I kalendern tar ytterligare en talangfull, svensk poet plats. Jag citerar Oscar Nilsson Tornborgs presentation från Författarcentrums hemsida.
"Född 1977 i Göteborg. Bosatt i Lund sedan 1999. Poet, skribent, skrivpedagog och fil mag i litteraturvetenskap. Debuterade 2011 med diktsamlingen Vilse (FEL Förlag). Utkom i oktober 2012 med sin andra diktsamling Undertexter (FEL Förlag). Medverkar med ett stycke efterpoesi i Charlotte Qvandts diktsamling Klarnar du (FEL Förlag, 2013) och har tidigare även medverkat med dikter och/eller artiklar i tidskrifter som Ord&Bild, Pequod, Lyrikvännen, Res Publica, Rymden och OEI. Arbetar som lärare och handledare vid Skurups folkhögskolas skrivarlinje. Utkom i januari 2016 med diktsamlingen En dag har stormen redan dragit förbi, på Sadura Förlag."
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Följande går att läsa om Sarah Howes debutsamling i urvalsantologin Eight Hong Kong Poets.
"There is a Chinese proverb that says: ‘It is more profitable to raise geese than daughters.’ But geese, like daughters, know the obligation to return home. In her exquisite first collection, Sarah Howe explores a dual heritage, journeying back to Hong Kong in search of her roots." Source: Eight Hong Kong Poets (Chameleon Press, 2015)
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| Jordan Valley Park, Hong Kong |
Crossing from Guangdong, by Sarah Howe
(from Loop of jade. London : Chatto & Windus, 2015.)
Something set us looking for a place.
For many minutes every day we lose
ourselves to somewhere else. Even without
knowing, we are between the enveloping sheets
of a childhood bed, or crossing
that bright, willow-bounded weir at dusk.
Tell me, why have I come? I caught
the first coach of the morning outside
the grand hotel in town. Wheeled my case
through the silent, still-dark streets of the English
quarter, the funeral stonework facades
with the air of Whitehall, or the Cenotaph,
but planted on earth's other side. Here
no sign of life, save for street hawkers, solicitous,
arranging their slatted crates, stacks of bamboo
steamers, battered woks, to some familiar
inward plan. I watch the sun come up
through tinted plexiglas. I try to sleep
but my eyes snag on every flitting, tubular tree,
their sword-like leaves. Blue metal placards
at the roadside, their intricate brooch-like
signs in white, which no one disobeys.
I am looking for a familiar face. There is
some symbol I am striving for. Yesterday
I sat in a cafe while it poured, drops
like warm clots colliding with the perspex
gunnel roof. To the humid strains of Frank
Sinatra, unexpectedly strange, I fingered
the single, glossy orchid - couldn't decide
if it was real. I picked at anaemic
bamboo shoots, lotus root like
the plastic nozzle of a watering can,
over-sauced - not like you would make at home.
I counted out the change in Cantonese.
Yut, ye, sam, sei. Like a baby. The numbers
are the scraps that stay with me. I hear
again your voice, firm at first, then almost
querulous, asking me not to go.
I try to imagine you as a girl -
a street of four-storey plaster buildings,
carved wooden doors, weathered, almost shrines
(like in those postcards of old Hong Kong you loved) -
you, a child in bed, the neighbours always in
and out, a terrier dog, half-finished bowls
of rice, the ivory Mah Jong tablets
clacking, like joints, swift and mechanical,
shrill cries - ay-yah! fah! - late into the night.
My heart is bounded by a scallop shell -
this strange pilgrimage to home.
(...)
***
Starka barndomsminnen genomsyrar den långa dikten "Islands". Jag har valt ut det tredje delavsnittet.
Islands (extract), by Sarah Howe
(from Loop of jade. London : Chatto & Windus, 2015.)
(..)
I often did. Waiting for the shadowed moon to rise
into the windowframe, a pale, dependable friend.
It took my mother many months to eat the gifts
of mooncakes; four cloud-encrusted islands drifting
in their silver tin. She would take a slice
each afternoon with cups of wine, the kind we
heated in a beaten kitchen pan. An autumn treat
accompanied by cooling evenings, too rich
for more habitual food. She cut into the patterned
casing. Full moon, half moon, quarter moon.
I loved the unexpected orb inside: a golden
yolk set in a firmament of lotus paste. They glowed
like all those tiny suns trapped in lanterns
at the festival, speared on slim red candles.
Their charring wicks were cedars twisted in the wind.
I had a paper globe. Its redness smouldered
like a burnt-out star. Other children had the shapes
of animals, crimson cellophane on wired frames -
the undulating waves of dragons, sharp-beaked
cranes, all in profile like the oval forms of fish.
In the blackness of Victoria Park their skin
was gleaming gelatine, the hatching chrysalides
of ghostly moths; a single, silver sequin
marked each winking, convex eye. The ruby
stain of lamplight over water. Fishlines trailed
from them, metallic ribbons - some fluttered off
like slanting rain to settle in the shrivelled grass.
The procession trod them in the moonlit dust.
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