is necessary in order for the West to recognise Tibetans as human beings, who have equal capacity for anger, hatred and violence.
 
 
MC:     What is your understanding of the term “cultural genocide”?
 
Cultural genocide is a situation where there’s a disruption in the natural, organic growth of a culture and that disruption has not happened because of a natural disaster but because it’s been artificially imposed. The older generation Tibetans cannot tell the younger generation of what happened in the Cultural Revolution and how much they had to suffer. A silence was created by the political conditions and therefore a whole memory has been erased and hidden. By this strategy, the Chinese government is trying to homogenise the territories that are called China including the occupied Tibet, East Turkishtan, Mongolia and Manchuria. China is flattening all the cultural differences in the name of nationalism. As citizens of China we must practice one culture. Through the practice of population transfer, flooding the occupied lands with Chinese, and basically dictating that the Chinese language is the language of education, administration and media, China is trying to homogenise the culture so its uniqueness will not be recognised. This is what they call a peaceful liberation and the danger is that a whole memory will be erased and people will lose their memories.
 
 
MC:    Is Buddhism and non-violence undermining the political cause of Tibetan independence?
 
TT:    I think what His Holiness is trying to do with the process of dialogue, in itself, is an exemplary non-violent approach. How we want to approach the struggle is confrontational but at the same time non-violent. We want to confront the Chinese dictators and try to address the injustice they are placing on the Tibetans, while his Holiness tries to send delegations, one after the other. But when dialogue is not a sincere process, the dialogue will never work and has not been working. The Chinese try to buy time. In seeking a dialogue we are dependent on them. In confronting and demanding Independence we are not dependent on the dictator, who will never listen, who instead of listening places more conditions on us and therefore tries to stifle whatever little voice we have; a voice that we’ve acquired in exile, in a free country.
That freedom we’ve won in exile is the only power that we have to negotiate with the dictator and even that little power we seem to be losing. We prefer to take control of our struggle, confront the Chinese, and demand Independence and refuse to be dependent on the terms of their negotiation. I’m talking about the larger majority of young Tibetans. They absolutely do not trust the Chinese for any type of negotiation, and largely people think that only an Independent Tibet can really guarantee a future for Tibet. Our demand is Independence, our approach is non-violent, but it’s confrontational. It’s not about delegations or round-the-table dialogue.
 
 
MC:    What role do you think the media has played in raising awareness of the struggle for Tibetan Independence?
 
TT:    Being in exile in a free country means that the media is one of our most important partners. China, because of its business interests has to listen to the Western world. The Western world doesn’t voluntarily support Tibet. Sometimes the West uses the Tibet issue to counter China; they find it useful. Sometimes they are forced to take up the Tibet issue in the interests of public diplomacy, because it continues to arise in the international media right in their face. Before the Bejing Olympics, Presidents Bush and Sarkozy had to make statements that the Chinese had failed to keep their promise on human rights because of the brutality by the Chinese government against the Tibetan uprising. Hundreds of Tibetans were killed and thousands were imprisoned. This was openly reported in the Western media. Poland and Germany, in particular were genuinely interested.
 
Australia has a huge stake in Chinese business. Even if Australians would love to support the Dalai Lama and the Tibetan people, I don’t think your government is in a position to do anything in favour of the Tibetans while China is actively importing Australian coal and iron ore.
 
 
MC:    You have written about protest as a celebration of difference. But is the celebrity status of the Dalai Lama and his adoring Western fans overshadowing the political cause of a free Tibet?
 
TT:    His Holiness has been created, and has become an icon for peace and sometimes we do feel that he’s becoming more a symbol for peace, and we feel we are missing the Dalai Lama as a Tibetan leader. But I think these are general concerns. The larger-than-life image that he has created is such a power that China is afraid of him. His Holiness has no gun. His Holiness has limited resources that can counteract China but what China fears is the media friendly image of the Dalai Lama. We are only six million Tibetans and China has a population of 1.3 billion, with financial resources and political power, but still in 2008 we shook the political assumptions of the PRC. We own the Dalai Lama’s leadership and power and therefore the Dalai Lama continues to be the symbol of hope for Tibetans, both inside and outside Tibet.
 
 
MC:    Tibetan poets living in exile are writing in their native tongue and in English. But in Tibet, the Chinese language has infiltrated a generation of Tibetans, and has become the language in which they write. Is this a cause for concern?
 
TT:    As it stands, the majority of the Tibetan population are in Tibet and they are speaking Chinese. Chinese has a strong influence in education, administration, economy and the media. The Chinese government has made this mandatory in Tibet. English might become the third language. For those of us born in India, English is the second language or even for some, the first language. The patois of Tibetan and Hindi is not necessarily an undermining of Tibetan culture. There’s a latent fear that results if you start to practise other languages, for example Tibetans are speaking Tibetan but then insert English or Hindi expressions. Also some Tibetans expressions are a direct translation of Hindi. We can observe this in the placement of verbs. In Hindi the verbs are placed first while in English the subject placement occurs before the object is placed. Grammatical shifts, the sentence structure indicates these are direct translation of Hindi. This happens in towns where Tibetans are swelling sweaters by the roadside, which they have been doing for the last 30-40 years, and therefore live that life of direct interaction.
 
There is a cause for concern if our language is being undermined, but at the same time language and for that matter culture is not static, and not something that remains frozen in time. Culture is always in flux; organically developing and we cannot stop it. We may be able to divert it but we are not able to stop it and if we do stop it then that’s the end of the culture. For example if we speak of a genuine Tibetan culture, then this particular phase in the natural flow of our culture is genuine. If we refer to Indian culture, are we talking about post-Independence Indian Culture, are we talking about the Ghandi era, the Moghul period or the Ashoka period? Culture is in a natural flow. We may be able to change its flow organically from constantly evolving but we can’t stop it.
 
So what is happening in exile, is that the kind of Tibetan we are speaking is a very fast pace, with new idioms that we’ve created which were not there in pre-Chinese occupation times. Tibetans inside Tibet today don’t understand us, and we have thus advanced. We have a reason to celebrate that we’ve created a new language. In this new language there are poems being written, songs, novels and essays. Thousands of essays are being written here and it sounds wonderful in this Indian-Tibetan community. Likewise in Tibet with the coming of Communist Chinese they have created amongst themselves, especially during the Cultural Revolution, a lot of idioms that reflect the new revolutionary anti-feudal, anti-Imperialist tones that speak of the glory of socialism. So all these new idioms are created and they are today a part of the Tibetan language, and are confusing to us, and sometimes so Utopian to us. So the Tibetan languages have been evolving both in exile, and in Tibet, and even for Tibetans living in America and Europe. And there are Tibetans in America singing rap songs in Tibetan.
 
 
MC:    What are the possibilities for translation and transcreation of the languages that Tibetans today speak and write?
 
TT:    I think translation and transcreation are very important border areas of literature but presently there are not many poets who have skills in Chinese, Tibetan and English. But I think that increasingly just as the trend is happening in other communities in India, translators are creating a new genre of writing. There is a huge scope of writing and this area will be explored more in time.
 
 
MC:    Do you think that the stories and the memories of the now ageing generation of Tibetans who remember a free Tibet before the Chinese invasion have been adequately preserved?
 
TT:    There is a very rich oral tradition in Tibetan communities. We grew up listening to our parents’ and grandparents’ stories about pre-Chinese Occupation: the fantasy land of Tibet, the heavenly kind of livelihood they lived, the pristine beauty of the natural resources, and the clean water they always described. This is the imagination of Tibet that we grew up on.
 
The imaginative Tibet has been preserved but what we’ve lost in the process is how we became accommodated in boarding schools where hundreds of Tibetan youngsters lived together. We never got to hear and learn from parents and from our ancestors during these times. The memory we lost is how the older generation of Tibetans survived in the economic urgency of creating a livelihood, selling sweaters, working as roadside labourers to earn a living. There was nothing in exile. Tibetan children were sent to school while their parents were earning an income as street vendors. And therefore there was a kind of separation between the two generations and we missed learning from our parents and grandparents.
 
What happened in Tibet was even worse. The Communist cadres used to send informers into the community and they would watch each other. It would happen in areas within China. You were constantly being watched by your own family, your own friends, your own relatives. So you couldn’t do anything considered to be disloyal to the Communist Party. Tibetans inside Tibet could hardly speak about the Chinese invasion of Tibet, the reality of Tibet before the Chinese occupation, and therefore they could not talk about the spirit to fight for freedom. You would be disbanded. Children would be interrogated in this process and if it was found out that they were speaking against the Chinese, they would be guilty of creating a treason.
 
So there was a disruption in the handing over of the memory that we needed to inherit. This is a huge disturbance.  
 
 
MC:    Your poetry seems to differ from Nyam Mgur tradition. It seems less concerned with stylised symbolism and spiritual insight, conveying instead a very real sense of the problems that Tibetans in exile must deal with: a denied sense of home, identity and belonging. Would you like to comment on this?
 
TT:    I’ve read poetry from Tibet; coming from a traditional background as well as new poets writing in a revolutionary style. Their history, education and orientation is very different to mine. I’ve been influenced by India and the influence of English literature. In the expression of writing I don’t really speak in the language of symbolism. My writings are more monologues, a direct communication. I could easily say the same thing or I could read a poem. The language is very simple, and that’s why I think it works, because when it’s heard people identify with it.
 
I don’t feel I write from a traditional style or school of Tibetan writing. Neither do I adopt a spiritual perspective that might be expected of me as a Tibetan or as a follower of the Dalai Lama. It’s more an expression of a person without hope. All my writing is constantly in search of hope. The search of my writing is the process of searching for home, physically or in the imagination.
 
 
MC:    Do you think writers can make a difference to the humanitarian issues that face the politically repressed?
 
TT:    What writers can do is to express concerns and to speak the heart of the common people. They speak the truth; they don’t hide the truth or manoeuvre like politicians. So they are loved by the public. Politicians have to work desperately to win the heart of the people, because they’re never trusted.
 
Because writers tell the truth, they are respected. Naturally they have to bear the responsibility to understand the ground realities; to continue to bear the courage to speak the truth. They can have a huge influence in creating opinions and changing the direction of public opinion.
 
 
MC:    What is your relationship as a writer and an activist to India?
 
TT:    Whether I’m using the language of the writer or the language of the activist, for me the models are always coming from India. Ghandi is a huge influence as well as many other Indian writers: Dilip Chitre, Dom Moraes, A.K. Ramanujan, Arun Kolatkar. I’m indebted to the whole Indian environment and the hundreds of Indian friends I have, and how much I’ve learnt from them. Being in Bombay and travelling all over India, and learning from the Indian community are direct influences, and this is my relationship to India.
 
 
MC:    Is there a risk of Tibetan literatures in exile becoming nostalgically repetitive, or without innovation?
 
TT:    No, I don’t think so. Firstly, we are living in a fast pace modern world, especially here in the Tibetan community. So much change is happening, and we are either documenting or responding to these changes that we are witnessing as well as being nostalgic about an imaginative Tibet in exile. I think there are a host of things to write about, and I think that the poetry that’s coming out is very creative in terms of what is being expressed. It’s not just nostalgia. There is truly a voice of anger, frustration with the injustice and the apathy about Tibet from the Western world. There are solid expressions of anger coming from our writers, like the poet Bhuchung D Sonam. I can see that. There’s no concern.
 
 
MC:    What do you think are more important; the verbal or the non-verbal acts of protest and remembrance?
 
TT:    The trouble with non-verbal protest is that it’s transitory unless you have it published or broadcast in the media so that it enters the imagination and the memory of the public. But even that doesn’t help much and you have to be effective in the registering. Today the media with the greatest impact is film and television. But again the problem is that the memory of the broadcast is short-lived. There’s a barrage of cinematic information being targeted at every household. So a protest of climbing the Oberoi Hotel and confronting the Chinese premier is not a memory for Bombay people; it’s not.
Written memory is present as a reference and we can broadcast it with the use of technology, by the use of blogs, websites, personal community newsletters. We can personalise and present it. This can’t be erased. I’ve not been able to spend much time as a writer. I’ve spent more time being an activist, organising rallies, getting arrested, being in gaol and fighting court cases. There’s been more of all that and unfortunately less of writing.
 
I think I’ve created a little bit of written public memory.

 

 

Ankur Betageri

Written by mascara on . Posted in Poetry.

Ankur Betageri, (18/11/83), is a bilingual writer based in New Delhi. His poetry collection in English is titled The Sea of Silence (2000, C.V.G. Publications.) Two collections in Kannada are titled Hidida Usiru (Breath Caught, 2004, Abhinava Prakashana)and Idara Hesaru (It’s Name, 2006, Abhinava Prakashana) He has also published a collection of Japanese Haiku translations called Haladi Pustaka (The Yellow Book, 2009, Kanva Prakashana). He holds a Masters in Clinical Psychology from Christ College, Bangalore. He co-edits the journal Indian Literature published by Sahitya Akademi and is contributing editor(India) of the Singapore-based ezine writersconnect.org. Recently, he represented India as a Poet at the III International Delphic Games held at Jeju, South Korea.

 

 

The quiet and rising tension in the jaw of the common man

You are drinking chai in the office canteen
looking out the window absentmindedly
at the unreal summer shadows of trees
thrown about carelessly
with the occasional bird
lighting the bough
and preening its brilliant wings
when suddenly you hear someone StaMMeRinG!

You look around and see
your whole inner self
in all its trembling
irritably burning
nakedness
splayed out in the shuddering body
of the ‘boy’ who serves chai.
Racked by the nervous torment that being here
has become, he is stammering
unable to utter a sensible word,
he is stammering in a terrible frothing anger
at a bully customer
and –  I realize –  at a world that has failed him.

I see chai-drinking chootias around me
smiling; I gulp the chai and unable to make out
what is happening to me,
unable to contain the trembling which is possessing me,
unable to go on sitting at the table, on the chair
in this stable world, in this insanely stable world
which will continue to be stable even after my death,
unable to do anything that could stop
his quaking body from stammering,
unable to do anything about the laughter
which goes on quietly massacring,
I drink chai
chai-drinking, English-speaking, afsar-cunt that I am
I continue to drink chai as if nothing has happened,
as if nothing will ever happen,
as if the trembling within me has
nothing to do with what is outside
as if yoga, meditation, shitty self-help books
are what I require,
as if happy hours at the bar, Sunday-sair with a girl
would instantly restore me to normalcy –
ah happy-cunt of the great Indian middle class!
ah intellectual-cunt debating in news channels!
ah corporate-cunt discussing growth in ac boardrooms!
ah poet-cunt churning out verse for international journals!
ah bollywood-cunt selling flaccid dreams to the poor!
ah cunt on the election poster
ah cunt in the complicit rooms of police stations!
ah cunt selling merchandize and noise on FM channels!
ah cunt running newspaper by splattering naked bodies of women!
ah student-cunt fornicating and agitating in college campuses!
ah actor-cunt asking us to end poverty from your palaces!
ah brand-ambassador-cunt for fair skin, white teeth and slim hips!
ah soulless empire of cunts
looking down from hoardings, ad-widgets and social-networking sites!
I shall exorcise myself of you and your ghosts!
I shall speak now of the wrongs, speak now of the murders
I really have had enough of your chai!
I – the Cunt with a Conscience – shall master this human trembling
I shall rescue from the rot this precious inner feeling
I shall hug the fevered hearts and speak for all those
still
stammering.

 

The Indian Soul

for Shri Vidiadhar Surajprasad Naipaul

The Indian soul is pure
no amount of money, corruption and sophistry in the world of high art
can corrupt its soul
look at the Indian dog licking at the worn out tyres of a Maruti 800
look at its eyes and you know it is sacred
its hungry and cold in the misty Delhi winter
and you can weep out of pity for it
(my head grows soft like a peeled cucumber
as my face weeps inside the cheeks)
but the dog doesn’t need my pity
it feels my love and runs away barking
as if its dangerous to linger in my pity…

The Indian women are pure
I loathe them and call them rubbish
and they let me go
yes, they tried to shackle my heart, break my spirit
yes, they enticed me with the dream of babies
BUT when they saw my purpose they let me go
I slept over them like on the warm sunny beaches
and looked at the sun take the sea with it
and when I rose they fell off my body
like so much sand,
they never stuck to me –
(it was I who stuck to them
coming in the way of their life in comfortable cars
bearing sun-faced babies and listening to technicolour songs –
and when they saw that my spirit was getting muddy
in the warm pools of their cosy homes
it was they who kicked me out
complementing me, indirectly:
you are too much for us, too much!)

The Indian women are pure
they mind their business and know
each one has his own destiny to fulfill –
Just look at the beautiful women in the sarees
how graceful their movement and many-splendored their bangled hands!
its just that they are not for me
and they smile at me warmly and let me go
and I smile back at them happily, flapping my wings.

The Indian soul, no matter how deep in the muck it gets pushed
is pure and full of joy
look at the Indian cow lying on a bed of its own dung
look at the buffaloes wallowing in their own shit
but still giving – two times a day – pure white milk!
look into the buffalo’s eyes
can anyone be as calm and quietly contented as her?
The Indian soul is pure and joyous and sacred
and no amount of western shit splattered on the shop fronts
hoardings and newspapers can change it –
Half-naked women swing hips to tasteless tunes of bollywood?
Let them! Let the buffoons and jokers pass themselves off as heroes
and once done, let them do netagiri
folding hands, showing teeth and all –
none of it is going to change the Indian soul
it will always be deep and pure and joyous
away from all that is ephemeral!

The Indian soul – no kidding, guys, – is pure
(no, not as pure as the beauty soap just taken out of the box
like they show us in the ads
but pure in a way our drugged imagination cannot even conceive –)

Deep in the Delhi night
I breathe the glacier-pure air
it quivers in my nostrils, in my lungs, in my hair
I breathe in the great expanse
and breathe it back in space

The Indian soul is us, a will that has found its sap
the Indian soul is us, a light that cannot be stopped
and India is the earth, whose map cannot be drawn.