I found Maria’s poems quite emotionally draining – challenging, familiar yet foreign – bitter sweet, I suppose – with the voice of experience faltering as the future is faced. ’Lingering Feeling’ is packed to the gunwales. What, intrepid readers, do you make of them?
Fitch
This stark tale from Pakistan is something that binds us all. The challenged family, the despair of not knowing what happened – it is part of our shared currency and we have to thank Mrs Anjum Wasir Dar from Rawalpindi for her story.
Fitch
Mostafa Mouhibe, who is from Morocco, has sent us this delightful poem. A wonderful mixture of the serious and the (almost) flippant it seems to me that Mostafa is demanding a response from his readers. So come on then, what is stopping you?!
Fitch
Hi everyone,
With the same zest and spirit as yours, I have received this lovely but culturally hermited tale. As an Arab reader I did not perceive well the cultural dimension of “jumping the fire” or “releasing the ballons in the air” until I did make a brief research on this type of cultural or anthropological rite. Amazingly enough, in my local culture, we do also ritually jump over the fire every once a year but according to the lunar calendar. I asked my mother about the reason ( the same way Sean wondered in the tale) of jumping, she replied ” girls jump to be very fertile when married, boys do to be initiated to adulthood”! Isn’t that amazing? Cultures do meet though geographically far might they seem. Herein lies the significance of literature which must be used to fuse peacefully all parts of the world.
You are right Chris I also see that the tale sheds light on the shift from adolescence to adulthood
to be continued
Mostafa
We are delighted to have this particular encounter with Claudia Ferradas.
It seems to us that “Digging” evokes a hard time of oppression, persecution. However, we are happy for the determination, courage of this daughter… who wishes to share forbidden thoughts with those “avid teenage ears”! This daughter’s attitude means a struggle for freedom and love, we think.
Thank you so much, Claudia!
Maria de Céu
Here’s a piece of luck for us. Sanghita’s poems were only recently published by Kritya, but already we have them to enjoy for ourselves.
The first poem looks at the trails and tribulations experienced in the Garden of Eden through the eyes of Eve while the second poem, ‘Apocalyptic Exodus’, takes us back to the tragic days of separation, when India and Pakistan established separate countries. In the third poem, a sliver of hope is offered in ‘A Dream’.
We’re thrilled to have Claudia Ferradas posting a poem on the site. What a poem as well. Dark and troubled, full of yearning and love; we glimpse a community in fear, the threat to the family. The message of books as symbols of freedom, or as threats to an ‘ordered’ society is not a new one but it is a message that we keep forgetting, it seems.
Claudia’s apparently simple, direct style goes straight to the heart but each time you read it another layer appears. How complex simplicity turns out to be!
Reactions, please …………….
Fitch
