Between Pen and Paper: The Poetry of Habiba Muhammadi

by Shannon K. Winston

I write
To shout
To live
You write
To shout
To live
But who will silence
The shouting between us?

-Habiba Muhammadi, trans. Ibrahim Muhawi

Habiba Muhammadi was born in Algeria and attended the University of Algiers where she studied philosophy. She then moved to Egypt where she earned a degree in Arabic literature. Now a permanent resident in Cairo, she works as a journalist and contributes regularly to a variety of literary and cultural magazines (Handal, The Poetry of the Arab Word, 339).

As the poem that opens this article suggests, Muhammadi’s poetry reflects on her personal relationship to writing. She turns to writing as a space where she can be heard or, in her own words, where she can “live,” “write,” and “shout.” Simultaneously, she also broaches the larger question of collectivity: in the final lines of this poem, there is a pronoun shift from a singular “I” to an “us.” While the reader is not given any definitive answers as to who the “us” includes, what is clear is that there is strife that divides the “us” that should be united rather than divided. When taking the larger historical and political situation of Algeria into consideration, the “we” could refer to Algerians and the Algerian War of Independence and, at the same time, it could also include women who have struggled for so long to be recognized.

The page is the central image that pervades many of Habiba Muhammadi’s poems. Her speaker continually reminds the readers of the writing process as the poem unfolds on the page, which assumes several significances. For example, Muhammadi writes: “This paper is our friend/ It holds ever steadfast/Against the repeated stabbings/Of our pens.” Here, not only is paper a place of familiarity but also one that withstands violence—the violence against meaning, language, and the literal violence that a writer recounts over her lifetime, as well. In another poem, paper links the speaker to her past when she states: “In my room far away/ I write the memory of dead paper/In a barren space/Loneliness speaks words of love/to me..” (231). Far from encouraging the creative process, here, paper represents a dearth of words and possibilities for communication.

Overall, Muhammadi’s poetic style is pithy and clear. Many of her poems are treat very complicated themes within a few short lines of verse. In her preface to The Poetry of the Arab World, Nathalie Handal explains: “North African women throughout their history have been heroes and legends, martyrs and resistance fighters, nationalists, and writers, participating in all aspects of their civilization historically, politically, socially, and artistically” (Handal, The Poetry of Arab Women: A Contemporary Anthology, 30). Muhammadi grapples with the past (and all that it entails for her as an Algerian woman living in Egypt) within the confines of the page.

Mara Zalite (1952 - )

by Zinta Aistars

Words splash at my feet,
the voice of my blood talks, whispers and
fills the chambers.
Glittering river.
Here, I am.
~ from the poem, “Language,” by M. Zalite

What we are denied, we often learn to treasure most. Of those basics that a human being needs to live life well, surely language—the ability to communicate freely—is one of the building blocks upon which nearly all else in civilized life is built. Language is our means of self-expression but also our vehicle of connection with the rest of humanity.

Mara Zalite (zah-lee-teh) is a child of the Soviet Union, born in 1952, in Krasnoyarsk, Russia, but returning to Latvia with her family at age four to grow up in the then Soviet-occupied Baltic nation. Among the many losses of freedom in Latvia at that time was the loss of free speech. Indeed, even just the use of the Latvian language was discouraged, if not made into a punishable offense, substituting instead the language of “Mother Russia.” And still, Latvian literature flourished, as various art forms often do in suppressed areas. Art has always proven to be a survival mechanism, if not a tool for revolution. Language, the word that is more powerful than even the sword, carries great energy and life force, and no one understood this better than those standing at the Soviet helm. Zalite, having lived in a time when language was denied as well as in a time when language in all its varied facets flourishes again, has a strong appreciation for her native tongue that emerges repeatedly in her various literary art forms. It is the voice of her blood, she writes, it is her identity. It is, one senses, the carrier of her personal battle cry.

Zalite writes in varied genres and forms: poetry, prose (essays), drama, lyrics, even rock opera. In whatever genre, Latvian folklore has a consistent presence in her work, not only tying her to the roots of Latvian language, but also to Latvian history—the identity of her people. Toward the final years of Soviet occupation in her country, she was known to weave protest into her work in a cry for Latvian independence—which indeed came to fruition in 1991, as the Soviet Union fell at last. Her play, “Pilna Maras istabina,” or “Full Mara’s Room,” staged in 1983, was her groundbreaking work that won her the attention from critics, readers and viewers, that would push her literary career forward. This and many other Zalite’s works have central female figures, adding a second and parallel voice for women’s independence in an independent country. The play addresses the masculine energy which has brutalized the earth and its nations, and renews a cry for the return of the feminine energy, the ancient Mother (earth and nature), mother of all mothers, to take her place again.

Zalite has also published many books of poetry, collections of essays, song lyrics and scripts for musicals. Her work has been translated into German, Russian, English, Estonian, Swedish, and other languages, yet as one who has the privilege and pleasure of reading her work in its original Latvian, to my ear and sensibilities, her work sings best on its own instrument.

One of Zalite’s better known essays, appearing in “Unfinished Thoughts,” is titled “The Cross and the Sword.” In it, she brings up some of those themes and concepts that those who have been long oppressed hold perhaps in higher esteem than those who have long known only freedom. Not only a deeper appreciation of one’s own native language, but the soil that nourishes it—one’s own free land. Delving into ancient Latvian history, dating back to the 13th century, when Latvia was known as Livonia (an area that today also covers parts of Estonia), Zalite traces the appearance of various symbols and their ties to the masculine and feminine in what we think of today as Latvian folklore. In the feminine group falls the concept of homeland. The masculine centers on power and aggression, expanding borders and too often expressing itself in battle and rape and a violence of power over another, but she recalls, too, the nurturing of the mother figure, and what greater mother than one’s land, or homeland. Zalite’s appreciation for her own rediscovered culture is poignant, but as modern times of a shrinking globe urge, she also considers Mother Earth, and that we must show gratitude and care for the mother that has birthed us all. In this mix of escalating mothers, from one’s own corner of the earth, to the earth itself, Zalite urges an appreciation for the diverse cultures of every homeland, for a greater array of self-expression is a wealth to be preserved and cherished. To be a global citizen is not to forget or abandon one’s homeland, but to bring it, rich and full with its unique tapestry of people, to the global arena. More perspectives, more solutions; more diversity, more treasure, benefiting all.

Zalite’s unique voice, its mix of the ancient and the contemporary; the oppressed and the free; the feminine in balance with the masculine; brings the Latvian literary tradition to the global doorstep in a way that perhaps few others can who have not traveled her unique path in life.

A graduate of the University of Latvia, the country’s most prestigious institute of higher education, with a degree in philology, Zalite has worked on various editorial boards and in the Writers’ Union of Latvia. She has been the managing editor of one of the country’s most esteemed literary periodicals, “Karogs,” or “Banner.” She is the president of the Latvian Authors’ Association.

Aspazija (1868 – 1943)

by Zinta Aistars

Several Latvian women writers stand out as offering insight into the earliest seeds of feminism—Latvian style, if you will—or, simply, what it meant, and means, to be a woman with a voice. Few, if any, are better known than Aspazija.

It was only in the latter part of the 19th century that Latvian literature found its own riverbed, and as if a dam had opened, a literary culture was fast taking its developmental course, pouring forth with a rush of new literary voices. Prior to this time, although the Latvian language and culture are among the oldest in existence today, the tiny Baltic country was under the heel of one occupying power after another. During that span of centuries, Latvians were not allowed to pursue an education and were forced to live as peasants and serfs, often coming to identify themselves culturally with the current ruler. Nearing the end of the 19th century, that ruling power would have been the German influence, and it wasn’t until a revolution of national identity took place that Latvians finally began to take some pride in being who they were—Latvians.

Aspazija’s voice entered the flow of new Latvian literature during that time, still a girl in high school when she began to write with a more serious intent (her first efforts at poetry was a collection written at age 14 in the German language). Until then, she had been Elza Rozenberga, but now she took a pen name, adopted from the Hammerling novel, “Aspasia.” The character of Aspasia was a woman of strength and beauty, and young Aspazija set her as a role model, adopting her name as her own. Critical acclaim soon followed, along with an invitation to work in Latvian theater in the capital city of Riga. Aspazija’s talent was recognized in drama, journalism, and as a literary critic.

Her beauty, meanwhile, caught the eye of another, equally fast rising Latvian literary star: Rainis. Not without recognition for the young woman’s literary prowess. The two were married in 1897 (Aspazija’s second marriage, as her first lasted but a short while and seemed mostly fodder for plays she wrote about a woman’s right to live according to her personal sense of life, following her own heart), and Aspazija and Rainis (pen name for Janis Plieksans) became a literary force to be reckoned with on an individual basis as well as a team. Aspazija was widely seen, and not just by Rainis, as being his muse, and the young editor of a Riga newspaper gained fame as a poet and playwright as well as a political influence. In the minds of many Latvians, even today, it is difficult to separate the two. One inspired the other, one’s works were often translated into other languages by the other, and it seems reasonable to imagine, each was the other’s irreplaceable “second pair of editorial eyes.” It is doubtful either would have achieved the level of literary acclaim or even political influence they enjoyed in Latvian society without the support of the other.

Yet to enjoy a strong and mutually satisfying relationship does not detract from a feminist voice. The couple was exiled to Russia and later to Switzerland, but were allowed to return to Latvia when the country regained its independence following World War I. Back in her own land, Aspazija continued to write in a feminist voice, becoming active in the Latvian feminist movement. A strain of rebellion, even when sometimes good-natured and humorous, threaded through many of her works, and her plays, “Simple Rights” and “Unattained Goals,” protested a society ruled by men. Her poetry often tended toward more romantic themes.

Aspazija was a member of the Parliament of Latvia from 1920 to 1934 as a representative of the Latvian Social Democratic Workers’ Party. Her contribution in Latvia’s government was her continued strong voice for women’s rights.

A book was later published of collected correspondence between Aspazija and Rainis, titled “Life and Art: A Correspondence,” and in it Aspazija wrote:

“With my deep love for my entire nation, I offer the entirety of two people’s lives, regardless of any protests, or threats, into the hands of our nation, so that it may, as a loving mother her children, who have suffered greatly, sometimes losing their way, punish or caress us—such will be our spiritual legacy.”

Astride Ivaska (1926-)

by Zinta Aistars

As with most of us, and, I suspect, in most any language, my first introduction to Latvian poetry was metered and rhymed, tightly reined in, an orderly clomping and marching of verses that moved like soldiers across the page. In Latvian school, which we children of the émigré community attended on Saturdays while our enviable American peers watched cartoons on television, or played ball in the park, or simply slept in, we instead learned to recite classic Latvian poetry. Our teachers drilled the metered lines into our brains, ta-TUM-ta-tum, ta-TUM-ta-da-dum, and we would memorize sometimes pages of these lyrical poems. It was a practice not only in learning literary form, but in rote memorization, and not the least in self-discipline. Many of the poems were testament to the war experience, with lines about the blood spilled in war, the love of one’s country, and the sacrifice made for freedom which we had nonetheless lost.

In those dusky rooms of the school on Saturday mornings, none of us felt particularly free. Super heroes in animated form with capes sweeping the breeze behind them on a television screen seemed much more enticing. But we memorized, and we discussed, and we recited. Poem after poem after poem.

Years later, I had a delayed appreciation for that kind of literary discipline. It was, after all, a world of super heroes. Only the heroes in those poems that spoke of the experience of loving one’s home and losing it, or dying for it, did not bounce back up from the ground for the next cartoon installment. Theirs was the mortal blood that nourished the soil to grow new seed and new life for future generations.

Some of that life took hold outside of Soviet-occupied Latvia. While we children of refugees were learning the old classics, a new generation of poetry was taking shape. It, too, spoke of the love of country, of freedom, and the hunger to survive. Such was the poetry of Astride Hartmane Ivaska, born in the capital city of Riga in 1926, a young woman when the Soviet army marched across the Latvian border. She was of the same generation as my parents and her experience was similar. When I had reached the age that she had been during World War II, I discovered Ivaska’s poetry, and it was nothing like what I had learned in school … and yet it was.

I received a book of Ivaska’s poetry as a gift, and I paged through it with growing wonderment. This was no army of words. There was no orderly marching here. These words danced and swam across the page, they whispered, they sang, they hummed, they wept. A line might stand alone, like a lost muse, only to recover itself in a droplet of syllables further down the page. Sometimes they rhymed, but mostly these words echoed and played off each other. And while this poet, too, wrote of heroes, and blood that was shed, and the ache of losing one’s childhood home to wonder if one would ever be allowed to see it again… it was in a manner that spoke more directly to my own heart. This was the poetry of exile. It contained the longing of a life thrown upon an unknown shore, even as it spoke of new love found, and renewed joy in living.

No pelniem
un no izdedziem
lidz dziesmai
esam celusies.
Un tomer dziedot
pelnu garsa
mute neizzud
ne mums, ne tiem,

kas saklausa mus taluma.

*
From the ashes
and from the burnt debris
to song
we have risen.
The taste of ashes
does not leave the mouth
not for us, nor for them

who listen to us from a distance.

(From “Memais laiks,” Gaisma Ievainoja by Astride Ivaska, Daugava, 1982)

I was struck, as one is, who falls in love at first read. In reading whatever I could find about Ivaska, I learned that she had lost her father during the war. He had been a general in the Latvian army during WWII, and no more had been heard from or about him after he had been captured by the Soviets. (In later years, I learned Ivaska had learned of her father’s fate only after the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991 and Latvia regained her freedom. He had been taken to Moscow in 1941, where he was executed.)

Ivaska wrote often about her father, and her connection with him, what she referred to as her “only mirror” in an essay of her memories, now a broken mirror. He had a kind of mythic form to her, as most fathers do to their daughters. She recalls his quiet strength, and he seems to take on the stance of all lost Latvian soldiers: a man who fights perhaps a hopeless battle, yet with utmost courage and devotion to the cause of what is right. He is a soldier in an army that is the David against the Goliath of the Red Army. Only this battle is not to be won.

As most Latvian refugees, Ivaska (then Hartmane) escaped to camps for “displaced persons” in Germany, where they awaited visas to whatever free land would take them. As did most of her peers, she continued her disrupted education in Germany, while she waited, studying languages. In 1949, she married Estonian poet, Ivar Ivask, and later that year immigrated to the United States, first to Minnesota, then taking up residence in Norman, Oklahoma in 1967, where she taught Russian, German and French at the University of Oklahoma. Ivaska remained there until the death of her husband, then answered an old call to cross the ocean once again to live in Europe—for a time in Ireland, then returning again to the place of her birth, Riga, Latvia, where she lives today.

And wherever this poet went, I followed her steps through her poetry and her poetic prose. That first book I had read of her work, Solis Silos (“A Step in the Woods,” 1973), was a step that had led me to try my own hand at Latvian poetry. Shortly after, I had the privilege of meeting Ivaska at a workshop for writing Latvian poetry, and when, by end of seminar, I shyly handed her some of my work, she astounded me by taking me, then the ripe age of 17, seriously. The workshop was over, but Ivaska took my manuscript home with her to Oklahoma, sending it back to me a few weeks later with careful and honest notes in the margins. Discard this, rework that, and the golden glimmer on a page here and there of praise. The note with the manuscript encouraged me to submit my manuscript to a Latvian publisher called Celinieks in Ann Arbor, Michigan—with her recommendation. My first book of Latvian poetry, Mala Kausa (“In an Earthen Mug”) was accepted for publication when I was 19 years old. My lifelong love affair with poetry, in any language, took root in those days, and I have Ivaska to thank.

Anna Brigadere (1861-1933)

Biancamaria Frabotta: Pushing Boundaries

by Shannon K. Winston

Biancamaria Frabotta is one of the most politically engaged poets in Italy today. She has been at the forefront of the woman’s movement in Italy and, as previously mentioned, she has written extensively about the polemics surrounding the category of an exclusively “women’s literature.” In the 1980s, she was the editor of a feminist review entitled “Orsa minore” and in the early 1990s she also edited a review called “Poesia.” In addition to her numerous poetry collections, she has also written a book and several plays. Frabotta teaches contemporary Italian literature at the University “La Sapienza.”

Frabotta’s creative and academic work reflects her commitment to gender studies and women’s rights. In “Frabotta’s Elegies: Theory and Practice,” Keala Jewell highlights the fact that questions of sexuality lie at the core of Frabotta’s work: “In Frabotta’s own verse we find a fascination with ambiguous creatures and doublings. A number of poems evoke the theme of twins (Frabotta’s astrological sign) or an “ambidextrous” self torn between two identities” (Jewell, “Frabotta’s Elegies: Theory and Practice,” 179). Jewell cities octopi and jellyfish as animals that inspire Frabotta precisely because they are not animals that typically inspire poetry. These animals serve as “new “others” against which the lyric self comes to the fore in a series of analogies and differentiations” (Ibid).

Much of Frabotta’s poetry grapples with many of the same themes that psychoanalysis attempts to understand, namely the complexity of the subject and his/her position of in the world. Themes of doubling, otherness, and difference are central to Frabotta’s writing. However, to reiterate Jewell’s point, Frabotta does so from unusual and new perspectives. For example, in the poem “The White Rumor,” the speaker begins: “The apple teaches me that it doubles it itself. / Life teaches me that it is apple seeds/ the half of a growing circumstance/ the mirror that doubles the head of a good hope” (1-4). Here, Frabotta finds quotidian objects—the conventional image of the mirror and the less commonly invoked apple—to explore issues of doubling and identity, which she uncovers in all facets of life. Frabotta’s poetry is demanding and, often times, hard to penetrate. The reader must be patient and use his/her analytical skills to uncover the meaning(s).

Frabotta’s poetry not only challenges conceptions of gender with her choice of subject matter, but also in the generic forms that she uses. In fact, Jewell’s principal argument in her article is that Frabotta uses the elegy—a traditionally male form—and reclaims it with her own feminist perspectives. Frabotta is, therefore, a writer who continually pushes the boundaries in her work in order to arrive at a greater sense of equality and to gain a deeper understanding of herself and others.

Writing on the Line: The Poetry and Life of Alda Merini

by Shannon K. Winston

Alda Merini, born in Milan in 1931, published her first poetry collection, La presenza di Orfeo, when she was only twenty-two. By and large, her poetry is characterized by a deep ambiguity. While her early poems are filled with hope and love, her later collections, especially Tu sei Pietro (1962), exhibit a more angst-ridden and troubled Merini. After suffering from mental breakdowns, she intermittently spent time in asylums, especially after the death of her husband in 1986 (O’Brien, 174, 177, 181). Merini’s struggle with her mental illness, her desire for a “normal” life, and her longing to be loved all come to shape her poetry (O’Brien, 177).

One theme that resurfaces in Merini’s writing over and over is the precariousness of life. Overall, Merini’s writing is modest and the “I” is diminished and private. In her poem “Confessione,” published in 1948, for example, she opens: “You always ask me,/ but I don’t live a continuous life;/ I will nourish you with only small instances”) (all translations mine) (Merini, “Confessione,” 1-3). These “instances” are the central theme of the poem, which is only twelve lines long and could be considered only an “an instance” itself. Love and life, the speaker reminds readers, are transient in the face of death. In addition, this poem, published only several years before she began to suffer from mental illness, could also testify to the fact that sanity and “normal life,” for Merini, is also fleeting. The speaker continues: “I am the apparition that disperses/and the time that exists between two moments/ is a truce in death’s favor” (Ibid, 4-5). Within these lines, she wavers in a liminal space between life and death. Yet, her sense of helplessness is interrupted, if only for a second, by a moment of tenderness and love. The speaker continues: “I live in the space of an exchange: you age me without realizing it/ under the heat of your caresses.”

Catherine O’Brien writes of Merini’s work: “[Her] poetry reflects her intention of highlighting her inner self but his effort causes her bitter disillusionment and grief as she waits for someone capable of understanding her” (O’Brien, 180-181). What renders Merini’s work so compelling is that despite her struggle with a mental illness and her proclivity to write about death, she still finds glimmers of hope, which is apparent in several of her poems. When speaking to Catherine O’Brien, she complained: “They ask me often what the asylum is like, but no one asks me about what it’s like to be alive. Life is part of the asylum because it’s in this unholy and abject place that I found life” (Ibid, 185). She, thus, uses poetry and the page as a creative place in which to negotiate and embrace the intense joys, loves, and anguish that define her life.

Antonella Anedda: Encounters with Silence, the Page, and the World

by Shannon K. Winston

Antonella Anedda, one of today’s most prominent and promising Italian women poets, once called poetry her “reality.” In that same interview with Niederngasse in 2006, she explains that poetry is “the way [she has of] opening [herself] to the world, with verses, with rhythms that [she has] in [her] head and it is on this score that [she works] when [she writes] on the page” (translation mine). For Anedda, poetry is therefore an implicitly musical genre that unfolds on a register that differs from prose; it allows for a greater space of silence, contemplation of human existence, and death. The speaker of “Nocturnes,” for example, urges the reader to “Accept this silence: the world caught in the dark of/ the throat like a stiffened animal, like/ the stuffed boar that sparkled in the cellar during/ October storms” (Poetry International Web). Night, just like writing itself, becomes place not only reflection but also of a critical examination of the self and its position in an increasingly volatile world. In fact, many of Anneda’s work is grounded in ethical concerns about war and injustice, which are the central themes of Notti di pace occidentale. Rather than assuming a safe and privileged position within work, Anedda and her speaker are deeply entangled in the struggles that she grapples with. She ties contemporary and literal wars with her battle with language in the poetic process. In “This language has no innocence,” her speaker begins: “This language has no innocence/ listen to how speeches break up/ as if also here there were a war” (www.lyrikline.org). How, she seems to ask, can the poet and reader remain innocent in a world where there is injustice? Here, like elsewhere in her poetry, Anneda complicates issues of agency, guilt, and hope for a more peaceful future. Here, however, her hope is intermingled with doubt that she, as a poet, can effect change: “I write with patience/ to the eternity I don’t believe in./ Slowness comes to me from silence” (16-1Cool (Ibid)). Silence, then, becomes a predominant theme in Anedda’s work as the place where change becomes possible.

Another distinguishing feature of Anedda’s poetry is the diminished “I” of the speaker. Rather, the “I” becomes a distanced observer that attempts—but sometimes fails—to grasp the present moment/moments in the poem. “I don’t like invasiveness,” she says and then goes on to say: “I don’t like texts in which the narrative “I” is too present, in which [the “I”] confesses itself” (Niederngasse). This distancing mode is prevalent in Anedda’s entire corpus and reflects her greater poetic vision “to write in order to disappear, so that life is revealed to [her], without [her], [her] face at last more blurred than the whiteness of the paper, bereft of reflection. A world where one can forget oneself. Not a mirror, but a stone” (Poetry International Web).” For Anedda then, poetry and truth—as it leads to a greater understanding of the world—emerges out of a desire to capture more than individual experience; it reaches beyond the self and the page to grapple with both contemporary and timeless struggles that continue to shape our existence. In undertaking this task, Anneda writes with a grace and humility that cannot help but to enthrall readers.

For more information on the life and works of Antonella Anedda, please visit Poetry International Web.