Chandelier abstract, Helsinki hotel, photograph Copyright Kyi May Kaung
http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/christina-patterson/christina-patterson-where-poetry-still-has-power-892823.htmlFaiz Ahmed Faiz was one such poet:
Here from The True Subject: Selected Poems by Faiz Ahmed Faiz, translated from the Urdu by Naomi Lazard --
If you look at the city from here
you see it laid out in concentric circles
each circle surrounded by a wall
exactly like a prison
Each street is a dog-run for prisoners
No milestones, no destinations, no way out.
If anyone moves too quickly you wonder
why he hasn't been stopped by a shout.
If someone raises his arm
you expect to hear the jangling of chains.
*
In c.1995 I met Yevtushenko when he was in Philadelphia on the University of Pennsylvania campus. He was reading from his big bilingual book of Russian poetry that Jackie Kennedy Onassis helped arrange when she worked as an editor.
The first thing he asked me when he learned I was from Burma, was "How is Aung San Suu Kyi and your beautiful country?"
The same day the vendor selling hot dogs by the roadside also asked me about Daw Suu.
So did a taxi driver recently in March when I came home from the airport.
Very amazing, the power of truth and the power of words and poetry.
I will try and bring you little vignettes from my meetings with (some) famous poets. --
Kyi May Kaung
