***
Idag, samtidigt som Sverige spelar ödesmatch, uppträder poeter från Indien, Bangladesh och Storbritannien på en scen i Southbank Centre. Författarna kommer att omtolka olika klassiska verk och programmet går under namnet "The Sonnet Exchange". Bland de deltagande författarna finns: Kaiser Haq, Daljit Nagra, Imtiaz Dharker och Sampurna Chattarji.
Jag dukar upp en dikt av Imtiaz Dharker.
Tissue, by Imtiaz Dharker (f. 1954)
(from The terrorist at my table. Tarset, Northumberland : Bloodaxe Books, 2006.)
Paper that lets the light
shine through, this
is what could alter things.
Paper thinned by age or touching,
the kind you find in well-used books,
the back of the Koran, where a hand
has written in the names and histories,
who was born to whom,
the height and weight, who
died where and how, on which sepia date,
pages smoothed and stroked and turned
transparent with attention.
If buildings were paper, I might
feel their drift, see how easily
they fall away on a sigh, a shift
in the direction of the wind.
Maps too. The sun shines through
their borderlines, the marks
that rivers make, roads,
railtracks, mountainfolds,
Fine slips from grocery shops
that say how much was sold
and what was paid by credit card
might fly our lives like paper kites.
An architect could use all this,
place layer over layer, luminous
script over numbers over line,
and never wish to build again with brick
or block, but let the daylight break
through capitals and monoliths,
through the shapes that pride can make,
find a way to trace a grand design
with living tissue, raise a structure
never meant to last,
of paper smoothed and stroked
and thinned to be transparent,
turned into your skin.
***
Den 29 maj erbjöds en vandring i de gamla arbetarkvarteren i Edinburgh. I samband med promenaden utfördes "poem performances" under rubriken Char. Ordet betecknar den grupp av kvinnor som jobbade med att städa de välbeställdas hem. Upphovskvinna till dikterna är Rachel Plummer och projektet (promenad och performance) var en del av the Hidden Door Festival, som även inkluderar konstutställningar.
Rachel Plummer tilldelades nyligen "New writers award".
Postcard from the Ferris Wheel, by Rachel Plummer
(Published in Scottish Book Trust’s website)
The drop from here is lethal, but the view
somewhat makes up for that. Out there the Forth
is silver, fat under the patchy blue
cloud-mottled sky, a ribbon in the North
or strand of grey roving, Falkirk its drop
spindle. Up here the Castle, where we stood
and looked out from the rampart at the top
of its rock face, our hands held hard. I could
almost catch sight of our lookout point past
the red and white axle, the wheel's slow spin,
if only it would pause a moment. Last
July I waited for you here, mired in
a dense summer. Higher, now, the wheel
rotates above a city framed in steel.
***
Den 2 juni anordnade Edinburgh Sculpture Workshop ett event med en uppläsning av Raphael Rubinstein. Det uppförandet gjordes tillsammans med designduon Maeve Redmond och Sophie Dyer.
Raphael Rubinstein är professor vid University of Houston och en väletablerad konstkritiker. Han har även figurerat som konstintendent vid universitetet.
Den avslutande dikten passar tyvärr väl ihop med Hamréns uttåg.
New Page, by Raphael Rubinstein (f. 1955)
(Published in poetryproject.org)
The two most beautiful words
in any writer’s vocabulary,
promising satisfaction
as concisely as the fizzy snap
of a freshly opened bottle of beer.
But immediately the problems
froth up, unstoppable.
Suck it up, so-called poet,
this foam of delicious nothingness,
tasting of the greatness
you can only read about.
This year, you swear,
desk cleared of every scrap
of failure and disappointment,
will witness the grand upsurge,
not of this infinitely replenished insubstantiality
but of a more obdurate substance,
suitable for putting into the hands
of skinny youths facing
other youths, maybe a bit less skinny
certainly bettered armored
and shored-up by phalanxes
of bureaucrats and paymasters
invisible in the streets
like they are invisible in this room.
Is every new page just an old one?
Pushing back against
the insidious cyclical models,
scripting a scenario where new and now
won’t simply be steamrollered
before some impatient cynic
turns the page.
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