Introduction
Indigenous poets have written, and indeed are writing, some damn good poems, not the token mawkishness and politics we have unfortunately come to expect.
Dear Editor,
I applaud your publication of translations from indigenous cultures. I recently used an excerpt from Antjie Krog’s much shorter version of the very poem you printed by Diakwain to articulate the Batwa’s relationship with the land from which they have been legally and physically disconnected:
the place does not feel to me
as the place used to feel to me
..........................................
the place feels strange to me
In our post-colonial world it may still be true that poetry makes nothing happen, but translation is an important source of dialogue with, and exposure to, the cultures whose socioeconomic realities our nation and culture often dictate without our express consent (or dissent, for that matter).
Your recent selection proves that indigenous poets have written, and indeed are writing, some damn good poems, not the token mawkishness and politics we have unfortunately come to expect. Thanks for searching them out.
Poet, translator, and filmmaker Shook was raised in Mexico City. They earned a BA at the University of Oklahoma and an MSt at Oxford University. In their debut collection, Our Obsidian Tongues (2013), Shook explores the violence and hunger of everyday life, steeping their poems in lush imagery and sensory detail.
In 2013, they founded the nonprofit publishing house Phoneme Media, since editing...