Come Hear Dynamic Poet Valzhyna Mort
She will read here at USC on Friday, April 6th, at 12:00 in the Welsh Humanities Office Building. The details are below. But first read her poem, BELARUSIAN ll, and think about the questions that follow it.
BELARUSIAN II
even our mothers have no idea how we were born
how we spread their legs and crawled out into the world
the way you crawl out of ruins after bombings
we didn’t know which of us was a girl or a boy
and we gorged on soil thinking we were gorging bread
and our future --- a gymnast on a thin
thread of the horizon was performing there
on the highest pitch.
bitch.
1. Would people in you culture consider this a poem? If not, what are poems like in your country?
2. Does this poem have rhyme or rhythm?
3. According to the poem, being born is like what?
4. One of the lines in the poem is, "we didn’t know which of us was a girl or a boy." What do you think the poet means by that?
5. Does this poem mean anything to you? Does it make you think or feel?
Finally, if you like this poem, you may want to hear the poet read her work. The details of her visit are below.
Location: 1st Floor Lounge in the Welsh Humanities Office Building
Date: Friday, April 6th
Time: 12noon-1pm
There will be a light lunch served. Please RSVP to Charlene Spearen at cmspeare@gwm.sc.edu, or call 777-5492.
At 24, a poet and translator, Valzhyna’s work has been translated into many European languages and published in various literary magazines and anthologies, including an Anthology of Belarusian Poetry (Sofia, 2002). Her first U.S. Book, Factory of Tears, is forthcoming by Copper Canyon Press in the spring of 2008.
Valzhyna is famed throughout Europe for her remarkable reading performances, which display a talent not normally associated with one so young. She is the winner of several poetry competitions in Belarus, and in 2004 she received the Crystal of Velenica Award in Slovenia, which is awarded for reading performance. Valzhyna’s first collection, I’m as Thin as Your Eyelashes (2005), is startlingly assured and reveals a powerful poetic voice. She is the 2005 recipient of the Gaude Polonia stipendium. She currently lives in the United States.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
2 comments:
The complete poem is below if you would like to read it.
BELARUSIAN II
even our mothers have no idea how we were born
how we spread their legs and crawled out into the world
the way you crawl out of ruins after bombings
we didn’t know which of us was a girl or a boy
and we gorged on soil thinking we were gorging bread
and our future --- a gymnast on a thin
thread of the horizon was performing there
on the highest pitch.
bitch.
we grew up in a country where
your door is first stroke with chalk
and then at dark there comes a chariot
and no one sees you any more
but in those cars were neither
armed men nor
a wanderer with a scythe
but this is how love loved to visit us
and snatched us veiled
we were completely free only in public toilets
where for little money nobody cared what we were doing
we opposed the heat in summer and snow in winter
and when we found that we were our language ourselves
and our tongues were pulled out we started talking with our eyes
and when our eyes were poked out we talked with our hands
and when our hands were cut off we talked with our toes
and when our legs were shot through, we decided to nod our heads for “ yes” and to shake our heads for “no”. and when they ate our heads alive
we crawled back into the bellies of our sleeping mothers
as if into bomb-shelters
to be born again.
and there, on the horizon, a gymnast of our future
was jumping through the scorching hoop
of the sun.
screwed.
—translated by Joseph Cortese
Here's another poem by Valzhyna Mort
Posted on Thursday 19 October 2006
A POEM ABOUT WHITE APPLES
white apples, first apples of summer,
with skin as delicate as a baby’s,
crispy like white winter snow.
your smell won’t let me sleep,
this is how dead men
are haunting their murderers’ dreams.
white apples,
this is how every july the earth
gets heavier under your weight.
and here only garbage smells like garbage…
and here only tears taste like salt…
and we were picking them
like shells in green ocean gardens,
having just turned away from our mothers’ breasts
we were learning
to get to the core of everything with our teeth.
so why are our teeth like cotton balls now…
white apples,
in black waters, the fishermen,
nursed by you, are drowning.
(Read by Valzhyna on the October 19, 2006 podcast)
Post a Comment