Both of us visit Japan frequently, almost commuting in Hiromi’s case, partly to engage in the literary activities, but also because of our ageing fathers. Hiromi’s father lives alone in Kumamoto, mine, also alone, in Fukuoka. Those happen to be the neighboring prefectures in Kyushu island, about 1,000 km southwest of Tokyo.

One day about two years ago, Hiromi told me, “Yotsumoto-san, I’m thinking of starting up a small group, right here in Kumamoto, to introduce contemporary literature from around the world. You know, everything new and interesting comes through Tokyo in Japan, and I want to change that. I want to connect Kumamoto directly to what is going on in the US, Europe, and Asia.” I said without any hesitation, “Great idea! I will join you.” On the spot, Hiromi, as Captain of the Kumamoto Literature Band, appointed me as the Chief of its Munich (one-man) Bureau.

For me, and probably for Hiromi as well, the real motive behind this is rather to combine the stressful task of family care and literature activities, which would otherwise be only accessible in Tokyo. By organising poetry readings and workshops by ourselves, we can have some fun while staying close to our fathers and saving time and money to visit Tokyo. Now, that is a great idea.

As it turned out, it was much more than “some fun”. The Kumamoto Literature Band organized more than a dozen lectures, workshops, and readings by well-known authors. Its membership is currently 50, involving academics, journalists, artists, students, and book lovers in and around Kumamoto. Its most activities include a Ren-shi (Linked-poetry) live session by poets Shuntaro Tanikawa, Wakako Kaku, Jerome Rosenberg, as well as Hiromi and me.

Behind all of these is Hiromi’s inexhaustible vitality and leadership. For any event, Hiromi personally finds sponsors, ensures maximum publicity, provides her own house for lodgings, entertains the visiting authors and holds house parties for the volunteer staff, all the while taking care of her father.

Now Hiromi will be bringing this Kumamoto spirit to Rotterdam and I will be joining the Captain on Friday as the Munich Bureau Chief. Let’s see what kind of ideas and materials we can find there for our future endeavours in Kumamoto . . .

Read more about The Kumamoto Literature Band on Hatena Diary.

Yasuhiro Yosumoto, editor of the Japan domain on PIW, will be interviewing Hiromi Itō on Friday 18 June in the foyer of the Rotterdam City Theatre at 19.15 hrs. Hiromi Itō will then be reading at 20.00 hrs, along with Michael Palmer and Ron Winkler, in the small auditorium. This event will be live-streamed.

Hiromi Ito (c) Michele Hutchison, Poetry International festival 2010

But ultimately the wider world of the 1980s did not have space in its consciousness for Irish poets not embroiled in the Northern Ireland conflict. McCarthy hailed from the serene, sedate fields of Ireland’s southernmost province of Munster and his poetic discourse is primarily one of a serene and sedate sensibility. Extremes of verbal music-making or contortions of form are not the markings of a McCarthy poem. The subject matter varies from the intimacies of family tragedy to the inner workings of a political party, to biographical portraits of writers and others in verse, to rigorous examinations of history and the pathways by which it has led us all to the present.

There is a richness of language to McCarthy’s poetry but rather than stemming from experiment it emerges out of McCarthy’s own vigorous emotional and intellectual engagement with the world. The elegance and sensibleness of his language are organic and integral aspects of his mode of thought – a careful, quiet, contemplative thought flavoured with rich emotional involvement.

All of these qualities are not only evident on the page with McCarthy but also in conversation with him. A McCarthy poetry reading is a riveting experience.

Thomas McCarthy will be reading along with Hassan El Ouazzani (Morocco) at 8pm on Sunday 13 June 2010 in the main auditorium of the Rotterdam City Theatre, in an event about the relationship between poetry and prose.

Patrick Cotter is the editor of the Ireland domain of Poetry International Web.

At 6 a.m. near our bed: four teddy-bears and one Mega Mindy. After we’ve surrendered, she debates taking a shower without soap. She barely eats a single slice. We’re the first at school. The bus leaves for the animal farm, finally.

At the office I rethink the bike-trip we did last week, which appeared to be the coldest in a century. The legendary holes in the surface, so violent and full of disgrace, like a movement on Facebook that calls people not to vote, because politics stinks.

In an i-Pod-captured hush I reach the church square right at 4 p.m. While I try to read columns about mass media, parents are chatting in the sudden heat. The bus arrives. There’s no one in it! On the front row she sleeps, so gently.

Read more about Marc Kregting on www.poetry.nl and www.poetryinternational.org

Kabul 2007; I remember when I was invited accidently to a literary meeting in Afghanistan’s presidential palace. A man working for the president cultural adviser phoned me to say that President Hamid Karzai had invited more than 200 poets and they would be happy for me to attend.

Poets would read their poems and  the President would speak about the cultural situation, said the caller. As a journalist and a poet who usually criticized high-ranking officials I was curious. Karzai and literature? What an interesting combination!

It was summer, but I don’t remember the exact date. I accepted and I went to presidential palace. Before and after a heavily fortified check point, I saw many people who had come from different parts of Afghanistan, like me, calling themselves poets.

Hello, hello, hello, a long greeting, and then Karzai entered. The Afghanistan national TV station, RTA, covered the event live.

OK . . . everything was set up under the trees in the presidential palace grounds and two announcers, one speaking Pashto and another one Persian, launched the literary meeting.

The first poet was announced and the host said that after him, there would be a poet who represents for the new generation of literature. Ah, another surprise. He invited me to read some of my poems. The first man from Nangarhar read something long in Pashto.

I hadn’t come prepared to read poems, so I quickly wrote a few lines while the man from Nangarhar read his work.

I had the attention of all of Afghanistan now over live TV, and so I wanted to make a special statement to Hamid Karzai.

This event reminded me of what I had once read by Sultan (King) Mahmud when 11 centuries ago he invited poets to one of his gatherings. Also this event reminded me of the people around Mahmud who were lazy, who, even when they were hungry, couldn’t be bothered to pick up apples that had fallen from the trees.

Then I read out something like the following:

Brothers, Sisters,
Is this poetry?
Is poetry only rhythm and rhyme?
Brothers,
Is poetry only beauty-spot and lip?
Sisters,
Is this a poem when it doesn’t have the power
To go outside the palace
And become a hand over a child’s head?

Then I said: it was 1983 when Raúl Alfonsín became president of a conflicted Argentina and in that year started national programs for justice.

Now, after several years of this guy’s presidency, he has gathered most of the criminals from the late king/dictator Muhammad Zahir and shares power with them.

This is not the guy Afghanistan needs. I said that, and then I left the palace.

Read more about Kamran Mir Hazar on www.poetry.nl and www.poetryinternational.org.

I am one of the Moroccan poets from a generation that emerged during the 1990s, a specific period of Moroccan history, generally regarded as a moment of decline: the Marxist Moroccan revolutionaries had been released after long years in prison; among them a number had reintegrated into the new social order and even to change social classes: the left-wing political parties had abandoned the battlefront to prepare themselves for total integration within the political system, hoping to gain access to power. The ideas of the 1970s ­– ideas of change, revolution, engagement and struggle – had been replaced by increased pragmatism, opportunism and individualism.

As a generation, therefore, we found ourselves without political causes, and we created, each in his or her own way, our own little causes: to belong to the world, to trivialise certainties and ‘grand’ political ideas, to celebrate the irregular and to survey the small details of our daily lives.

2

In 2000, I was invited to the big poetry festival of Medellin (Colombia), and I planned to fly there in via London. The police at Heathrow had other ideas, however: namely that I spend 4 hours in tiny cell waiting until they were sure that I was a poet and not a drug-trafficker. Even today, the Heathrow police still have a photograph they confiscated from me. In it, I am pictured with a group of Moroccan poets, whom they believed were perhaps members of a terrorist gang.

3

I write about this by way of affirming that our engagement as poets and writers or artists should above all consist of recognising and celebrating the values of difference, and of battling against humiliation of others. This is our new noble cause. At least, that’s what I believe!

Translated from French by Sarah Ream.

Read more about Hassan El Ouazzani on www.poetry.nl and www.poetryinternational.org