position:poet

  • Israel convicts Palestinian poet Dareen Tatour of incitement to violence, supporting terror
    Tatour, 36, was arrested in October 2015 for three social media publications
    Noa Shpigel May 03, 2018 11:41 AM
    https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/.premium-israel-convicts-palestinian-poet-dareen-tatour-of-incitement-1.605

    The Nazareth Magistrate’s Court convicted Palestinian poet Dareen Tatour of incitement to violence and supporting a terror organization Thursday because of three publications on social media.

    Tatour, 36, a resident of the Galilee village of Reineh near Nazareth, was arrested in October 2015 after publishing, among others, a poem titled “Resist, my people, resist them." The indictment against her includes a translation of the poem, which includes the lines: “I will not succumb to the ’peaceful solution’ / Never lower my flags / Until I evict them from my land.”

    She was charged in November 2015 with incitement to violence and support for a terror organization. According to the indictment, one video shows masked men throwing rocks and Molotov cocktails at Israeli forces. In the background, Tatour is heard reading a poem she wrote, whose English title is “Resist, my people, resist them.”

    The day after uploading the video, she wrote in a post: “The Islamic Jihad movement hereby declares the continuation of the intifada throughout the West Bank. ... Continuation means expansion ... which means all of Palestine. ... And we must begin within the Green Line ...for the victory of Al-Aqsa, and we shall declare a general intifada. #Resist.”

    The State Prosecutor’s Office interpreted this text as support for Islamic Jihad and a new intifada.

    The third, allegedly criminal, post was uploaded five days later. It was a photograph of Asra’a Abed, a 30-year-old Israeli Arab woman who was shot and wounded by police after waving a knife at officers in the bus station in Afula in October 2015. Tatour captioned the image, “I am the next shahid,” or martyr.

    The police arrested Tatour at her home two days later.

    In January 2016 Tatour was released, after being fitted with an ankle monitor, to house arrest at the home of her brother in Kiryat Ono.

    At the time of her house arrest, more than 150 literary figures, including nine Pulitzer Prize winners, called for Israel to free Tatour.

  • African Solutions for African Problems | Warscapes
    http://www.warscapes.com/opinion/african-solutions-african-problems

    The transcript of the speech titled “African Solutions for African Problems: Limning the Contours of a New Form of Connectivity” delivered by poet and scholar Ali Jimale Ahmed at the 10th anniversary of the Hargeysa International Book Fair in July 2017.

    Let me first thank Dr. Jama Musse Jama and his colleagues for inviting me to the 10th anniversary of the Hargeysa International Book Fair. Ten years is a long time to observe and gauge the development, consistency and staying power of a new idea. It is gratifying to know that the book fair, a fledgling project ten years ago, is now a full-fledged institution. But that is not all. Dr. Jama and his colleagues have succeeded in teaching by example: Thanks to him, we now have the Mogadishu Book Fair and Garoowe Book Fair, with many more book fairs cropping up on the horizon, and coming soon to a city near you. What this shows, then, is that people in Somalia are now emulating the good deeds of Jama and Co. He has shown that institutions can be built and sustained over the years. And for that, we give our thanks.

    Now let us turn to the matter at hand.

    We live in interesting and challenging times, to quote from a purportedly age-old Chinese adage that never ceases to be relevant. Our time is the best of times and the worst of times. It is the worst of times in that history has mercilessly deposited us at a crossroads; and crossroads, by nature, baffle the traveler. This is the time when old ideas unmitigated by wit cannot help; it is also a moment in time when the future is still in its inchoate or embryonic stage. But our times also represent the best of times, for there are two ways to look at calamities or apocalyptic events. We could view the apocalyptic as a ground for despair, to paraphrase Gerald Graff. You could also see it—and seeing is an act of interpretation—as “a ground for celebration” (a ground for hope, that is). In short, the apocalyptic could be interpreted through its antiphony, the visionary. Apocalypse, as you know, signifies rebirth, renewal. It is the end of the world as we knew it or have known it. And the end, as in all endings, is a prelude to a new beginning. And while it is painful to be living in a time when self—both communal and individual— and history collide, it is also a moment of immense opportunity, as truth, to paraphrase a Somali proverb, is born or created at the dissolution of another truth. I have mentioned elsewhere that all forms of crisis should be seen and embraced as challenges. The Chinese word for “crisis” is weiji, which consists of two characters: danger and opportunity. So in the midst of crises, one finds opportunities. But to find opportunity in the bosom of crisis, one must be willing to think outside the box.

  • Al Gore Does His Best Ralph Waldo Emerson - Issue 58 : Self
    http://nautil.us/issue/58/self/al-gore-does-his-best-ralph-waldo-emerson

    There was no single job title for those who practiced science prior to 1834. Naturalists, philosophers, and savans tramped around collecting specimens, recorded astral activity, or combusted chemicals in labs, but not as “scientists.” When William Whewell proposed this term, he hoped it would consolidate science, which he worried otherwise lacked “all traces of unity.” Whewell saw scientists as analogous to artists. Just “as a Musician, Painter, or Poet,” are united in pursuit of a common goal—the beautiful—Whewell believed a botanist, physicist, or chemist should be united in their common pursuit of understanding nature. Built into his concept of what it means to be a scientist was a relation between what the poet and philosopher, Ralph Waldo Emerson, a contemporary of Whewell, called “Each (...)

  • Keorapetse Kgositsile was a feminist
    http://africasacountry.com/2018/03/keorapetse-kgositsile-was-a-feminist

    I was raised blue-black by hip hop #CULTURE, imbibing the legend of a South African poet who christened the grandfathers of rap with a name: The Last Poets We rocked Karl Kani jeans back-to-front like Kriss Kross, strapped Timberland boots in the scorching sun of Lebowa townships. We crafted a way of life that was our own: Made with our beats, our…

    #South_Africa

  • Monuments to the work of Bangladeshi migrants

    An estimated 9.4m Bangladeshis have left the country to seek employment abroad. Their experiences are being chronicled in poetry and art.

    Diana Campbell Betancourt, the artistic director and chief curator of the Dhaka Art Summit, says that “one cannot understand Bangladesh without considering these workers.” All too often, they are abused and overworked, treated as slaves or indentured servants. “These workers give so much with their labour, and they need to be seen as more than just bodies,” she says. The Dhaka summit shows that they are not only more than bodies, fully human, but artists, too.

    Kamruzzaman Shadhin, a Bangladeshi artist, collected the abandoned clothes of Bangladeshis who were illegally trafficked into Malaysia and Thailand, tapping an internal migrant community in Thakurgaon to stitch them together into a giant patchwork quilt (pictured, top). Liu Xiaodong, a Chinese artist, paints portraits of migrant workers in a medium often reserved for powerful patrons. In one, a bearded man looks over his shoulder with a wary face and a cigarette in his mouth against a blue background (pictured). In another, a gaunt man with sunken cheeks is a picture of exhaustion, his eyes bloodshot from working long hours. Mr Liu’s work humanises these workers, but does not glamourise their suffering.

    Et de la #poésie :

    Mr Khokan never strayed from his writing roots, and needed a way to express his experiences in a creative manner. He founded Amrakajona (“We Are” in Bengali) as a group for Bengali migrant workers interested in poetry, as well as another poetry group, Singapore Bengali Literature. The Dhaka Art Summit, which ran from February 2nd-10th in the dusty, congested Bangladeshi capital, showcased poetry from members of Singapore Bengali Literature. Mr Khokon read “Pocket 2”, a lament for his wife and their forced separation:

    I remember when I returned this time
    my heart dissolved in your tears
    The pocket of my shirt was wet
    Reaching the end of my memories
    I wear that shirt every night
    and write love poems to you

    MD Sharrif Uddin, another poet, addressed the invisibility of the migrant worker directly:

    Though my tears satisfy the thirst of the city,
    It will forget me by and by!
    But like the waters on the high waves of the river,
    I’ll survive and I’ll be there.
    The sweat of my tired body has
    Become the moisture of the city,
    and in this moisture, I’ll survive.
    I live forever.

    https://www.economist.com/blogs/prospero/2018/02/constructing-identities?fsrc=scn/tw/te/bl/ed/monumentstotheworkofbangladeshimigrantsconstructingidentities
    #migrants_bangladais #migrations #travailleurs_étrangers #monument #art #esclavage_moderne (ping @reka) #exploitation #exil #poésie
    cc @isskein


  • VENITMIGLIA, IMPERIA, ITALY - 2017/12/14
    Lines from a poem by famous Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish is plastered on the walls of an underpass that offers shelter to well over a hundred migrants and refugees in Ventimiglia, Italy. Refugees and migrants stay here in between attempts to cross into France, which is just a few kilometres away. Italy is a country hit hard by the European refugee/migrant crisis. Unlike Greece where most of the migrants are from the war torn middle east, most of the migrants in Italy are from African nations heading to Europe for economical reasons.(Photo by John Owens/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images)

  • Meet Harvard’s Own Poet-Physician - Issue 58: Self
    http://nautil.us/issue/58/self/meet-harvards-own-poet_physician

    Rafael Campo speaks Nautilus’ language. A professor at Harvard Medical school and Lesley University, and a practicing physician, he has also published a-half dozen volumes of poetry and won a Guggenheim fellowship for his work. A passionate believer in experiencing patients’ illness through both a scientific and a humanist lens, Campo demonstrates a remarkable balance between a mechanistic curiosity and a deeply felt empathy. Science and art, he tells us, are asking the same kinds of questions. Which could have come straight from this magazine’s first editorial meeting. Campo chatted with us last month. Rafeal Campo One of your poems reads: “It was terrible, what the body told / I’d look inside another person’s mouth, / And see the desolation of the world.” Could you talk through what those (...)

  • What the Russian Revolution meant for modern art and culture - World Socialist Web Site

    https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2018/02/28/talk-f28.html

    Arts editor David Walsh speaks on the centenary of the October Revolution
    What the Russian Revolution meant for modern art and culture
    By David Walsh
    28 February 2018

    We post here a talk given by WSWS arts editor David Walsh to several college audiences in December and January, to mark the centenary of the October Revolution.

    “But the new art, which will lay out new landmarks, and which will expand the channel of creative art, can be created only by those who are at one with their epoch… ”
    —Trotsky, Literature and Revolution

    #art #révolution_russe #urss #union_soviétique #culture #soviétisme

    • There is a remarkable photograph from the late 1920s of composer Dmitri Shostakovich, theater director Vsevolod Meyerhold, poet Vladimir Mayakovsky and artist-designer-photographer Alexander Rodchenko. Shostakovich, because of his international fame, survived, but the fates of the others illustrate Trotsky’s point: Mayakovsky committed suicide, Meyerhold died in the purges, Rodchenko “became silent.”
      Four artistic geniuses. There is a deeply tragic element to the fate of the Russian Revolution and its participants and supporters, almost unimaginably so.

      pour légender la photo

      #Chostakovitch #Meyerhold #Maïakovski #Rodtchenko

  • Art et Liberté: Egypt’s Surrealists | by Charles Shafaieh | NYR Daily | The New York Review of Books

    http://www.nybooks.com/daily/2018/02/03/art-et-liberte-egypts-surrealists

    In March 1938, the Egyptian poet and critic Georges Henein and a small group of friends disrupted a lecture in Cairo given by the Alexandria-born Italian Futurist F.T. Marinetti, who was an outspoken supporter of Mussolini. Six months later, Henein, along with the Egyptian writer Anwar Kamel, the Italian anarchist painter Angelo de Riz, and thirty-four other artists, writers, journalists, and lawyers, signed the manifesto “Vive l’Art Dégénéré!” (“Long Live Degenerate Art!”) that would inaugurate Art et Liberté, a short-lived but influential artists’ collective based in Egypt that is the focus of an illuminating exhibition currently at the Tate Liverpool, in Britain, covering the years 1938–1948. Printed in Arabic and French, with a facsimile of Guernica on its reverse, the declaration was a direct challenge to the previous year’s Nazi-organized exhibition “Entartete ‘Kunst’” (“Degenerate ‘Art’”), which presented art by Chagall, Kandinsky and other modern artists, largely Jewish, that the Nazi Party deemed decadent, morally reprehensible or otherwise harmful to the German people.

    Internationalist in orientation and opposed as much to fascist-endorsed art as to the Egyptian academy’s own nationalist-minded aesthetics that resurrected ancient symbols in the name of “Egyptianness,” the group declared that it was “mere idiocy and folly to reduce modern art… to a fanaticism for any particular religion, race, or nation.” Surrealism—in its rejection of tyranny in any form and by championing uninhibited freedom of expression—was a fitting counterpoint that the group believed could also be harnessed to bring about social change.

  • Palestinian-American poet Remi Kanazi: “It’s essential that in the same breath that we say ‘end Israeli occupation,’ we say ‘end mass incarceration,’ with the same force that we say ‘not one more bomb dropped on Gaza,’ we say ‘not one more bullet fired at Black people in Chicago,’ and with the same vigor that we say, ‘boycott, divestment, and sanctions,’ we say ‘divest from prisons.’” https://palestineinamerica.com/2015/10/black-palestinian-solidarity-video-affirms-joint-struggles

  • The Transformation of Silence Into Language and Action (excerpt) by Audre Lorde

    I have come to believe over and over again that what is most important to me must be spoken, made verbal and shared, even at the risk of having it bruised or misunderstood. That the speaking profits me, beyond any other effect.

    I was forced to look upon myself and my living with a harsh and urgent clarity that has left me still shaken but much stronger. Some of what I experienced during that time has helped elucidate for me much of what I feel concerning the transformation of silence into language and action.

    In becoming forcibly and essentially aware of my mortality, and of what I wished and wanted for my life, however short it might be, priorities and omissions became strongly etched in a merciless light, and what I most regretted were my silences. Of what had I ever been afraid? To question or to speak as I believed could have meant pain, or death. But we all hurt in so many different ways, all the time, and pain will either change or end. Death, on the other hand, is the final silence. And that might be coming quickly now, without regard for whether I had ever spoken what needed to be said, or had only betrayed myself into small silences, while I planned someday to speak, or waited for someone else’s words.

    I was going to die, if not sooner then later, whether or not I had ever spoken myself. My silences had not protected me. Your silence will not protect you.

    What are the words you do not yet have? What do you need to say? What are the tyrannies you swallow day by day and attempt to make your own, until you will sicken and die of them, still in silence? Perhaps for some of you here today, I am the face of one of your fears. Because I am a woman, because I am Black, because I am lesbian, because I am myself — a Black woman warrior poet doing my work — come to ask you, are you doing yours?

    And of course I am afraid, because the transformation of silence into language and action is an act of self-revelation, and that always seems fraught with danger. But my daughter, when I told her of our topic and my difficulty with it, said, “Tell them about how you’re never really a whole person if you remain silent, because there’s always that one little piece inside you that wants to be spoken out, and if you keep ignoring it, it gets madder and madder and hotter and hotter, and if you don’t speak it out one day it will just up and punch you in the mouth from the inside.”

    In the cause of silence, each of us draws the face of her own fear — fear of contempt, of censure, of some judgment, or recognition, of challenge, of annihilation. But most of all, I think, we fear the visibility without which we cannot truly live.

    And that visibility which makes us most vulnerable is that which also is the source of our greatest strength. Because the machine will try to grind you into dust anyway, whether or not we speak. We can sit in our corners mute forever while our sisters and our selves are wasted, while our children are distorted and destroyed, while our earth is poisoned; we can sit in our safe corners mute as bottles, and we will still be no less afraid.

    Each of us is here now because in one way or another we share a commitment to language and to the power of language, and to the reclaiming of that language which has been made to work against us. In the transformation of silence into language and action, it is vitally necessary for each one of us to establish or examine her function in that transformation and to recognize her role as vital within that transformation.

    For those of us who write, it is necessary to scrutinize not only the truth of what we speak, but the truth of that language by which we speak it. For others, it is to share and spread also those words that are meaningful to us. But primarily for us all, it is necessary to teach by living and speaking those truths which we believe and know beyond understanding. Because in this way alone can we survive, by taking part in a process of life that is creative and continuing, that is growth.

    And it is never without fear — of visibility, of the harsh light of scrutiny and perhaps judgment, of pain, of death. But we have lived through all of those already, in silence, except death. And I remind myself all the time now that if I were to have been born mute, or had maintained an oath of silence my whole life long for safety, I would still have suffered, and I would still die. It is very good for establishing perspective.

    We can learn to work and speak when we are afraid in the same way we have learned to work and speak when we are tired. For we have been socialized to respect fear more than our own needs for language and definition, and while we wait in silence for that final luxury of fearlessness, the weight of that silence will choke us.

    The fact that we are here and that I speak these words is an attempt to break that silence and bridge some of those differences between us, for it is not difference which immobilizes us, but silence. And there are so many silences to be broken.

    (Originally delivered at the Modern Language Association’s “Lesbian and Literature Panel,” Chicago, Illinois, December 28, 1977. First published in Sinister Wisdom 6 (1978) and The Cancer Journals (Spinsters, Ink, San Francisco, 1980)

  • Bukowski’s last stand : Hank’s final poetry reading from 1980 | Dangerous Minds
    https://dangerousminds.net/comments/bukowskis_last_stand_hanks_final_poetry_reading_from_1980

    Good and original poets spawn bad and imitative poetry.

    Look at all the verbiage spewed out by those green and dappled flecked imitators after Dylan Thomas had one too many on a New York afternoon; or all the poems about PMT, swollen ankles and the indifference of men that came forth after Sylvia Plath’s sad demise; or the short men who swaggered after Charles Bukowski died, juggling six-pack and pen, writing long anaemic poetry about drinking, fighting and love. Yes, good poetry does often inspire bad poets.

    It doesn’t always appear after death, sometimes it rubs shoulders with the living poet in hope of capturing some of their spark. I recall when the cool got hip to Bukowski and he appeared in Andy Warhol’s Interview talking with actor Sean Penn, that everyone including Penn was writing long three word a line poems about nothing much in particular, but this how it is if you’re a poet and you know sensitive and you gotta live that kinda life on the edge kinda thing blah-de-blah-de-blah. Suddenly it was hard to find a magazine that didn’t have some sub-Bukowskian ode in it, that looked like the stuff from high school poetry clubs and always made me think of G.K. Chesterton’s line that:

    To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it.

    Bukowski did not give many readings during his lifetime. Biographers have claimed he hated giving readings, but did it for the two hundred or three hundred dollars to keep him in booze, smokes and a wager on the horses. But this all changed in the 1980s, when money started coming in via checks and royalties for books and film options and Bukowski no longer needed that extra couple of hundred to tide him over. Bukowski gave his last poetry reading at the Sweetwater music club in Redondo Beach, California on March 31, 1980, almost a decade and a half before he died in 1994. The whole reading was (thankfully) filmed by Jon Monday, who left the performance unedited as he believed the sections between Bukowski reading his poems gave some insight into the man and his temperament. It certainly does, as Oliver Hardy would say, and shows why the original poet will always be better than the imitators.

    Charles Bukowski - The Last Straw 1980
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1JQeCKSIO88

    The Last Straw is a film documenting the very last live poetry reading given by Charles Bukowski, even though he lived and wrote for another 14 years. The reading was given at The Sweetwater, a music club in Redondo Beach, California on March 31, 1980. It is produced and directed by Jon Monday

    Klassenkrampf | Telepolis
    https://www.heise.de/tp/features/Klassenkrampf-3897945.html

    Ich meine, dass Bukowski in Deutschland nicht „missverstanden“ wurde, er hatte auch in Carl Weissner einen ausgesprochen versierten Übersetzer. In Deutschland-West und dann natürlich -Ost breitete sich das Prekariat ja bereits in den Siebziger- und Achtzigerjahren aus - und Bukowski führte genau diese Lebenssituation vor. Er musste keine marxistische Gesellschaftskritik hintanhängen, er musste sich nicht, wie Günter Wallraff, maskieren, um das Leben der Menschen „ganz unten“ zu studieren.

    Er hatte es jahrelang, Tag für Tag, miterlebt. Und er schrieb gewissermaßen das Drehbuch für die Jahre von damals bis heute — denn das Leben eines Bukowski ist heute überall in Europa Alltag. Kein Wunder, dass die WELT eine Dosis Klassenkrampf über dem Autor ausschüttet, wie Säure über dem Leichnam, der auch nach über 20 Jahren nicht aufhört, äußerst lebendig zu bleiben.

    Hier noch etwas zum Nachlesen: Bukowskis Dankesbrief an seinen Verleger und Gönner, John Martin, der dem begabten Autor ein Stipendium von 100 Dollar im Monat spendierte, damit er die Maloche bei der Post aufgeben und sich ganz dem Schreiben widmen konnte.
    http://www.lettersofnote.com/2012/10/people-simply-empty-out.html

    Wie Bukowski schrieb: „50 Jahre meines Lebens hab ich vertan, jetzt muss ich auf die Tube drücken, um irgendwas von dem zu realisieren, was mir vorschwebte.“ Immerhin, es kamen noch rund 50 Bände Storys und Gedichte zusammen - und dann nochmal so viele in Form von posthumen Briefen und sonstigen Traktaten.

    Eine schöne Sammlung von Robert-Crumb-Illustrationen zu Geschichten von Bukowski findet sich hier.
    https://www.brainpickings.org/2012/10/08/r-crumb-illustrates-bukowski

    Tom Appleton

    #poésie #USA #Californie

  • Why Google Maps gets Africa wrong | World news | The Guardian
    https://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/apr/02/google-maps-gets-africa-wrong

    About halfway through Jonathan Swift’s boisterously witty epic poem On Poetry: A Rhapsody, the 18th century Anglo-Irish satirist briefly turns his attention to maps of Africa, writing:

    So geographers, in Afric maps,
    With savage pictures fill their gaps,
    And o’er uninhabitable downs
    Place elephants for want of towns.

    In Swift’s time, European explorers had only skirted around the coastal edges of Africa and its interior remained, to all intents and purposes, a mystery. But as the poet pointed out, rather than just leave the middle of the continent blank, mapmakers would instead “fill their gaps” with things they thought might reside in such exotic corners of the world, such as strange monkeys, roaming lions, and “elephants for want of towns.”

    –—

    Mapping Africa: can you help us fill in the gaps? | World news | The Guardian
    https://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/apr/04/mapping-africa-can-you-help-us-fill-in-the-gaps
    https://i.guim.co.uk/img/static/sys-images/Guardian/Pix/pictures/2014/4/4/1396607631211/7f2380c1-0496-4285-aec2-81f053aebcab-620x372.png?w=1200&h=630&q=55&auto=fo

    We have come along way from the European explorers who used exotic animals to “fill in the gaps” when they were drawing maps of Africa. We have the technology, more resources and better data, maps are no longer the purview of colonial conquerors.

    Google Maps, the world leaders in cartography, say they are on the “never-ending quest for the perfect map” but are they also guilty of selling African short? Over the past few years they have vastly increased their coverage of the continent but have they gone far enough?

    #cartographie #afrique #manipulation #visualisation #représentation

  • What Makes a Poem Really Pop? - Pacific Standard
    https://psmag.com/news/i-still-cant-make-it-through-ode-on-a-grecian-urn

    New research reports a key factor is its ability to induce internal imagery. A poet’s proficiency at using words to conjure images was the strongest predictor of a work’s aesthetic appeal.

    “People disagree on what they like, of course,” said lead author Amy Belfi, a psychologist at Missouri University of Science and Technology. “[But] it seems there are certain factors that consistently influence how much a poem will be enjoyed.”

    The research, published in the journal Psychology of Aesthetics, Creativity, and the Arts, was conducted at New York University. The 400 participants, who were recruited online, read a series of either sonnets or haikus. The poems varied in style and subject matter, and were a mix of classic and contemporary works.

    After reading each poem, participants rated it on four dimensions: the vividness of its imagery; the degree to which they found it stimulating or relaxing; how positive or negative they considered its content; and, finally, “How enjoyable or aesthetically appealing did you find this poem?” Each judgment was rendered using a zero-to-100 scale.

    #Poésie #Lecture #Humanités_numériques

  • Revolution, counterrevolution, and imperialism in Syria | International Socialist Review

    https://isreview.org/issue/107/revolution-counterrevolution-and-imperialism-syria

    Yassin al-Haj Saleh is one of the pivotal figures in the Syrian Revolution. He has a long history of activism in the country. Arrested by the Syrian regime in 1980 for the crime of political activism and membership of the Syrian Communist Party (Political Bureau) while in medical school at the age of 20, he spent the next 16 years in jail, including a final year in the infamous prison Tadmor, which the poet Faraj Bayradqdar called “the kingdom of death and madness.”

    Released from prison in 1996, Saleh finished his interrupted medical studies, after which he became a political journalist and independent activist unaffiliated to any political party. Upon the outbreak of the Syrian Revolution, he went into hiding so he could tell the story of the revolution in newspapers and on a website he cofounded on the first anniversary of the Syrian Revolution: al-Jumhuriya (https://www.aljumhuriya.net/en).

    #syrie

  • What happened when a poet was sent to the biggest US mall to write for shoppers | US news | The Guardian
    https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/oct/10/mall-of-america-poet-brian-sonia-wallace

    In March of 2017, I responded to a ridiculous post that a friend shared on Facebook.

    “Apply now! Mall of America seeks Writer-in-Residence to celebrate its 25th Birthday!”

    A quick Google search turned up reams of articles skewering the residency as nothing but a shameless publicity stunt for the biggest mall in North America, deriding the idea that a writer would come and be inspired by a Nordstrom or its customers.

    “Hey,” I thought, “if the supreme court says corporations are people, why can’t a mall have a birthday? It even has a parent company!”

    #dfs #consommation #Poésie #centre_commercial

  • Colonial Postcards and Women as Props for War-Making | The New Yorker

    https://www.newyorker.com/books/second-read/colonial-postcards-and-women-as-props-for-war-making?mbid=social_twitter

    When French colonial armies arrived in Algeria in the early twentieth century, they were accompanied by photographers. France had occupied Algeria since 1830—the occupation would last until 1962—and these photographers wanted to take pictures of Algerian women as they’d imagined them: lounging in harems, smoking hookahs, trapped in the prison of their own homes, topless, sexually available. But when they reached the country, they encountered women whose bodies could not be seen. Veiled from head to toe, with only their eyes visible, Algerian women were inaccessible to the photographers’ gaze.
    The photographers were undeterred. They hired models, often from the margins of society, and paid them to pose and to wear costumes. In their studios, the photographers used props and backdrops to create bedroom interiors, decorated spaces with hookahs and coffee pots and rugs to look like harems, and placed bars on windows to produce a sense of imprisonment. If Algerian women would not take off their veils voluntarily, the photographers would pay them to do so.
    These staged photographs, which became picture postcards, are the subject of “The Colonial Harem,” by Malek Alloula, an Algerian poet and literary critic who died, in 2015, as an exile in Paris. The book, which is dedicated to Roland Barthes, was first published, in French, in 1981; it was translated into English by Myrna and Wlad Godzich five years later. Though the photographs that Alloula examines in the book were staged, they were captioned as if they documented life in Algeria. For example, a photograph of two women viewed through a barred window is labelled “Moorish women at home.” Three separate images of a single woman, in the same outfit, are captioned as if she were three different women, from three different places: “Young Bedouin Woman,” “Young Woman from the South,” “Young Kabyl Woman.” A woman shown in a jewelled and tasselled headpiece, her elaborate dress opened to show her breasts, is captioned “Moorish Woman in Housedress.” The images reveal not Algerian women but the colonial photographer’s fantasies about them. They are an illusion.

    #Algérie #colonisation #femmes

  • You Can’t Go Home Again, by Thomas Wolfe : 42. The Family of Earth
    https://ebooks.adelaide.edu.au/w/wolfe/thomas/you-cant-go-home-again/chapter42.html

    The woman smiled at them as they came in, and all three of their 1 fellow-passengers looked at them in a way that showed wakened curiosity and increased interest. It was evident that George and Adamowski had themselves been subjects of speculation during their absence.
    Adamowski now spoke to the others. His German was not very good but it was coherent, and his deficiencies did not bother him at all. He was so self-assured, so confirmed in his self-possession, that he could plunge boldly into conversation in a foreign language with no sense whatever of personal handicap. Thus encouraged, the three Germans now gave free expression to their curiosity, to the speculations which the meeting of George and Adamowski and their apparent recognition of each other had aroused.
    The woman asked Adamowski where he came from —“Was fur ein Landsmann sind sie?”
    He replied that he was an American.
    “Ach, so?” She looked surprised, then added quickly: “But not by birth? You were not born in America?”
    “No,” said Adamowski. “I am Polish by birth. But I live in America now. And my friend here”— they all turned to stare curiously at George ——“is an American by birth.”
    They nodded in satisfaction. And the woman, smiling with good-humoured and eager interest, said:
    “And your friend — he is an artist, isn’t he?”
    “Yes,” said Adamowski.
    “A painter?” The woman’s tone was almost gleeful as she pursued further confirmation of her own predictions.
    “He is not a painter. He is ein Dichter.”
    The word means “poet”, and George quickly amended it to “ein Schriftsteller”— a writer.
    All three of them thereupon looked at one another with nods of satisfaction, saying, ah, they thought so, it was evident. Old Fussand–Fidget even spoke up now, making the sage observation that it was apparent “from the head”. The others nodded again, and the woman then turned once more to Adamowski, saying:
    “But you — you are not an artist, are you? You do something else?”
    He replied that he was a business man —“ein Geschäftsmann”— that he lived in New York, and that his business was in Wall Street. The name apparently had imposing connotations for them, for they all nodded in an impressed manner and said “Ali!” again.
    George and Adamowski went on then and told them of the manner of their meeting, how they had never seen each other before that morning, but how each of them had known of the other through many mutual friends. This news delighted everyone. It was a complete confirmation of what they had themselves inferred. The little blonde lady nodded triumphantly and burst out in excited conversation with her companion and with Fuss-and-Fidget, saying:
    “What did I tell you? I said the same thing, didn’t I? It’s a small world after all, isn’t it?”
    Now they were all really wonderfully at ease with one another, all talking eagerly, excitedly, naturally, like old friends who had just met after a long separation. The little lady began to tell them all about herself. She and her husband, she said, were proprietors of a business near the Alexander-platz. No — smiling — the young man was not her husband. He, too, was a young artist, and was employed by her. In what sort of business? She laughed — one would never guess. She and her husband manufactured manikins for show-window displays. No, it was not a shop, exactly — there was a trace of modest pride here — it was more like a little factory. They made their own figures. Their business, she implied, was quite a large one. She said that they employed over fifty workers, and formerly had had almost a hundred. That was why she had to go to Paris as often as she could, for Paris set the fashion in manikins just as it did in clothes.
    Of course, they did not buy the Paris models. Mein Gott!— that was impossible with the money situation what it was. Nowadays it was hard enough for a German business person even to get out of his own country, much less to buy anything abroad. Nevertheless, hard as it was, she had to get to Paris somehow once or twice a year, just in order to keep up with “what was going on.” She always took an artist with her, and this young man was making his first trip in this capacity. He was a sculptor by profession, but he earned money for his art by doing commercial work in her business. He would make designs and draw models of the latest show-window manikins in Paris, and would duplicate them when he returned; then the factory would turn them out by the hundreds.
    Adamowski remarked that he did not see how it was possible, under present circumstances, for a German citizen to travel anywhere. It had become difficult enough for a foreigner to get in and out of Germany. The money complications were so confusing and so wearisome.
    George added to this an account of the complications that had attended his own brief journey to the Austrian Tyrol. Ruefully he displayed the pocketful of papers, permits, visas, and official stamps which he had accumulated during the summer.
    Upon this common grievance they were all vociferously agreed. The lady affirmed that it was stupid, exhausting, and, for a German with business outside the country, almost impossible. She added quickly, loyally, that of course it was also necessary. But then she went on to relate that her three-or four-day trips to Paris could only be managed through some complicated trade arrangement and business connection in France, and as she tried to explain the necessary details of the plan she became so involved in the bewildering complexities of cheques and balances that she finally ended by waving her hand charmingly in a gesture of exhausted dismissal, saying:
    “Ach, Gott! It is all too complicated, too confusing! I cannot tell you how it is — I do not understand it myself!”
    Old Fuss-and-Fidget put in here with confirmations of his own. He was, he said, an attorney in Berlin —“ein Rechtsanwalt”— and had formerly had extensive professional connections in France and in other portions of the Continent. He had visited America as well, and had been there as recently as 1930, when he had attended an international congress of lawyers in New York. He even spoke a little English, which he unveiled with evident pride. And he was going now, he said, to another international congress of lawyers which was to open in Paris the next day, and which would last a week. But even so brief a trip as this now had its serious difficulties. As for his former professional activities in other countries, they were now, alas, impossible.
    He asked George if any of his books had been translated and published in Germany, and George told him they had. The others were all eagerly and warmly curious, wanting to know the titles and George’s name. Accordingly, he wrote out for them the German titles of the books, the name of the German publisher, and his own name. They all looked interested and pleased. The little lady put the paper away in her pocket-book and announced enthusiastically that she would buy the books on her return to Germany. Fuss-and-Fidget, after carefully copying the paper, folded the memorandum and tucked it in his wallet, saying that he, too, would buy the books as soon as he came home again.
    The lady’s young companion, who had shyly and diffidently, but with growing confidence, joined in the conversation from time to time, now took from an envelope in his pocket several postcard photographs of sculptures he had made. They were pictures of muscular athletes, runners, wrestlers, miners stripped to the waist, and the voluptuous figures of young nude girls. These photographs were passed round, inspected by each of them, and praised and admired for various qualities.
    Adamowski now picked up his bulky paper package, explained that it was filled with good things from his brother’s estate in Poland, opened it, and invited everyone to partake. There were some splendid pears and peaches, some fine bunches of grapes, a plump broiled chicken, some fat squabs and partridges, and various other delicacies. The three Germans protested that they could not deprive him of his lunch. But Adamowski insisted vigorously, with the warmth of generous hospitality that was obviously characteristic of his nature. On the spur of the moment he reversed an earlier decision and informed them that he and George were going to the dining-car for luncheon anyway, and that if they did not eat the food in the package it would go to waste. On this condition they all helped themselves to fruit, which they pronounced delicious, and the lady promised that she would later investigate the chicken.
    At length, with friendly greetings all round, George and his
    Polish friend departed a second time and went forward to the Speisewagen.
    They had a long and sumptuous meal. It began with brandy, proceeded over a fine bottle of Bernkasteler, and wound up over coffee and more brandy. They were both determined to spend the remainder of their German money — Adamowski his ten or twelve marks, George his five or six — and this gave them a comfortable feeling in which astute economy was thriftily combined with good living.
    During the meal they discussed their companions again. They were delighted with them and immensely interested in the information they had gathered from them. The woman, they both agreed, was altogether charming. And the young man, although diffident and shy, was very nice. They even had a word of praise for old Fussand–Fidget now. After his crusty shell had been cracked, the old codger was not bad. He really was quite friendly underneath.
    “And it goes to show,” said Adamowski quietly, “how good people really are, how easy it is to get along with one another in this world, how people really like each other — if only ——”
    “— if only ——” George said, and nodded.
    “— if only it weren’t for these God-damned politicians,” Adamowski concluded.
    At the end they called for their bill. Adamowski dumped his marks upon the table and counted them.
    “You’ll have to help me out,” he said. “How many have you got?”
    George dumped his out. Together, they had enough to pay the bill and to give the waiter something extra. And there was also enough left over for another double jolt of brandy and a good cigar.
    So, grinning with satisfaction, in which their waiter joined amiably as he read their purpose, they paid the bill, ordered the brandy and cigars, and, full of food, drink, and the pleasant knowledge of a job well done, they puffed contentedly on their cigars and observed the landscape.
    They were now running through the great industrial region of western Germany. The pleasant landscape was gone, and everything in sight had been darkened by the grime and smoke of enormous works. The earth was dotted with the steely skeletons of great smelting and refining plants, and disfigured with mountainous dumps and heaps of slag. It was brutal, smoky, dense with life and labour and the grim warrens of industrial towns. But these places, too, had a certain fascination — the thrill of power in the raw.
    The two friends talked about the scene and about their trip. Adamowski said they had done well to spend their German money. Outside of the Reich its exchange value would be lower, and they were already almost at the border; since their own coach went directly through to Paris, they would have no additional need of German currency for porters’ fees.
    George confided to him, somewhat apprehensively, that he had some thirty dollars in American currency for which he had no German permit. Almost all of his last week in Berlin had been consumed, he said, in the red tape of departure — pounding wearily from one steamship office to another in an effort to secure passage home, cabling to Fox Edwards for more money, then getting permits for the money. At the last moment he had discovered that he still had thirty dollars left for which he had no official permit. When he had gone in desperation to an acquaintance who was an official in a travel agency, and had asked him what to do, this man had told him wearily to put the money in his pocket and say nothing; that if he tried now to get a permit for it and waited for the authorities to act on it, he would miss the boat; so to take the chance, which was, at most, he thought, a very slight one, and go ahead.
    Adamowski nodded in agreement, but suggested that George take the uncertified money, thrust it in the pocket of his vest, where he would not seem to hide it, and then, if he were discovered and questioned, he could say that he had put the money there and had forgotten to declare it. This he decided to do, and made the transfer then and there.
    This conversation brought them back to the thorny problem of the money regulations and the difficulties of their fellow-travellers who were Germans. They agreed that the situation was hard on their new-found friends, and that the law which permitted foreigners and citizens alike to take only ten marks from the country, unless otherwise allowed, was, for people in the business circumstances of the little blonde woman and old Fuss-and-Fidget, very unfair indeed.
    Then Adamowski had a brilliant inspiration, the fruit of his generous and spontaneous impulses.
    “But why ——” he said —“why can’t we help them?”
    “How do you mean? In what way can we help them?”
    “Why,” he said, “I have here a permit that allows me to take twenty-three marks out of the country. You have no permit, but everyone is allowed ——”
    “— to take ten marks,” George said. “So you mean, then,” he concluded, “that each of us has spent his German money ——”
    “— but can still take as much as is allowed out of the country. Yes,” he said. “So we could at least suggest it to them.”
    “You mean that they should give us some of their marks to keep in our possession until we get across the frontier?”
    Adamowski nodded. “Yes. I could take twenty-three. You could take ten. It is not much, of course, but it might help.”
    No sooner said than seized upon. They were almost jubilantly elated at this opportunity to do some slight service for these people to whom they had taken such, a liking. But even as they sat there smiling confirmation at each other, a man in uniform came through the car, paused at their table — which was the only one now occupied, all the other diners having departed — and authoritatively informed them that the Pass–Control had come aboard the train, and that they must return at once to their compartment to await examination.
    They got up immediately and hastened back through the swaying coaches. George led the way, and Adamowski whispered at his shoulder that they must now make haste and propose their offer to their companions quickly, or it would be too late.
    As soon as they entered the compartment they told their three German friends that the officials were already on the train and that the inspection would begin shortly. This announcement caused a flurry of excitement. They all began to get ready. The woman busied herself with her purse. She took out her passport, and then, with a worried look, began to count her money.
    Adamowski, after watching her quietly for a moment, took out his certificate and held it open in his hand, remarking that he was officially allowed twenty-three marks, that he had had that sum at the beginning, but that now he had spent it. George took this as his cue and said that he, too, had spent all of his German money, and that, although he had no permit, he was allowed ten marks. The woman looked quickly, eagerly, from one to the other and read the friendship of their purpose.
    “Then you mean ——” she began. “But it would be wonderful, of course, if you would!”
    “Have you as much as twenty-three marks above what you are allowed?” asked Adamowski.
    “Yes,” she nodded quickly, with a worried look. “I have more than that. But if you would take the twenty-three and keep them till we are past the frontier ——”
    He stretched out his hand. “Give them to me,” he said.
    She gave them to him instantly, and the money was in his pocket in the wink of an eye.
    Fuss-and-Fidget now counted out ten marks nervously, and without a word passed them across to George. George thrust the money in his pocket, and they all sat back, a little flushed, excited but triumphant, trying to look composed.
    A few minutes later an official opened the door of the compartment, saluted, and asked for their passports. He inspected Adamowski’s first, found everything in order, took his certificate, saw his twenty-three marks, stamped the passport, and returned it to him.
    Then he turned to George, who gave him his passport and the various papers certifying his possession of American currency. The official thumbed through the pages of the passport, which were now almost completely covered with the stamps and entries which had been made every time George cashed a cheque for register-marks. On one page the man paused and frowned, scrutinising carefully a stamp showing reentrance into Germany from Kufstein, on the Austrian border; then he consulted again the papers George had handed him. He shook his head. Where, he asked, was the certificate from Kufstein?
    George’s heart jumped and pounded hard. He had forgotten the Kufstein certificate! There had been so many papers and documents of one kind and another since then that he no longer thought the Kufstein certificate was needed. He began to paw and thumb through the mass of papers that remained in his pocket. The officer waited patiently, but with an air of perturbation in his manner. Everyone else looked at George apprehensively, except Adamowski, who said quietly:
    “Just take your time. It ought to be there somewhere.”
    At last George found it! And as he did, his own sharp intake of relief found echo among his companions. As for the official, he, too, seemed glad. He smiled quite kindly, took the paper and inspected it, and returned the passport.
    Meanwhile, during the anxious minutes that George had taken to paw through his papers, the official had already inspected the passports of the woman, her companion, and Fuss-and-Fidget. Everything was apparently in order with them, save that the lady had confessed to the possession of forty-two marks, and the official had regretfully informed her that he would have to take from her everything in excess of ten. The money would be held at the frontier and restored to her, of course, when she returned. She smiled ruefully, shrugged her shoulders, and gave the man thirty-two marks. All other matters were now evidently in order, for the man saluted and withdrew.
    So it was over, then! They all drew deep breaths of relief, and commiserated the charming lady upon her loss. But they were all quietly jubilant, too, to know that her loss had been no greater, and that Adamowski had been able in some degree to lessen it.
    George asked Fuss-and-Fidget if he wanted his money returned now or later. He replied that he thought it would be better to wait until they had crossed the frontier into Belgium. At the same time he made a casual remark, to which none of them paid any serious attention just then, to the effect that for some reason, which they did not follow, his ticket was good only to the frontier, and that he would utilise the fifteen minutes’ wait at Aachen, which was the frontier town, to buy a ticket for the remainder of the trip to Paris.
    They were now approaching Aachen. The train was beginning to slacken speed. They were going once more through a lovely countryside, smiling with green fields and gentle hills, unobtrusively, mildly, somehow unmistakably European. The seared and blasted district of the mines and factories was behind them. They were entering the outskirts of a pleasant town.
    This was Aachen. Within a few minutes more, the train was slowing to a halt before the station. They had reached the frontier. Here there would be a change of engines. All of them got out — Fuss-and-Fidget evidently to get a ticket, the others to stretch their legs and get a breath of air.

    #Deutschand #Berlin #Geschichte #Nazis #Rassegesetze #Juden #Literatur #Bahnhof_Zoo #Kurfürstendamm #Charlottenburg

  • The $1 Billion Misunderstanding of Aging - Facts So Romantic
    http://nautil.us/blog/the-1-billion-misunderstanding-of-aging

    Biotech researchers and entrepreneurs want to grow up but not grow old, because once you’re old, things generally start going wrong. Photograph by Joe Campbell / FlickrRobert Conquest, a historian of Soviet Russia and a poet, once summarized Shakespeare’s 28-line poem, “The Seven Ages of Man,” in five lines. They go like this: Seven Ages: first puking and mewling Then very pissed off with your schooling. Then fucks and then fights. Then judging chaps’ rights— Then sitting in slippers—then drooling. For biotech researchers and entrepreneurs who see aging as an engineering problem to be solved, the goal is to halt the process somewhere, I imagine, between the third and fourth lines. They want to grow up but not grow old, because once you’re old, things start going wrong. “The current system in (...)

  • “In a piece never published online until now, Mahmoud Darwish describes the Palestinian writer’s difficult duty”

    Welcome: A letter from Mahmoud Darwish
    https://electronicintifada.net/content/welcome-letter-mahmoud-darwish/21081

    “The renowned Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish was the first writer that the Palestine Festival of Literature approached with a request to be a Founding Patron. He accepted. He was due to speak at PalFest’s inaugural event in the occupied West Bank city of Ramallah in May 2008 but medical reasons prevented him from attending. He sent a letter instead. Darwish passed away three months later in August.

    The English translation of his 2008 letter features as the opening piece of This Is Not a Border, a newly published collection of essays, diaries and poems marking a decade of PalFest. Darwish’s letter appears online here for the first time.

    Dear Friends,”

  • Des artistes anglais à #Radiohead:

    Le grand #Ken_Loach:

    Radiohead need to join the cultural boycott of Israel – why won’t they meet with me to discuss it?
    Ken Loach, The Independent, le 11 juillet 2017
    https://www.independent.co.uk/voices/radiohead-israel-palestine-boycott-bds-thom-yorke-ken-loach-meet-disc

    Traduction en français:

    Radiohead devrait se joindre au boycott culturel d’Israël – pourquoi ne veulent-ils pas me rencontrer pour en discuter ?
    Ken Loach, The Independent, le 11 juillet 2017
    https://www.bdsfrance.org/radiohead-devrait-se-joindre-au-boycott-culturel-disrael-pourquoi-ne-veul

    #Dave_Randall est le guitariste du groupe #Faithless:

    Radiohead are wrong to play in Israel. Here’s why
    Dave Randall, The Guardian, le 11 juillet 2017
    https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/jul/11/radiohead-reject-israel-boycott-play-tel-aviv-palestinians

    La réponse de #Thom-Yorke à Ken Loach:

    Thom Yorke responds to Ken Loach letter asking Radiohead to cancel Israel concert
    Roisin O’Connor, The Independent, le 12 juillet 2017
    http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/music/news/radiohead-israel-concert-ken-loach-letter-thom-yorke-boycott-tel-aviv

    Le grand #Mike_Leigh:

    Mike Leigh slams Radiohead for ignoring Palestinians
    Artists for Palestine, le 17 juillet 2017
    https://artistsforpalestine.org.uk/2017/07/17/mike-leigh-slams-radiohead-for-ignoring-palestinians

    #Palestine #BDS #Boycott_culturel #Royaume_Uni #Musique