WORLD POETS SERIES:
PATRICIA PRIME
--- A World Poet from Auckland, New Zealand
An Interview by Mohammed Fakhruddin
TE WHAHAPU BAY
After the summer storm
we drive to the bay
and walk its shelly margin.
The bright mirror of the ocean
reflects
sullen clouds.
Lives that have brought us here
are etched forever into
the metal of Te Whahapu Bay.
Feathery birds fly low,
shells shine like drops of honey.
How have they survived?
Fishermen slowly drag
their trembling boats
out of the westerly wind.
The sun flares at last.
We have this current . . .
a momentum only.
It pulls us one to another.
The sea a full, tight net,
gathering us in its embrace.
(Patricia Prime)
Patricia is a member of The New Zealand Poetry Society, a member of The New Zealand Author, and a member of the Tanka Society of America. She is on the panel of editors for the Indian publication Poetcrit, a member of the review panel of Metverse Muse, is on the review panel of Voice of Kalkata, co-editor of the New Zealand haiku journal Kokako,reviews editor of the ezine Stylus, and is on the panel of judges for the Seashell Game in the British haiku publication Presence. Patricia was honoured with the Poet of the Millennium Award by the International Poets Academy in 2001. Her articles, reviews, interviews and poetry have been published extensively in the small press and in anthologies, and her poems have been anthologised in Catching the Light, the shortcut home, The World Poetry Anthology, and others. A selection of her poems, reviews, interviews and haiku has appeared on the Internet, and her work has been published worldwide in books, newspapers and magazines. Her haiku have been featured in The Second New Zealand Haiku Anthology and in The Haiku Canada Anthology. In 1998 Les Editions David published ten of Patricia’s haiku in Anthology of Haiku, directed by Andre Duhaime, Canada. In 1999 Patricia collaborated with two poets to produce a collection of haiku Every Drop Stone Pebble. She collaborated with Indian haijin, Kanwar Dinesh Singh, to produce a collection of haiku called Deuce. She has collaborated with fellow New Zealand haijin, Catherine Mair, on two books of linked verse, sweet penguin and first rays of the sun. Patricia won a prize for her haiku entry in a contest commemorating the 10th anniversary of the HIA (Japan), and an award for her haiku for the A-bomb Memorial Day (Japan). Haiku entries were highly commended in the New Zealand International Poetry Competition and her poems appeared in their anthology, tapping the tank. In 2001 she judged the Junior Haiku Section of the New Zealand International Poetry Competition. She recently won the inaugural haiga online contest. Patricia has written on New Zealand women poets for Creative Forum (India). She has written essays on contemporary Indian English poetry and on Australasian poetry. The New Zealand poetry anthology Something Between Breaths, published by Bahri Publications, India, is the first book she has edited. Her first solo collection of poetry Accepting Summer was published in 2001 by Bahri Publications, India. Currently she is working on a collection of tanka, Ten Thousand Things, and is preparing interviews on New Zealand poets/editors for the Australian online magazine Stylus.
Q. What’s the poetry scene in New Zealand today compared to other countries in the world?
A. As you know, New Zealand is a very small country, numbering about four million people. Writers and artists are spread widely throughout the country and are mostly centred in the main cities of Auckland, Hamilton, Wellington, Christchurch and Dunedin. These cities also contain our universities. Most of the universities run creative writing courses and many of our writers (young and old) have attended these courses. Poetry magazines such as JAAM, Poetry New Zealand, Landfall, Sport, Glottis, Takahe, Spin, Kokako and Southern Ocean Review do as much as they can to encourage young writers and artists, whilst also publishing the work of established writers.
Q. What kind of poetry is being written now by ethnic New Zealand poets and in which language?
A. Many Maori writers have had their written and oral literature published in the landmark anthology, Te Ao Marama, edited by Witi Ihimaera. Not afraid to experiment, these writers embrace all the media available – song lyrics, protest poetry, rap, theatre, radio, television and film. Many of them explore contemporary life on the streets of New Zealand cities, with vibrant work that burst beyond the expected to challenge both Maori and Pakeha concepts of identity. This series of books is predominantly written in English.
The Penguin Book of New Zealand Verse, edited by Ian Wedde and Harvey McQueen, Penguin, 1985, contains as essay called “The Maori Tradition”, by Margaret Orbell, and a section of Maori poetry with insistence on the primacy of texts in Maori.
Huia and Nga Kupu Press publish poetry in and by Maori. There are probably other presses. Indeed any publisher and I’d guess any poetry magazine will publish in Maori, usually asking for an English translation. Readers can look up Manukau in Poetry to find examples (www.manukau-libraries.govt.nz/whatwehave/poetry). Mike O’Leary’s recent anthology is another example published by HeadworX. Indeed many anthologies of New Zealand poetry have work in Maori, eg. Big Smoke and Bernard Gadd’s Real Fire that has translations of Maori poetry and song.
Q. Could you please name a few of the popular poets with a few quotations of their verses?
A. James Norcliffe, “badlands”, JAAM 19
the shit of hip-filled pigeons glows pink
on the path like tiny pastilles of hope
James Brown, “Spamtoum”, Landfall 205
Pass this on and support the arts
What are you afraid of?
Business deals in the Middle East
Major attacks
Gregory O’Brien, “Beausoleil”, Landfall 205
The beginning of summer was the end
of summer; spring became
autumn. A lizard running down a stone wall
ran back up.
Jack Ross, “News from Home”, Spin 45
I was frightened when I hid behind
the hedge, and saw them riding by –
the big horses, the dark riders,
and the dogs
down the hill to the wharf, where
the cream launch came threshing in.
Pooja Mittal, “deep in the woods”, Poetry New Zealand 26
deep in the woods
the metal boy seeks his father.
each branch bends a kiss
of moonlight, but the stars
remain untouched.
Pip Sheehan, “home is the arms around you”, Poetry New Zealand 26
Wanaka/Christchurch
mist patting down the damp hills
the car knifes its warm way
through the highway
Q. Having migrated to New Zealand from Britain decades ago, what made you take up poetry writing and when did you write first. How did you feel immediately after writing the first poem?
A. I suppose I would give two answers. The first approach is the more private one of manipulating language in the way many people do in their teens when I sent poems to women’s magazines and the children’s pages of newspapers, and my work appeared in my school’s magazine. Writing became more of an interest for me later on after I became a widow and my young daughter and I went to a creative writing course at night school. She gave up after the first year but I went on to take a course by correspondence through The Writing School in Wellington. This course taught lessons in playwrighting, articles, short stories and novels.
The first poem I had published was called “Street Kids” and was printed in a journal edited by Bernard Gadd, with whom I now co-edit the haiku magazine, Kokako. I was surprised and pleased with Bernard’s immediate acceptance of my poem and with seeing my name in print for the first time in New Zealand.
Q. What are the developments you noticed, as the years passed by, in yourself and in your creativity during the process of writing poetry continuously?
A. I came to writing late in life and have only been writing seriously since 1989. I began with poetry as that seemed, at the time, the easiest form. I am still working fulltime as a teacher and only have the weekends in which to write. Gradually I became interested in other genres and now write haiku, tanka, haibun, linked collaborative verse, articles, criticism, reviews and am now working on a series of interviews with New Zealand poets and editors for the Australian online magazine, Stylus.
Q. Do you have the knowledge of poetics and various structural forms available in English poetry?
A. I attended an English grammar school where we were taught the rudiments of structured poetry, and later gained my degree in English and Education. The basic structures of English poetry were part of my English major. I have a large library that contains several books on poetry. Among them, The Poetry Dictionary, edited by John Drury, Story Press, 1995, and The Poetry Handbook, edited by John Lennard, Oxford University Press, 1996, which contains a chapter on poetic forms.
Q. What are your personal choices of structural forms available in English poetry?
A. Inevitably a lot of my practice and the cross-arts way I approach writing would place me in the continuity of the avant-garde tradition. I would situate the idea of the avant-garde as a particular tradition which is very much rooted from the beginning of the twentieth century, particularly which has to do with a break away from nineteenth century practice. Also it’s to do with a move away from a sense of humanist wholeness in relation to the arts, to knowledge, to language.
I do not consider myself to be an avant-garde writer, but inevitably I would be placed within it. This is because I question language, I question meaning, and I question the place of women writers in literature. My practice doesn’t follow the realist or structured form of poetry.
The only time I use structure is in following the Japanese tradition when composing haiku, tanka and haibun.
Q. What are your personal choices of structured forms usually adopted to express yourself in verses?
A. I consider myself to be a lyric poet writing in a free-form style, and do not conform to structural forms. My poems seem to find their own stanzaic patterns, line breaks and rhythms.
Q. Being a poetry critic, what exactly do you search in the published works and rate the published poets?
A. I am committed to the idea of artistic practice as something that needs to sit and address and look at social structure such as where does art sit today. That is part of the wider social frame, that it doesn’t sit outside it. I am interested in art questioning the frames, like avant-garde practice might do, but also in being active socially within it.
Q. What qualifications do you prescribe to be a poetry critic?
A. As a wide reader of poetry from all ages and countries and as a writer in various genres, I believe I am equipped to write knowledgeably about another writer’s work.
Q. Do we have good poetry critics in the established print media? Can you name a few of them?
A. I can only talk about my own country. I would say that we have some excellent critics writing today in our newspapers and journals. Among them I would name Gregory O’Brien, Roger Horrocks, Alistair Paterson, Mark Willliams, Harry Ricketts, Mark Pirie, and, of course, there are many more.
Q. Name ten best poets of the world in the English language.
A. That’s a hard choice to make! I will give you a few of my own favourite poets writing today.
From the USA: John Ashbery, Anne Carsons, Louise Gluck, Jori Graham, Lyn Hejinian, Susan Howe, David Antin. From New Zealand: Robert Sullivan, James Norcliffe and Brian Turner.
Q. You have been reading and reviewing the works of Indian English poets. Could you please name the best living poets you have come across?
A. By this question I take it you are talking about Indian poets. There are many poets whose works I have come to appreciate through reviewing their books.
Q. Do you draw a line between traditional poetry and modern poetry telling that traditional poetry is out-dated and free verse is the modern poetry that is the style of expression of the modern poets world over?
A. My answer is that a basic knowledge of structure is necessary for an understanding of, and an ability to judge, the elements of a poet’s craft. Profoundly different as they are, Chaucer, Shakespeare, Emily Dickinson, Sylvia Plath etc. could readily talk with one another about the techniques that they have in common.
There are students of poetry and readers today who know little more about metre beyond the terms “blank verse” and “iambic pentameter”, much about form beyond “couplet” and “sonnet”, or anything about rhyme more complicated than that two words do or don’t.
The form, rhyme or metrical device of a poem is noticed more easily by the readers if they have some knowledge of these things. We cannot avoid this engagement with technique when we give a close reading to a poem. Close reading is only a beginning, to be followed by more distant reading, which for the reader it is a sensible place to start.
Q. Is poetry a craft that has to be learnt by every practicing poet world over to master the skill of expression in written form, or do you say that poetry is a more spontaneous expression of one’s feelings in which no skill whatsoever is involved and structuring of verses is not required?
A. Rhythm is basic. Hearing our hearts beat, feeling our lungs breathe, walking, dancing, sex, and sport, all create and require a sense of rhythm. In speech there are rhythmic patterns that we use to peck out meaning and phrase from the strings of syllables that we hear. To create and shape these rhythms, and to manipulate readers with words underpinned by them, is part of the poet’s job.
To choose a form is to make a decision about structure, metre, rhyme, punctuation and tone.
Much twentieth-century poetry in free verse has an open form; this does not mean that there is no form, but that the form is variable. As with free verse and metre, open form doesn’t mean you don’t think about forms while you are writing or reading. All lines have a rhythm that can be metrically described, and all poems have a form.
Q. What future do you see for the growth and development of poetry in the English language?
A. For me the future of poetry lies with the Internet, with
CDs, e-books, self publication, small press publishing, the proliferation of young people joining creative writing courses and the ease with which anyone can publish their own work, good or bad. It will be up to the discerning reader to judge whatever they are reading as indifferent or worthwhile.
Q. What is the attitude of the younger generation towards poetry in New Zealand?
A. The attitude of our younger generation towards poetry in New Zealand is excellent. Poetry is taught in schools as part of the curriculum, children have access to good libraries and they are encouraged to enter the New Zealand Poetry Society's annual poetry contest, which caters for haiku and mainstream poetry from both children and adults. A range of venues is open to young people interested in poetry, including bookshops where poets give readings of their work, libraries, magazines, and educational facilities to encourage the literacy of the younger generation.
Q. Which are the major English dailies of New Zealand? Do they publish poetry in their Sunday weekly editions and review poetry books?
A. There are only two national newspapers in New Zealand: the Herald (North Island) and the Dominion (South Island). The Herald publishs neither reviews nor poetry. The Weekend Herald has a supplement called Canvas that publishes reviews, the Sunday Star Times has a supplement called Sunday Life and Review that publishes reviews. I don't see the Dominion, so can't comment on what it publishes.
We also have a weekly TV and radio magazine called the Listener that has a book review section and publish one or more poems per issue.
Q. How many universities are there in New Zealand? Are there any poetic activities going on?
We have eight universities in New Zealand: Albany, Auckland, Auckland University of Technology (UNITEC), Waikato, Massey, Wellington, Canterbury and Otago.
Performance poetry is popular in New Zealand and poets take their poetry into cafes and bars to read and perform. Poetry Day is a huge success with poetry readings taking place in libraries, bookshops, universities, on buses and trains, and on the street. There are also literary festivals held throughout the country where national and international writers hold workshops, read their work and discuss their work on panels. There are programmes on radio that discuss, review and read poetry and books.
Q. You may have read a feature titled “New Era Literature” (Japanese poetry), by M. Fakhruddin, published in Poets International, January 2003 issue. Will you please comment on it?
A. I have indeed read your article in the above magazine. Haiku “is a vehicle for rendering a clearly realized image just as the image appears at the moment of aesthetic realization, with its insight and meaning, with its power to seize and obliterate our consciousness of ourselves.” (Kenneth Yasuda, Japanese Haiku, Tuttle,1957). Or, as you correctly say in your article, “Yet, haiku isn’t just a photographic response. Deeper meanings and emotions must be revealed without pointing them out!”
Poets International launched the haiku movement in India in 1995, and has been instrumental in publishing haiku from both Indian and overseas poets, culminating in the success of the All India Haiku Conference in 1997. Besides all of this, you have also established haiku through various media in your country. Indeed, by means of Poets International, you have forged strong ties between poets of various countries and cultures.
--- INI Features
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Mohammed Fakhruddin is a journalist and editor of “Poets international” a monthly journal of short verse
SASA VAZIC
An Exclusive Interview by Dr. Mohammed Fakhruddin
Saša Važić is a freelance journalist, astrologer, translator, writer of prose and poetry, essays, book reviews. Author of over 1000 articles on various topics which appeared in newspapers and journals, member of the editorial board of Haiku Novine in Niš and of the World Haiku Club, her haiku have been included in over ten national and international haiku anthologies and a number of national and international haiku magazines. They have been translated into English, Japanese, Chinese, Macedonian, Slovenian, Croatian, German, Czech, Bulgarian, Russian, Polish, Dutch. She is the recipient of several awards and commendations in contests held in her country, in Japan (Water, Lake and Sea; Suruga Baika; Basho Festival; Ito en), Germany and Croatia. Largely, through her translation efforts she has brought English language haiku poetry, articles and books to Balkan readers and vice versa (Serbian language ... to English readers). Važić is the editor of the bilingual Haiku Reality (http://www.geocities.com/ana_vazic/indexeng.htm). She is the author of an e-book of haiku poetry entitled muddy shoes candy heart, edited by Anita Virgil and published by Peaks Press, USA (peakspress@lcscentral.net).
She also creates haiga, some of which have been published at the World Haiku Club’s website and at Kuniharu Shimizu’s website See Haiga Here, as well as in the Contemporary Haibun published by the Red Moon Press, USA.
Recently she has translated David G Lanoue’s novel Haiku Guy into Serbian.
Her many longer poems, articles and book reviews have also been published in a number of journals, in her country and abroad.
Questionnaire:
Q. In which language do you write poetry and since when?
A. I write poems in my mother tongue that is in Serbian but it happens that I write them in English directly, most often when haiku is concerned.
Since when...? It's hard to tell precisely, but let's say since my early childhood. And there were good reasons for my expressing in words as I used to often move with my family to many towns, villages and cities due to my father's job (he used to be head of prison and later head of a local Ministry of Internal Affairs). As I felt the need for a sort of roots, something/someone I could lean upon and communicate with, and as it was like it was, I found that something/someone in my inner being. . .
Q. Could you give me your first poem and what made you write it?
A. Unfortunately, I cannot remember my first poem. It was so long ago... What made me write was, first of all, my inner being forced by sadness and memories, and than perhaps my family genes and background (one of my brothers is a painter, the other used to be director of a local TV, my brother-in-low is a poet and novelist...)
Q. What kind of poetry do you usually write?
A. The so-cold "common" or "longer" poetry and of course - haiku.
Q. Who is you favourite Serbian poet, of the past, who impressed you most? Could you please give me an in depth analysis of his poetry?
A. I love to read poems by our many lyric poets (Šantić, Dučić, Nazor, Jakšić, Radičević...). It's a pity none of our lyric poets' wonderful poems can be translated into any language and save the feeling they are able to evoke. But that could be the case with any other nation’s poetry. If I must make my mind and choose between our “old” lyric poets, then it would be Vladislav Petković Dis. Vladislav 's temperament, his inner feelings and the way he transfers them into words are the most similar to mine, or let me tell that I would like to be able to produce the same effect he did regarding the way into which he expressed his deep-rooted sadness, tenderness, great humanity. . . He is undoubtedly one of the most tragic love poets in the history of Serbian poetry. His love is rather unrealistic, beyond time and place, much more experienced through dreams than in reality. To illustrate this, I’d like to cite one of his poems that has been resonating in my inner body for years...
UTOPLJENE DUŠE
Još jednom samo, o, da mi je dići
Ispod života svet umrlih nada;
Još jednom samo, o, da mi je ići
Prostorom snova pod vidikom jadâ.
Potajna slabost i žudnja ka sreći,
Skrivene misli u boji ljubavi,
Njen pogled nekad sve što znade reći,
Još jednom samo da je da se javi.
U harmoniji svetlosti i tame,
Lik duše trajno gda se od nas krije,
Gde svesti nema, već ideje same,
Otkud bol sleće, da osećaj svije.
U meni o njoj, o lepoti, cveću
I o mladosti – o još jednom samo,
Da mi je da se moje misli kreću,
Da mi je da sam još jedanput tamo.
Da mi je da sam u predelima onim,
Gde su mi mladost, san i uspomene,
Kod negda svojih da je da se sklonim
S lepotom njenom što ko miris vene.
Il’ da je groblja, senki, vetra, zvuka
I igre mrtvih, avetinjâ kolo,
Da je bolova, sećanja, jauka –
Znamenja, da sam nekad i ja vol’o.
Al’ nije. Ja znam svi ti dani stari,
I želje, njena tuga i lepota,
I nežne veze osmeha i čari
Nemaju više za mene života.
Nemaju više života ni za nju
Sva njena ljubav i moja stradanja:
Dremež i suton i noću i danju.
Nama se spava. Nama se ne sanja.
Gube se redom, trunu pod životom
Aleje bola i podneblja plava,
I moja lira sa njenom lepotom,
Tugom i srećom... da je da se spava.
I samo katkad, al’ to retko biva,
Nju kada vidim posred ovih zala,
Prilazi meni neka magla siva.
Nagovest bleda dalekih obala.
Gledeći dugo taj magleni veo,
Kamo se dani moji razasuše,
Širi se pokrov velik, prostran, beo,
Pod kojim leže utopljene duše.
Q. Is there any Serbian Poetry originated in your country?
A. I would say that there is no poetry genre that is specific to our country, but, as is with any other nation, there are specific ways of expression, styles, rhythm, and music... employed in any poetry genre practiced in Serbia. Speaking of folk epics, specific to our nation is non-symmetric decasyllable.
Q. What is the present trend in Serbian Poetry today and the reasons for its popularity?
A. I can say that there is a conglomerate of every kind of poetry, beginning with epics up to the modern poetry.
(This question I am not able to fully answer as I am not so much "in" the matter because I am mostly interested in haiku poetry and its development)
Q. Who is your favourite Serbian living poet? What do you admire him for?
A. I prefer our "old" poets and my soul belongs to by-gone times...
Q. Did the Serbian Government ever sponsor in organizing World Poetry Festivals to promote Serbian Poetry?
A. Fortunately, yes. For example, there is a long tradition in organizing International Belgrade Meeting of Writers and International Festival of Poetry "Smederevo's Poetry Autumn”.
Q. Are there any poetic structural forms adopted in Serbian Literature from outside?
A. Yes. The most popular are sonnet and haiku. There is much I can tell about haiku. Its development in our country and many other issues pertaining to it are explained in a long interview I made for Simply Haiku in the summer of 2005. To make things simple and to avid repetition, I’d like to recommend it to your readers.
Q. Do you translate English poetry into Serbian language? If ‘yes’, could you please translate this particular poem, written by me, into Serbian language:
SONNET
By Mohammed Fakhruddin
Prime time of your prime age is passing by,
Longing for the one who’s not nearby;
As the burning candle weeps in silence,
Hope against hope strengthens your confidence.
But to trust someone and share virgin love,
Needs self-confidence and do all for love;
Submissive one must be when love is true;
Merge soul within soul for the sublime love.
Secret of life is to live for the day,
And enjoy sweet moments of ecstasy;
Trust not past or future, time changes all,
No one is true to self, Love tempts we fall;
Any can write; but who can write to move
Heart within heart? A valentine of love.
A. Yes, I do. Not only my own poems, but, as a usual practice, I translate works (poems, articles, stories, novels, etc) of other authors (both domestic and foreign) for their books, collections, anthologies, magazines. . . (As owner and editor of the bilingual Haiku Reality, I'd like to call haiku poets from all over the world to visit it and to share their works with others)
Here is my translation of the above poem:
SONET
Najlepši dani života minuše već
U čežnji za onim što doći ti neće;
Ko sveće plam samotan što cvili,
Nada se javi da veru ti čili.
Da veruješ nekom i ljubavi žarkoj,
Sebi verovat moraš i toj slici jarkoj;
Pokoran biti ljubavnoj žari;
S dušom stopiti dušu božanske čari.
Tajna života je u trenu bivati,
Ushićen sav se zanosu dati;
Ni juče ni sutra, vreme ovde strada,
Kad Ljubav se javi, tad čovek pada;
Pisati može svak; al ko da rečima plam srca
u srcu uspali? Praznik od ljubavi grca.
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