Call us what we carry (Noem ons wat we dragen) - Amanda Gorman

An excellent and eloquent written debut collection

Amanda Gorman was 22 when she could recite her poem “The hill we climb” on Jan 20, 2021 at the inauguration of President Biden in Washington DC, a recitation that went around the world. Her powerful performance touched me on the other side of the ocean at the European continent too. In December of that year, her debut collection "Call us what we carry" hit the shelves worldwide. (Vertaling in het Nederlands: Noem ons wat we dragen, jan 2023 door Zaïre Krieger)

The collection is not that easy as I expected. Gorman delivered a seven-part collection in which she delivers verses partly as a witness or observer in a documentary style and partly as an elegy. Many of her poems tell about how shattering and confusing the year 2021 was in the US. Testimonies from the American history coincide with the images of that year. Whereas she sketches what has happened during the Covid pandemic for example, she also remembers and repossesses the voice of an American soldier, Corporal Plummer, an African American who was stationed in France during the Spanish Flu, at the end of the first World War. She dug up archival materials from him to work with.

Fury & Faith is a chapter mostly about the George Floyd assassination under police custody, and the Black Lives Matter (BLM) manifestations in the US, but which also got followed up in many other countries worldwide.
Gorman’s verses are packed with echoes and rhythm, in a way I’d still prefer them being performed by the poet than only being able to read them.

Fury & Faith

[...]

“Together we envision a land that is liberated, not lawless.
We create a future that is free, not flawless.
Again & again, over & over.
We will stride up every mountainside.
Magnanimous & modest.
We will be protected & served.
Be a force that is honored & honest.
This is more than protest.
                    It’s a promise.”

Migration into the US ("The Surveyed – Report on migration of Roes") is brought up, just like the deterioration of the environment ( “Earth eyes”). Gorman finds word for the loss and grief, and the pain of the country. However, she tries not to exaggerate the traumas but to find words to heal and repair.

This collection is certainly chock full of American references I may have not grasped entirely, from pop culture or other American poets, but also of other references from around the world. From Shakespeare’s Othello or Emily Dickinson’s 'letter to the world' for example, what Gorman calls her entire debut collection actually. She brings in "A dictionary of English Etymology" from 1859, and the 1882 Chinese Exclusion Act. A lot of layers and images are found throughout the poems. Her words sing throughout the whole collection: “America, / How to sing / Our name, Singular, / Signed, Singed.” The point of view is mostly not the ‘I’, but the ‘we’, ‘us’ and ‘our’, an exception in these times of individualism and selfhood. The layout and the orientation from the sheets differ here and there according to the format.

CORDAGE, or ATONEMENT (Hensleigh Wedgwood, A Dictionary of English, 1859) 

[…]

We would leap out of this night
Down-rushing on our head.
Often we cannot change
Without someone in us dying.

***

[…]

Until we can hold near
Who we hold dear.

What a marvelous wreck are we.
We press out of our cold
& separate crouching.
Like a vine sprung overnights.
We were reaching & wretched
Upon this mortal soil
& even so we are undiminished.
If just for this newborn day.
Let us take back our lives.

 

Every day we are learning

Every day we are learning
How to live with essence, not ease
How to move with haste, never hate.
How to leave this pain that is beyond us
Behind us.
Just like a skill or any art,
We cannot possess hope without practicing it.
It is the most fundamental craft we demand of ourselves.

 

CALL US
(title poem)

Grant us this day.
Bruising the make of us.

At times over half of our bodies
Are not our own.

Our persons made vessel
For non-human cells.

To them we are
A boat of a being,

Essential.
A country.

A continent.
A planet.

A human
Microbiome is all the writhing forms on

& inside this body
Drafted under our life.

We are not me-
We are we.

Call us
What we carry

Gorman’s excellent and eloquent written collection ends with the famous and luminous inaugural poem we have all heard her perform at Capitol Hill. 

Titel: Call us what we carry/Noem ons wat we dragen

Auteur: Amanda Gorman

Vertaler: Zaïre Krieger
Uitgevers: Chatto & Windus (Vintage UK, 2021), J.M. Meulenhoff (2023)

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Aleksandra - Lisa Weeda

In English below

Een confronterend en mooi gecomponeerd verhaal

Lisa Weeda, een Nederlands-Oekraïense schrijfster, bracht haar debuutroman uit in oktober 2021, dus net voordat de grootschalige Russische aanvalsoorlog in Oekraïne uitbrak in februari 2022. In dit boek “Aleksandra” vertelt zij het verhaal van haar grootmoeder met die naam en haar familie. Het gaat ook over de verschillende oorlogen die Oekraïne, een uitgestrekt land tussen het oosten en het westen en een echte graanschuur, in de 20ste en de 21ste eeuw getroffen hebben. Van de twee wereldoorlogen, de Sovjetoverheersing nadien, tot de Russische annexatie van het Krimeiland en de oorlog in Oost-Oekraïne in 2014.

De familie van de auteur komt uit het dan bezette deel, haar grootmoeder is er geboren en stamt af van de Kozakken uit het gebied die ooit in een ver verleden een aparte staat hadden en die bekend stonden voor hun onafhankelijkheid en onverschrokkenheid, en hun militaire vaardigheden, vooral hun rijkunsten. Haar grootmoeder heeft haar gevraagd naar de Donbass te reizen om haar oom Kolja te zoeken die is vermoord tijdens de oorlog in 2014.

Weeda schreef een uitzonderlijk rijk boek met heel wat literaire elementen in. Een rauwe geschiedenis van het land Oekraïne wordt afgewisseld met magische realistische elementen zoals familieleden die veranderen in herten met gouden pijlen en terug. Daarnaast is er het tijdreizen. Bij het teruggaan in de tijd ontmoet Lisa haar overgrootvader Nikolaj in het Paleis van de Verloren Don Kozak, een plaats waar al haar dode familieleden zich op een of ander moment ophielden, en die haar helpt de sporen van haar oom te volgen. Maar eerst leert ze het verhaal van een aantal andere familieleden doorheen de tijd kennen. Haar grootmoeder werd als jong meisje van haar dorp naar Duitsland gedeporteerd om daar tijdens de Tweede Wereldoorlog als arbeidster in de oorlogsindustrie aan de slag te gaan. In de oorlog om Oost-Oekraïne komt de familie aan beide kanten van de oorlog tegenover elkaar te staan. De Don Kozakken-tradities worden ruim aangehaald.

In het boek wordt er vaak van tijdsbestek en van perspectief gewisseld, zodat het niet gemakkelijk te lezen is. Toch krijgt de lezer veel terug van dit mooi gecomponeerd en knap geschreven verhaal. Het boek is echt actueel en leert je het land Oekraïne en zijn rijke geschiedenis beter kennen, zowel van de laatste jaren als over het nazi- en het Sovjetregime. En bovenal bevat het veel waarheid en is het erg confronterend voor de lezer die in vrijheid in een stabiel en democratisch land woont.

Citaten:

“We hoopten dat het antwoord deze keer anders zou zijn. Op deze grond is al te veel verloren gegaan om niets.”

'We kunnen niets,' zegt een van onze oudsten. 'Wij zijn maar voorouders. Wij voelen de grond nog wel onder onze hoeven, maar kunnen er niet meer op lopen.'

 

A confrontational and beautifully composed story

Lisa Weeda, a Dutch-Ukrainian writer, released her debut novel in October 2021, just before the full-scale Russian war of aggression broke out in Ukraine in February 2022. In this book entitled “Aleksandra”, she tells the story of her grandmother with that name, and her family, covering the various wars that hit Ukraine, a vast country between east and west and a veritable granary, in the 20th and the 21st century. From the two world wars, the Soviet regime afterwards, to the Russian annexation of the Crimean island and the war in eastern Ukraine in 2014.

The author's family is from the then occupied part, her grandmother having been born there and descended from the Cossacks of the area who once in the distant past had a separate state and were known for their independence and fearlessness, and their military skills, especially their riding skills. Her grandmother has asked her to travel to the Donbass to search for her uncle Kolja, who was killed during the 2014 war.

Weeda wrote an exceptionally rich book with a lot of literary elements in it. A raw history of Ukraine is interspersed with magical realist elements such as family members turning into deer with golden arrows and back. Then, there is also time travelling. In going back in time, Lisa meets her great-grandfather Nikolay at the Palace of the Lost Don Cossack, a place where all her dead relatives used to hang out at one point or another, helping her follow her uncle’s tracks. But first she learns the story of several other relatives through time. Her grandmother was deported from her village to Germany as a young girl to work as a labourer in the war industry during World War II. In the war for eastern Ukraine, the family comes face to face on both sides of the war. Don Cossack traditions are widely cited.

The book switches in time and from one POV to another frequently, so it is not an easy read. Yet the reader gets a lot back from this beautifully composed and cleverly written story. The book is really topical and gets you acquainted with Ukraine and its rich history, both of recent years and about the Nazi and Soviet regimes. And above all, it contains a lot of truth and is very confronting for the reader living in a stable and democratic country, with a lot of freedoms.

Quotes (free translation in English):

"We hoped the answer would be different this time. Too much has already been lost on this ground for nothing."

'We can't do anything,' says one of our elders. 'We are only ancestors. We can still feel the ground under our hooves, but we can no longer walk on it.'

Titel: Aleksandra
Auteur: Lisa Weeda 

Uitgever: De Bezige Bij

Jaar uitgave: 2021

Genomineerd voor de Bronzen Uil 2022 en de Libris Literatuurprijs 2022

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A ghost in the throat - Doireann Ní Ghríofa

A poetic and unusual encounter of autofiction and essay with excerpts of poetry

Doireann Ní Ghríofa (1981) is an acclaimed Irish bilingual poet who has already written several poet collections in both Irish (Gaeilge) and English. She debuted in prose with A ghost in the throat, published in 2020 with Tramp Press, which was praised highly in Ireland and internationally, and has won several prizes of which the An Post Irish Book of the Year award. 

In this poetic and unusual encounter of autofiction and essay with excerpts of poetry, a young mother and writer, Ní Ghríofa herself, has narrowly avoided a tragedy at the birth of her fourth child. Taken up by her many to do lists, she struggles with her repetitive daily routine. But then she re-discovers an epic Irish poem which she fell in love with during her schoolyears: the Lament for Art O’Leary or the Caoineadh Airt Uí Laoghaire and written by the 18^th century Irish noblewoman and poet, Eibhlín Dubh Ní Chonaill, in which Eibhlín, also known as Nelly, mourns her husband, who she discovered in his own blood, murdered, from which she drank herself a few handfuls.

The story-telling young mother and writer is taken back to the past and gets obsessed by tracking down the life of Eibhlín Dubh, and doing a better job than all other literary investigators who tried this before her. She turns all archives around to find buried information and visits the places she knows where Eibhlín would have lived. She also re-translates the epic and orally inherited poem from folkloric origin in English as she wasn’t satisfied either with the English translations she had to deal with. She recognizes herself in this poet, and sees the parallels with her own life.

“This is a female text, which is also a caoineadh: a dirge and a drudge-song, an anthem of praise, a chant and a keen, a lament and an echo, a chorus and a hymn. Join in.”

All chapters besides the prologue start with a sentence from the Irish poem, both in Irish and English, and the entirety of the 5 parts and 36 verses is included at the end. It is an interesting asset although Irish is completely unrecognizable both in writing and in sound for most of us. The prologue sets the scene in which the book is written. The further chapters are very rhythmical and poetic, whether it’s about her routinely day-to day-life as about her investigation subject. Nevertheless, it takes a while to get accustomed to the story and the very calm speed of it. It is not as captivating from the beginning onwards.

The biggest part of the story is a beautifully written inner dialogue how the writer combines her house-work and chores with her research and writing. She writes her chores down on to do lists, which she deletes one after the other and tries to stick to them in an obsessive and kind of frustrating way. “If each day is a cluttered page, then I spend my hours scrubbing its letters. In this, my work is a deletion of a presence.”

At the same time, she tries to assemble a life from the fragments she finds about Eibhlín Dubh, which aren’t nearly enough as certainly in those times, female writers were not important enough to write about. It is a bit of a mystery that lingers on quietly, not as exciting as a detective story, but in fact with a slight touch of it.

As a poet herself, Ní Ghríofa shares her views on her 18^th century counterpart and her work, and finds the right words for it, like I couldn’t myself:  "My favourite element hovers beyond the text, in the untranslatable pale space between stanzas, where I sense a female breath lingering on the stairs, still present, somehow, long after the body has hurried onwards to breathe elsewhere.”

The lives of both women are intertwined. Present and past are connected, Ní Ghríofa has flashbacks to her own youth, as well as day dreams about Eibhlín Dubh’s life, in which she tries to fill in a personal life based on historical facts. The mixture of history and personal life works wonderfully well.

In a passionate and honest way, Ní Ghríofa brings out a female voice and praises the role of women in history who have got forgotten as well as the joy and the sense of fulfilment that motherhood can give. This versus the urge for intellectual challenges and the self-esteem which can suffer at the same time. Her investigation into one of Irelands’ most important female poets makes her find herself again. 

Titel: A ghost in the throat
Auteur: Doireann Ní Ghríofa

Vertaler: Caroline Meijer 

Uitgevers: Tramp Press (2020), Van Oorschot (2021)

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Tijl (Tyll) - Daniel Kehlmann

A modern interesting read about European culture and history

Review in English. Read in Dutch. German literature.


Tyll is the newest novel (2017) by the German-Austrian writer Daniel Kehlmann, after his bestseller "Measuring the world" (Die Vermessung der Welt), a novel which was about two 18th century German scientists Carl Friedrich Gauss and Alexander von Humboldt, which has been translated to more than 40 languages. 

Tijl or Tyll is in fact a mythical figure from the Dutch – German folklore. Tales exist in both languages and differ a bit in settings and historical eras, the best known in Dutch and in Belgium is the story by the French-speaking Belgian author Charles De Coster, set in the 16th century against the background of the Spanish occupation of the low countries by Philipp II, and in which Tyll is born in Damme, a Flemish town, written in 1867. But Tyll first appears in German tales written around the 1500s in which he wanders around the medieval then existing German principalities and the low countries in the 14th century. Legend has it that he died in Mölln, Germany in 1350, where a grave is claimed to be his. It is probably no coincidence that the mythological wanderers Willem Tell in Switzerland and Robin Hood in Great Britain were also set in those medieval times and painted to be rebellious liberators, for the poor farmers, against the feudal kingdoms of that time.

Tyll is called “Gaukler” in the German edition, a jester in the English version and a kunstenmaker (“Arts maker”) in the Dutch edition. There is no word in Dutch with the exact same meaning including a travelling entertainer, thightrope walker and juggler, a philosophical thinker, a buccaneer.

Kehlmann combined historical figures and facts from the Thirty Years War, which raged between almost all European countries within the Holy Roman Empire, with his fantasy to compile this modern complex non-linear novel. Several storylines intertwine with each other. The storyline about Tyll starts in his youth and goes on during his nomad life, while he is travelling in villages together with Nele and a talking donkey called Origines. Next to their story, there is the story of the Winter King and Queen, Frederick V of the Palatinate and his wife Liz, (Elizabeth Stuart, daughter of James VI (I) of Scotland, England and Ireland) and who try to confront the Emperor of the H.R.E. in accepting the Kingdom of Bohemia. Their nicknames refer to the fact they could only hold on to their title for one season, after which they were sent in exile to The Hague (Nl), as they were both somewhat naive in this attempt. The Thirty Years War is largely a war between the catholic and the emerging protestant regions in West and Central Europe. The chronology of both these stories is preserved but it is difficult to keep track of the changing viewpoints of the different chapters which make the novel so complex. Tyll is already there in the first chapter but then disappears and pops up again in the following chapters unexpectedly.

A lot of European culture, history and folklore is brought into the novel which may sound familiar but it is difficult to sort out the facts from the fiction which the author has put very well together. The travelling Jesuit scholars throughout the book, the German Athanasius Kircher and the English Oswald Tesimond, conversing in Latin between each other, were existing figures who left their marks in different fields after their deaths, but who are rather forgotten - Kircher being the most renowned one (esp. in geology, medicine, and Egyptology) still - and whose findings have been premature and contradicted in many cases by proven scientific outcomes from the later centuries (during and after the European Age of Enlightenment). In the 16th century, superstition, religion and a lot of confusion are still all around, also in their discussions!

It is also the era of Tyll’s father, a simple miller who has several books in his possession - even a Latin one which he can’t understand and read himself - and of witch hunts, because these characters are the outsiders of their communities and can easily serve as scapegoats. The difference between the scholars and them being the powerful and the powerless, the haves and the havenots. The scholars at that time were the ones who ruled the religion as well, the critical thinkers those who recognized and knew more about how nature is a source of cures for various diseases.
The grim description of Tyll’s father execution together with that of a woman being charged of witchcraft as well as the very realistic ones of the war battlefields, get under your skin. Not to forget the colours and the smell!

Tyll is the one who, as a modern popular charming and mocking comedian and storyteller, points out the hypocrisy by using the mirror (Eulen’Spiegel’) against these feudal rulers to show their shortcomings and the consequences of their childlike war games to the inhabitants of their territory. The wish for more “Lebensraum” from the Thirty Years Old War is shockingly relatable to the Two World Wars and the ongoing war in Europe. Tyll acts in fact as the neutral observer who keeps his own opinions and emotions largely for himself. The author’s writing style is clear and evident, and reads easily. It is the structure and the deeper message between the lines that make this novel albeit a slow beginning still an interesting read about European culture and history.

Titel: Tijl
Auteur: Daniel Kehlmann

Vertaler:Josephine Rijnaarts

Uitgever: Querido

Jaar uitgave: 2017

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Islossning - Arne Dahl

Bewildering, far fetched and nail-biting suspense ridden story

I read this book in Swedish. Review in English.

Having looked forward so much until the last book of the Swedish Berger & Blom series by the bestselling thriller author Arne Dahl (pen name for Jan Arnald’s writing career in the crime genre), I couldn't wait to read it and immediately downloaded the Swedish e-book edition to read it as soon as it was available. Once being plunged into the setting and the action again, it was no problem to read it until the end almost in one night.

Meeting the private detectives, Sam Berger, and his love and professional partner Molly Blom, and his dear friend "Deer" who's still working with the Stockholm police, again was a big pleasure. Although the big storyline that largely cross-cut the previous books has come to an end, and "Deer" has been revalidating from one last surprise attack, her stress and the last remainders of last book's excitement are still very much present in this last part of their story together. Being able to grasp the mental effects of his characters’ past experiences and their inner worlds, is one of Arne Dahl's specialisations, often missing in a lot of books in this genre.

Some gripping flash-backs from the beginning of the story onwards try to throw a light on a frightening childhood of someone who is probably looking for revenge in the present. But who is this person, why are dead bodies being found on sandy beaches across the Stockholm archipelago with exactly one month in between, and why is there probably a second serial killer on the loose murdering former Hells Angels’ members with an axe at the same time?

Deer is confronted with her boss, Conny Lundin, who has put her, one of his best police officers, aside in a lower ranking “office job” since her comeback, while she doesn’t trust him with these two major cases. And she can’t help to keep puzzling with those herself. Sam Berger and Molly Blom having Deer to thank for her heroic efforts saving their own child, can’t do otherwise than to help her putting a stop to these obnoxious murders.

Although it is a bit complicated to get there, of course the two cases are expertly knit together at a certain point somewhere in the middle of the book like Dahl has done already so many times. The plot itself is quite far fetched, comprising this time things like cryonics and cryotherapy, biotechnology, plastic surgery, the quest for eternal life, police infiltrations and the Russian mafia - like more Scandinavian books & scripts tend to be – but Dahl can draw his readers into the story and keep them interested by maintaining a high rhythm, regularly switching the perspectives, and a good balance between rising the suspense and calming down again until the finale has to be set...

Arne Dahl’s writing style is still metaphorical although less mystical and dreamy than in some previous books of these series, and still witty and as sharp as a knife, just sufficiently explanatory. The “showing” is of more importance than the “telling” bit. Exactly this combination, the extraordinary, the suspense, the plot and the writing makes this book again a great bewildering story of high quality. And then, there is the end which makes clear the Berger and Blom series is now finished but also just captivating enough as a cliff-hanger for something new again.

 
Titel: Islossning
Auteur: Arne Dahl
Uitgever: Albert Bonniers Förlag
Jaar uitgave: 2021

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