Valzhyna Mort: How Can This Exist on Earth?

Valzhyna Mort from Laura Hope-Gill on Vimeo.

In this month’s issue of Poetry Magazine, I stumbled across a name I couldn’t even attempt to pronounce. While this may not seem like a notable occasion, in a magazine known as “the oldest monthly devoted to verse in the English-speaking world,” running across a name so unabashedly un-Anglicized is reason to take note. Besides an annual translation issue, the magazine doesn’t deal much outside of the English language. When it does, it indicates that the artist in question is someone who has truly transcended country borders in order to garner international attention.

The poet--Valzhyna Mort--was born and raised in Belarus but is currently living in D.C., according to her Poetry Foundation biography. Her biography also confirmed my suspicions of Mort being an international sensation, though it at the same time suggested her unwavering nationalism. Though Mort has released acclaimed works in many individual countries, she continues to compose all of her poems in her native Belarusian in an attempt to revive and preserve the language.

A little bit more digging revealed that Mort is truly an electrifying poet, in almost every way that the word can be used. Her infamous readings are rivaled only by her equally enthralling subject matter. Though Mort, unlike Anjuman, doesn’t seem too worried about preserving the beauty of her language, what her work in translation does betray is a palpable effort to maintain a certain rawness, a plain-style sincerity that ensures her troubling and often disturbing imagery is maintained:

“even our mothers have no idea how we were born
how we parted their legs and crawled out into the world
the way you crawl from the ruins after a bombing
we couldn’t tell which of us was a girl or a boy
we gorged on dirt thinking it was bread
and our future
a gymnast on a thin thread of the horizon
was performing there
at the highest pitch
bitch”

--From Belarusian

In just a few words, Mort communicates the poverty, helplessness, and abject hopelessness that pervaded her generation and her country. Her intricate and bizarre imagery reinforces the other-worldliness of their situation, asking always: how is it possible that these conditions could exist on earth? With all her travel and success and ascension into high-brow literary circles, it is remarkable that she has not stopped asking this question. It makes our inability--or perhaps refusal--to answer that much more palpable.

Watch Mort read part of Belarusian in the video above.

[Valzhyna Mort at the Poetry Foundation]

[Valzhyna Mort]

Not Lost in Translation: The Honesty of Afghanistan's Nadia Anjuman

Perhaps a product of the human rights spotlight that was placed on the Middle East post 9/11, there are undoubtedly a slew of adjectives that come to mind when one hears the identifier “Afghan woman.” I’m willing to bet that “poet” is not one of them.

Yet poetry--preserved and passed on mainly through an equally rich oral tradition--has a deep and rich history in Afghanistan, particularly among women. The tradition was spearheaded by the ancient Queen Gowhar Shad, a woman who is largely credited with prompting the country’s fifteenth century cultural renaissance.

During the rule of the Taliban, the title of “poet” was one that women were forced to bear secretly, and even this was a very brave move. In the early 2000’s, a young woman by the name of Nadia Anjuman risked public execution in order to continue her writing. She was widely regarded as the foremost up and coming poet in the country and one look at her work explains why. Though a poet’s mastery of his or her native language is often lost in translation, Anjuman’s poems retain a beauty that is
striking in its ease:

The sound of green footsteps is the rain.
They’re coming in from the road, now,
Thirsty souls and dusty skirts brought from the desert,
Their breath burning, mirage-mingled,
Mouths dry and caked with dust.
They’re coming in from the road, now,
Tormented, girls brought up on pain,
Joy departed from their faces,
Hearts old and lined with cracks.
- From “Voiceless Cries,” July/August 2002

Yet even more striking than her language is her subject matter. Anjuman wrote with a level of honesty and directness that was unheard of among her ancient predecessors--with a level of youthful fearlessness that is breathtaking, and perhaps could only come from a generation that had experienced globalization and rapid technological progress. With what can only be imagined as an extremely slight taste of freedom, Anjuman’s voice emerged as a strong indictment of her society’s oppression. With all of this in mind, her strength of conviction is truly awe-inspiring. Her first collection, “Dark Flower,” was reprinted three times and sold over 3,000 copies.

Many would argue that this conviction is what led to her death. In 2005, Anjuman died of injuries sustained to the head after a late-night fight with her husband.

Though there are many things to admire about Nadia’s work, what I find most compelling and promising is its bravery and its honesty. She was not afraid to speak about the injustices that the women of her country faced. Even more compelling than this was the pure and unedited emotional response these injustices provoked in her. This is where I think the potential of Nadia’s work to create change ultimately lies.

There are many, many things that become lost during times of war; it was only during a relative time of peace that Nadia felt safe enough to release her work into the outside world. I wonder: how many other voices, as clear and beautiful and promising as this one, are being stifled every day?

To learn more about Nadia and the poetry tradition in Afghanistan, pick up a copy of Land of the Unconquerable: The Lives of Contemporary Afghan Women and see the essay by Zuzanna Olszewska entitled “A Hidden Discourse.” Or better yet, attend IMOW’s event on July 27th that is centered around this collection of essays and which will feature editor Ashraf Zahedi and contributor Amina Kator. More information about that event can be found here.

Land of the Unconquerable: The Lives of Contemporary Afghan Women Ed. Ashraf Zahedi and Jennifer Heath [UC Press]
The Defiant Poet's Society [The Sunday Times Online]