mpt . modern poetry in translation . Palestine issue . free time in Oxford 2 weeks ago

I got a Darwish poem for the first time. He's talking to himself and getting at ideas. It's more of a conversation than a precise tight set of words. I need clarity. Mixed up hidden meanings annoy me. Just tell me what you are thinking, even if the thoughts are contradictory and confusing. Just spit them out, then toy with them and analyse them to get to what you really deeply mean. It's ok to need more time, to sit in silence until the words come out, even if they are all upside down. They are something to work with. Poems are made like that, a rush of all sorts of words which are then rearranged and organised. Phrases made and taken apart again, like me running my hands through my hair and turning it all round to make a new clipped bundle?? On the back of my head. That's an odd description. Just go forward into new discussions, each fresh interaction with the one you can sit open-eyed in front of.

...

I got a Darwish poem for the first time. He's talking to himself and getting at ideas. It's more of a conversation than a precise tight set of words.

I need clarity. Mixed up hidden meanings annoy me. Just tell me what you are thinking, even if the thoughts are contradictory and confusing. Just spit them out, then toy with them and analyse them to get to what you really deeply mean.

It's ok to need more time, to sit in silence until the words come out, even if they are all upside down. They are something to work with.

Poems are made like that, a rush of all sorts of words which are then rearranged and organised. Phrases made and taken apart again, like me running my hands through my hair and turning it all round to make a new clipped bundle?? On the back of my head. That's an odd description.

Just go forward into new discussions, each fresh interaction with the one you can sit open-eyed in front of.

...

I read it
in a cafe
slowly, then quicker.

Then I understood
that it was
a musing session.

I haven't gone
back to it,
prefer to remember

an imperfect approximate
getting at something.
What has stayed?

Just an impression,
not something I
could defend rigorously.

Stuff all that
rigorous, analytical truth;
objective dead nonsense.

It shuts out
a more fleeting
shadow of thought -

a breath of
wind is neither
right nor wrong.

So a reaction
is what it
is - just then.

...

I like these
3 by 3
patterns of words

they need not
be going to
a set destination

they are a
version of the
clouds passing over

something I made
up back last
year with Rose

we were playing
with words together
and this began.

...

I apologise to
the writers of
neat, accurate analyses.

That is an
entirely different project,
perfect in itself.

One down, loads to go

I have finished my first book of the holidays: Journal of an Ordinary Grief (1973) - Mahmoud Darwish, translated by Ibrahim Muhawi.

The chapter on Gaza explains a lot. I hadn't perceived its importance at all, until now. How blind can one be?

You could open the book at random and pick any sentence to write from. I took 2 a while ago and gave them as a writing challenge on a forum I am on. I like starting from somewhere and going somewhere else entirely. The starting point acts as a door or a permission to make a start. It is not meant to hold you to remaining on a topic at all. The words are just that, and can be used freely.

There are 2 further books in the trilogy of memoirs, written later and much later: Memory for Forgetfulness (1985) and In the Presence of Absence (2006). For another time.

There is a concept I hadn't come across before - the Arabic Sentence. By that I think he means the impossibility of expressing the truth in language, yet it is the safest arena for trying to do so. So using Arabic gives him an unchallenged space, which is denied geographically and politically. The language is under his control and is his in an undeniable and permanent way, whatever might happen. The words are the most powerful and permanent weapon. Putting them in sentences wraps them up in an endless series of statements which can't be refused permission or denied existence or status. No one apart from an Arabic speaker can use the language, so it is a plastic, living, unlimitable force.

The preface by the translator doesn't look at it quite like that, but we can see what we like in a work..