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garadinervi · 9 months
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Langston Hughes, The Negro Mother [The Negro Mother, and Other Dramatic Recitations, 1931], in Selected Poems of Langston Hughes, Drawings by Edward McKnight Kauffer, Alfred A. Knopf, New York, NY, 1966, pp. 288-289
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aaknopf · 11 months
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Three brief poems of male love, of transcience and what abides. These works fall in a chain of influence from the singular James Merrill (1926–1995) through his younger contemporary and good friend J. D. McClatchy (1945–2018), and down to Richie Hofmann, whose 21st-century work carries an echo of their desires. As a student, Richie wrote his senior thesis on Merrill’s poetry and its relationship to visual art, and later assisted McClatchy in sorting through a collection of Merrill’s books, to facilitate their donation to the James Merrill House in Stonington, CT. 
Last Words by James Merrill
My life, your light green eyes Have lit on me with joy. There’s nothing I don’t know Or shall not know again, Over and over again. It’s noon, it’s dawn, it’s night, I am the dog that dies In the deep street of Troy Tomorrow, long ago— Part of me dims with pain, Becomes the stinging flies, The bent head of the boy. Part looks into your light And lives to tell you so.
Mercury Dressing by J. D. McClatchy
To steal a glance and, anxious, see Him slipping into transparency— The feathered helmet already in place, Its shadow fallen across his face (His hooded sex its counterpart)— Unsteadies the routines of the heart. If I reach out and touch his wing, What harm, what help might he then bring?
But suddenly he disappears, As so much else has down the years . . . Until I feel him deep inside The emptiness, preoccupied. His nerve electrifies the air. His message is his being there.
Things That Are Rare by Richie Hofmann
It is so easy to imagine your absence. Maybe it is night, we are still handsome. All the young are. It is so easy. Another thing to be beautiful. How gently the curtain falls back down and the room is dark again, the season of in-betweenities, my eyes heavy, my lips numb. Fingerprints on the unjacketed books. Inside the collars of the shirts in the open closet— An affluent night. You’ve touched everything in my small room.
. .
More on these authors:
Browse other books by James Merrill. Learn more about the historic James Merrill House and browse their events.
Browse other books by J. D. McClatchy. 
Follow Richie Hofmann @richiehof on Twitter and Instagram, join his advanced poetry course online or in person at 92NY, and hear him read at Women and Children First in Chicago on June 27.
Read Richie Hofmann’s new poem, “Lamb,” recently published in Poem-a-Day by the Academy of American Poets.
Visit our Tumblr to peruse poems, audio recordings, and broadsides in the Knopf poem-a-day series.
To share the poem-a-day experience with friends, pass along this link.
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joanbpoet · 2 years
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"Ask, now that body shines / no longer, by what light you learn these lines." Here I reflect on James Merrill's poem "b o d y."
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dk-thrive · 1 month
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I’m just sad. Aren’t I supposed to talk about that? ...The big pathological sad. Whether I’m actually thinking about it or not. It’s like a giant bowling ball on the bed, everything kind of rolls into it.” “Maybe you don’t believe God wants you to be happy? God, your mother, poetry, whatever. What makes you so special that everyone else deserves that except you?”
— Kaveh Akbar, Martyr!: A Novel (Knopf, January 23, 2024)
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librarycomic · 22 days
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My Very Own Special Particular Private And Personal Cat by Sandol Stoddard Warburg, designed and illustrated by Remy Charlip. Enchanted Lion, 2023. (Originally published in 1963.) 9781592703852. http://www.powells.com/book/-9781592703852?partnerid=34778&p_bt
I love everything about this book: the poetry, the illustrations, the orange-yellow paper, and especially the layout, which helps the words and illustrations work together. A child talks about playing with his cat, and the cat is clearly not having a good time and finally runs off. The story really gets going in the second half, when it shifts into the cat's point of view.
Also: I loved the reproduction of Remy Charlip's signature on the "This book belongs to __" page.
Gravity Is Bringing Me Down by Wendelin Van Draanen, illustrated by Cornelia Li. Alfred A. Knopf, 2024. 9780593375921. https://www.powells.com/book/-9780593375921?partnerid=34778&p_bt
Gravity is in a bad mood, and it's making Leda's school day pretty rough. (Don't worry, she makes up with gravity later in the book.) The story is great, and a fun way to introduce kids to science, but Li's illustrations make the book amazing; the way she draws the sun is my favorite thing in the book.
Love in the Library by Maggie Tokuda-Hall, illustrated by Yas Imamura. Candlewick, 2022. Includes an author's note at the end. 9781536204308. https://www.powells.com/book/-9781536204308?partnerid=34778&p_bt
The story of George and Tama Tokuda, the author's maternal grandparents, who fell in love in the Minidoka incarceration camp in Idaho. (Tama worked in the library during their incarceration; George came in all the time and checked out more books than anyone could possibly read.) This is the best picture book on the internment of Japanese Americans I've read, and the most beautifully
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musingsofmonica · 7 months
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August 2023 Diverse Reads
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August 2023 Diverse Reads
•”Happiness Falls” by Angie Kim, August 29, Hogarth Press, Literary Mystery 
•”Every Drop Is a Man's Nightmare” by Megan Kamalei Kakimoto, August 29, Bloomsbury Publishing, Short Story Collection — Fairy Tales, Folk Tales, Legends & Mythology (Hawaiian Identify) 
•”The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store” by James McBride, Riverhead Books, Historical
•”Family Lore” by Elizabeth Acevedo, August 1, Ecco Press, Literary/Magical Realism
“A Council of Dolls” by Mona Susan Power, August 7, Mariner Books, Literary — Coming of Age/Native American & Aboriginal/Magical Realism
•”Tomb Sweeping: Stories” by Alexandra Chang, August 8, Ecco Press, Short Story Collection — Asian American  
•”The End of August” by Yu Miri, Translated by Morgan Giles, August 1, Riverhead Books, Historical/Saga 
•”Holler, Child: Stories” by Latoya Watkins, August 29, Tiny Reparations Books, Short Story Collection — African American  
•”Vampires of El Norte” by Isabel Cañas, August 15, Berkley Books, Gothic Thriller/Horror/Suspense 
•”Las Madres” by Esmeralda Santiago, August 1, 
Knopf Publishing Group, Literary
•”Daughters of Latin America: An International Anthology of Writing by Latine Women” by Sandra Guzman, August 15, Amistad Press, Anthology — American: Hispanic & Latino
•”Falling Back in Love with Being Human: Letters to Lost Souls” by Kai Cheng Thom, August 01, Dual Press,  Nonfiction/Poetry/Motivation
•”The Art of Scandal” by Regina Black, August 1, Grand Central Publishing, Romance
•”Her Radiant Curse” by Elizabeth Lim, August 29, Alfred A. Knopf Books for Young Readers, Fantasy/Fairy Tales/Folklore 
•”The Apology” by Jimin Han, August 1, Little Brown and Company, Family Saga/Magical Realism
•”The Water Outlaws” by S. L. Huang, August 22, Tordotcom, Fantasy
•”The Queen of the Valley” by Lorena Hughes, August 22, Kensington Publishing, Historical
•”I Will Greet the Sun Again” by Khashayar J. Khabushani, August 1, Hogarth Press, Contemporary — Coming of Age/LGBTQ+/Muslim
•”The Peach Seed” by Anita Gail Jones, August 1, Henry Holt & Company, Literary 
•”Lush Lives” by J. Vanessa Lyon, August 1, Roxane Gay Books, Literary
Happy Reading!
Mo✌️
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whisperthatruns · 10 months
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Beyond Pleasure
Gradually we realize what is felt is not so important (however lovely or cruel) as what the feeling contains. Not what happens to us in childhood, but what was inside what happened. Ken Kesey sitting in the woods, beyond his fence of whitewashed motorcycles, said when he was writing on acid he was not writing about it. He used what he wrote as blazes to find his way back to what he knew then. Poetry registers feelings, delights and passion, but the best searches out what is beyond pleasure, is outside process. Not the passion so much as what the fervor can be an ingress to. Poetry fishes us to find a world part by part, as the photograph interrupts the flux to give us time to see each thing separate and enough. The poem chooses part of our endless flowing forward to know its merit with attention.
Jack Gilbert, Refusing Heaven: Poems (Alfred A. Knopf, 2005)
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rockislandadultreads · 3 months
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In Memoriam: Authors We Lost in 2023
Master of Disguises by Charles Simic
In this volume of poetry, Charles Simic shows the height of his poetic powers, as its poems mine the rich strain of inscrutability in ordinary life, until it is hard to know what is innocent and what ominous. The face of a girl carrying a white dress from the cleaners with her eyes half-closed. The Adam & Evie Tanning Salon at night. A sparrow on crutches. A rubber duck in a shooting gallery on a Sunday morning. And someone in a tree swing, too old to be swinging, blowing a toy trumpet at the sky. Simic served as poet laureate of the United States from 2007-2008.
Charles Simic passed away on January 9th. 
Passage to Juneau by Jonathan Raban
In this volume, travel writer Jonathan Raban takes us along the Inside Passage, 1,000 miles of often treacherous water, which he navigates solo in a 35-foot sailboat. Throughout, Raban offers captivating discourses on art, philosophy, and navigation; an unsparing narrative of personal loss; and insight into the immeasurable divide between the Northwest's Indians and its first European explorers over a gulf of centuries. 
 Jonathan Raban passed away on January 17th. 
Avid Reader by Robert Gottlieb
After editing The Columbia Review, staging plays at Cambridge, and a stint in the greeting-card department of Macy's, Robert Gottlieb stumbled into a job at Simon and Schuster. By the time he left to run Alfred A. Knopf a dozen years later, he was the editor in chief, having discovered and edited Catch-22 and The American Way of Death, among other bestsellers. At Knopf, Gottlieb edited an astonishing list of authors, such as Toni Morrison, John le Carré, and Michael Crichton. In this memoir, Gottlieb writes with wit and candor about the challenges and satisfactions of running America's preeminent magazine.
Robert Gottlieb passed away on June 14th. 
A Village Life by Louise Glück
In her eleventh volume of poetry, Louise Glück begins in the topography of a village, a Mediterranean world of no definite moment or place. Glück was known as a lyrical and dramatic poet; while her manner was novelistic, she focused not on action but on pauses and intervals, moments of suspension (rather than suspense), in a dreamlike present tense in which poetic speculation and reflection are possible. She also served as poet laureate of the United States from 2003 to 2004. 
Louise Glück passed away on October 13th. 
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wellesleybooks · 6 months
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The National Book Award finalists have been announced.
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2023 Longlist for the National Book Award for Fiction:
Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah, Chain-Gang All-Stars Pantheon Books / Penguin Random House
Aaliyah Bilal, Temple Folk Simon & Schuster
Eliot Duncan, Ponyboy W. W. Norton & Company
Paul Harding, This Other Eden W. W. Norton & Company
Tania James, Loot Knopf / Penguin Random House
Jayne Anne Phillips, Night Watch Knopf / Penguin Random House
Mona Susan Power, A Council of Dolls Mariner Books / HarperCollins Publishers
Hanna Pylväinen, The End of Drum-Time Henry Holt and Company / Macmillan Publishers
Justin Torres, Blackouts Farrar, Straus and Giroux / Macmillan Publishers
LaToya Watkins, Holler, Child Tiny Reparations Books / Penguin Random House
2023 Longlist for the National Book Award for Nonfiction:
Ned Blackhawk, The Rediscovery of America: Native Peoples and the Unmaking of U.S. History Yale University Press
Jonathan Eig, King: A Life Farrar, Straus and Giroux / Macmillan Publishers
Viet Thanh Nguyen, A Man of Two Faces: A Memoir, A History, A Memorial Grove Press / Grove Atlantic
Prudence Peiffer, The Slip: The New York City Street That Changed American Art Forever Harper / HarperCollins Publishers
Donovan X. Ramsey, When Crack Was King: A People’s History of a Misunderstood Era One World / Penguin Random House
Cristina Rivera Garza, Liliana’s Invincible Summer: A Sister’s Search for Justice Hogarth / Penguin Random House
Christina Sharpe, Ordinary Notes Farrar, Straus and Giroux / Macmillan Publishers
Raja Shehadeh, We Could Have Been Friends, My Father and I: A Palestinian Memoir Other Press
John Vaillant, Fire Weather: A True Story from a Hotter World Knopf / Penguin Random House
Kidada E. Williams, I Saw Death Coming: A History of Terror and Survival in the War Against Reconstruction Bloomsbury Publishing
2023 Longlist for the National Book Award for Poetry:
John Lee Clark, How to Communicate W. W. Norton & Company
Oliver de la Paz, The Diaspora Sonnets Liveright / W. W. Norton & Company
Annelyse Gelman, Vexations University of Chicago Press
José Olivarez, Promises of Gold Henry Holt and Company / Macmillan Publishers
Craig Santos Perez, from unincorporated territory [åmot] Omnidawn Publishing
Paisley Rekdal, West: A Translation Copper Canyon Press
Brandon Som, Tripas Georgia Review Books / University of Georgia Press
Charif Shanahan, Trace Evidence Tin House Books
Evie Shockley, suddenly we Wesleyan University Press Monica Youn, From From Graywolf Press
2023 Longlist for the National Book Award for Translated Literature:
Juan Cárdenas, The Devil of the Provinces Translated from the Spanish by Lizzie Davis Coffee House Press
Bora Chung, Cursed Bunny Translated from the Korean by Anton Hur Algonquin Books / Hachette Book Group
David Diop, Beyond the Door of No Return Translated from the French by Sam Taylor Farrar, Straus and Giroux / Macmillan Publishers
Jenny Erpenbeck, Kairos Translated from the German by Michael Hofmann New Directions Publishing
Stênio Gardel, The Words That Remain Translated from the Portuguese by Bruna Dantas Lobato New Vessel Press
Khaled Khalifa, No One Prayed Over Their Graves Translated from the Arabic by Leri Price Farrar, Straus and Giroux / Macmillan Publishers
Fernanda Melchor, This Is Not Miami Translated from the Spanish by Sophie Hughes New Directions Publishing
Pilar Quintana, Abyss Translated from the Spanish by Lisa Dillman World Editions
Astrid Roemer, On a Woman’s Madness Translated from the Dutch by Lucy Scott Two Lines Press
Mohamed Mbougar Sarr, The Most Secret Memory of Men Translated from the French by Lara Vergnaud Other Press
2023 Longlist for the National Book Award for Young People’s Literature:
Erin Bow, Simon Sort of Says Disney-Hyperion Books / Disney Publishing Worldwide
Kenneth M. Cadow, Gather Candlewick Press
Alyson Derrick, Forget Me Not Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers / Simon & Schuster
Huda Fahmy, Huda F Cares? Dial Books for Young Readers / Penguin Random House
Vashti Harrison, Big Little, Brown Books for Young Readers / Hachette Book Group
Katherine Marsh, The Lost Year: A Survival Story of the Ukrainian Famine Roaring Brook Press / Macmillan Publishers
Dan Nott, Hidden Systems: Water, Electricity, the Internet, and the Secrets Behind the Systems We Use Every Day Random House Graphic / Penguin Random House
Dan Santat, A First Time for Everything First Second / Macmillan Publishers
Betty C. Tang, Parachute Kids Graphix / Scholastic, Inc.
Yohuru Williams and Michael G. Long, More Than a Dream: The Radical March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom Farrar, Straus and Giroux Books for Young Readers / Macmillan Publishers
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any-which-way-poetry · 8 months
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Transcript: 杜甫 Du Fu - 早秋苦热堆案相仍 Awful heat in early autumn, piles of paperwork keep coming
[Listen to the episode here.]
This is 早秋苦热堆案相仍 "Awful heat in early autumn, piles of paperwork keep coming" by Du Fu.
七月六日苦炎蒸, qī yuè liù rì kǔ yán zhēng, 对食暂餐还不能。 duì shí zàn cān hái bù néng.
august sixth. baking in this awful heat about time for a hasty meal? think again
常愁夜来皆是蝎, cháng chóu yè lái jiē shì xiē, 况乃秋后转多蝇。 kuàng nǎi qiū hòu zhuǎn duō yíng.
I suffer. and when night comes, so do the scorpions – only to be replaced, come fall, by the flies
束带发狂欲大叫, shù dài fā kuáng yù dà jiào, 簿书何急来相仍。 bù shū hé jí lái xiāng réng.
I’m going to go mad from my ties and belts. I want to scream ledgers and documents (cannot be urgent) keep coming. they keep coming
南望青松架短壑, nán wàng qīng sōng jià duǎn hè, 安得赤脚踏层冰。 ān de chì jiǎo tà céng bīng.
travelling in my mind to those green pines by the ravines south of here oh the satisfaction of bare feet breaking through a crust of ice
---
Um, happy old man Monday?? This started when I saw this Twitter thread by Liz Crash @AsFarce - this initial tweet was just captioned "Du Fu, circa 758 AD", which is the two lines about wanting to scream in his office. Presumably a lot of people found this relatable.
The original Twitter poster did a follow-up thread, which I think is important to consider for a fuller picture of 'how we got here'. Quoting:
I was instead struck by how imperial China pioneered much of what we take for granted about the modern world, particularly modern bureaucracies. writing as such emerges hand in hand with state formation. so written history is the history of states.
And also:
the British civil service was strongly influenced by the much older Chinese civil service. China is where Europe got the idea for state functions administered by politically independent qualified professionals rather than someone’s nephew
The other bit of particular context for this particular poem - which is kind of scratching the surface, really - is that this was written in the middle of the An Lushan rebellion! This was, uh, 'the previous emperor has abdicated and his third son has retaken the capital city and is forming a government. And guess who has to do a lot of work to stabilize this new government!' But y'know, truly, props to Du Fu for tweeting through it.
I really - I was really vindicated to find this blogpost on Medium by Delaine Rogers which is like a summary of five Tang-dynasty poets, and the section about Du Fu just begins:
If any ancient poet were to be on Twitter, documenting his daily experiences and thoughts, it would be Du Fu
To that end, I highly recommend David Young's book of Du Fu poetry, just entitled Du Fu: A Life in Poetry, published by Alfred A. Knopf. I find he gives Du Fu just this really wonderful, distinctive, and consistent Old Man Voice that has really made its impact on me, personally - on my personal idea of who Du Fu was.
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modelewis · 1 year
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F1 Drivers as Poems Day 15/22—Nico Hülkenberg—“Keeping Things Whole,” Mark Strand 👤
“This is always the case. Wherever I am I am what is missing.”
Alt text for Photo 1: A photo of Nico Hülkenberg, a mid-30s white Formula 1 racer in a green Aston Martin racing suit, sitting in a Formula 1 car of the same color with a focused expression. A green graphic of a patch of grass is in the top left corner, and a solid green bust silhouette of Nico is in the bottom right. Thin, green sans serif text in all caps reads “Nico Hülkenberg” in the top right corner.
Alt text for Photo 2: A text-based graphic on a deep green background with the same grass and silhouette graphics and driver’s name. Light-green serif text in the middle reads: “I am the absence / of field. / This is / always the case. / Wherever I am / I am what is missing. / We all have reasons / for moving. / I move / to keep things whole.” Thin, green sans serif text in all caps beneath the poem reads “—Mark Strand, “Keeping Things Whole”.”
Photo from Aston Martin F1 Team on Twitter
Poem: “Keeping Things Whole” by Mark Strand from Selected Poems (Alfred A. Knopf, Inc., 1979) via Poetry Society of America
Made with Canva
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garadinervi · 1 year
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Sylvia Plath, (1960), The Colossus and other poems, Alfred A. Knopf, New York, NY, 1962 [Alexander Rare Books, Hillsborough, NC]
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aaknopf · 1 year
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broadside artwork by Min Goto
This January, we lost the Serbian-American poet Charles Simic, born in 1938 in Belgrade. Over five decades and dozens of books, this winner of the Pulitzer Prize and the Frost Medal was a compelling ambassador of the uncanny. He lingered before dusty pawn-shop windows, conversed with hoot owls, and crystallized the oddities of living in the late-20th- and early-21st-century as an experience of essential otherness. But he also suggested that we could find wonder in it, if we happened around the corner at just the right moment.
Summer Dusk 
You’ve been the love of my life,  Light lingering in the sky  At the close of a long day  Over the roofs of some city  Like New York or Rome,  As streets empty in the heat,  And shadows lengthen  And darken every room,  Occupied or still vacant,  Where some turn on the lamp  And others step to a window  To savor this fleeting moment  When everything stops  As if stunned by its own beauty.
. .
More on this book and author: 
Learn more about No Land in Sight by Charles Simic.
Browse other books by Charles Simic.
After Charles Simic’s passing, the poet Carolyn Forché published an essay on Simic, their friendship, and their shared connection with Central Europe. 
Visit our Tumblr to peruse poems, audio recordings, and broadsides in the Knopf poem-a-day series.
To share the poem-a-day experience with friends, pass along this link.
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ruknowhere · 2 years
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Summer Sorrow
What shall meadow hold to please me,
Spreading wide its scented waving,
How shall quiet mosses ease me,
Or the night-wind cool my craving?
Hill and hedgerow, cloud-sweet sky,
Echo our good-by.
Bud unplucked and leaf a-quiver,
Bird that lifts a tuneless trilling,
Restless dream of brook and river,
All June’s cup a wasted spilling—
You and I so thirsty-hearted!—
Summer knows us parted.
Leonora Speyer was born in Washington, D.C., in 1872. She won the Pulitzer Prize in 1927 for her poetry collection Fiddler’s Farewell (Alfred A. Knopf, 1926)
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dk-thrive · 1 year
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Somewhere in there, I had faith in the next step. One step, then another. The next steps on the journey home.
The sorts of kids who write songs or poetry or paint pictures are the sorts of kids who feel too much at times. The sorts of kids whose feelings can overpower them. In writing this now, I am brought back to the green briar and leafy trees at the edge of the school grounds in Mount Temple. I am brought back to a fretting teenager standing by the train tracks and imagining the comfort they might offer if I lay across them and gave up on hope and love. But I had faith. Somewhere in there, I had faith in the next step. One step, then another. The next steps on the journey home.
— Bono, “Surrender: 40 Songs, One Story by Bono” (Knopf, November 1, 2022) 
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pwpoetry · 2 years
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Q&A with Tayi Tibble
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M: Can you tell us a bit about the title of your collection?
T: Poukahangatus is a transliteration of Pocahontas, articulated in Te Reo Maori phonetics. It doesn’t have an actual or complete meaning in Maori, but broken down, ‘pou’ means a pillar, a column, a totem, and ‘kaha’ means strength or bravery, and I like those meanings being present in the title for the collection.
The title is also lifted from the opening essay, ‘Poukahangatus: An Essay about Indigenous Hair Do’s and Don’ts’ and just as the essay explores, I think as a title, Poukahangatus suggests themes of indigenous representation, appropriation, story sovereignty and reclamation, which are recurring and the undercurrent of the collection.
M: This was your debut--what was it like shaping it, and what have you worked on since?
T: I wrote Poukahangatus while I was studying towards my MFA at the International Institute of Modern Letters, so it was shaped through workshops, supervision and a year of concentrated study which was all super helpful to both the book's development, and my own development as a writer. It was an intense but very rewarding experience — it was the first time I had ever explored my culture, my family, the history and impact of colonization in my writing and in New Zealand at the time, there was a bit of a gap in our literature that held both Te Ao Maori (the maori world) and the modern, globalized world of pop culture and the internet, so writing into that space was very fertile, but in part, sort of vulnerable too.
Since then, I wrote a second collection Rangikura, which will also be published by Knopf at a later date. It’s similar to Poukahangatus with its themes of family and colonization, but its parameters are a little tighter, and the intensity turned up — it has an undercurrent of climate change urgency; exploring the relationship between the desecration of the earth and desecration of indigenous women. I’m currently also starting a third collection, but it’s taking its time to reveal itself.
M: There's a range of forms in your first collection. Can you talk a bit about the prose poems that anchor the opening and appear throughout?
T: I’m interested in prose poems because I am interested in storytelling. I write poetry of course, but I also consider my poems to be, and want my poems to serve as, a form of indigenous storytelling; a way to capture and articulate our indigenous knowledge and experiences, and pass them along through generations.
I guess I like how prose poems invite density, generosity, and exploration while also offering the visual cue or expectation that there might be a narrative drive or a story. Many of the prose poems in Poukahangatus have a narrative drive or tell stories. For example, ‘Tangi in The King Country’ is a series of prose poems that tell the story of two small children returning to their marae or ancestral lands for the first time. In another poem titled ‘Pania’ a relationship between an exotic dancer and her client is told over three blocks of prose, which also draws on the traditional myth of Pania of The Reef, a sea maiden from the Ngati Kahungungu tribe of Aotearoa. It’s important to me as a writer to share the stories of my people, and prose poems are a functional way to do this. I like playing with dense blocks of text, but still working the language enough to make it feel light and sing like poetry.
M: Are there any other books or works of art with which you feel your work is in conversation?
T: I’m not sure if they're in conversation with, but the books that spoke to me as I was writing Poukahangatus, and in turn helped me to find my voice and speak with courage and confidence were Citizen by Claudia Rankine, Teaching my Mother How to Give Birth by Warsan Shire and Fale Aitu by Tusiata Avia. They sort of formed the atmosphere I wanted to write into, these passionate wahine writing about power and ancestry with truth and reclamation
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