introduction
by Mike Baynham
Welcome to the first edition of Other Tongue, Mother Tongue, the bilingual/multilingual poetry supplement of the other side of hope. We have collected 20 poems, in their original language and translation. The translations are often provided by the poets themselves. The languages of the poems include Yoruba, Ukrainian, Swedish, Spanish, Portuguese, Persian, Kiikamba, Jamaican Patois, Italian, Bangla, Russian, Igbo, Greek, French, Belarusian and Arabic. One of the poets, Elvina Valieva, blends a Russian poem with phrases in Tatar, her lost heritage language, mourning its loss. Yana Sanko similarly slips a salty and untranslatable Belarusian expression into her exploration of prison, oppression and planning for exile. Two of the poets, Basir Ahang and Tiago Dias, write not in their mother ‘tongues’ but in languages of adoption, Basir in Italian, Tiago in Swedish. Each poem is presented along with its translation. Priscilla Okoye, in collaboration with her mother, provides a riff on the notion of ‘mother tongue’ itself. Our devoted team of translation advisors provided reviews of the submissions and advice at many points along the way. The work of translation was an exhilarating engagement with poets who were self-translators and translators, with myself as editor. We all learnt a lot and would like to acknowledge also the support of the editor of the other side of hope, Alexandros Plasatis, and Grace Cowie who provided valuable editorial assistance.
The themes of the poems span many aspects of the migration journey. Some explore the uncertainties of the road, of being on the move and in-between. Basir Ahang invokes the long trajectories of border crossing and at last making his story heard. Bakr Al Jabr’s suitcase on its wheels trails behind him on his journeying like a pet dog. Alberto Quero provides a tally of the symptoms of exile. For others, the disorienting experience is of being not at home in your own country, of being somehow an outsider. The bereaved father in Musembi Ndaita’s poem is somehow exiled from the familiarity of his home village through losing his life partner. The voice in second generation Maria Iotova’s poem fails to find acceptance as a ‘proper’ Greek, having the wrong skin colour. Elena Georgiou’s country has been torn apart by war. Others again explore the sense of settlement and at homeness, either through place or relationships, Giada Nizzoli finds it in her chosen London suburb of Twickenham, in Julia Niro’s poem there is in a tender and grounding moment with a lover. Juliana Castañeda explores the stories she tells herself to feel safe in an unsettling world. Lily Ingabire’s Internal Exile asks how to handle overflowing feelings of dispossessed love, which reaches out, echoing Reza’s concluding poem, beyond individual and network to encompass humankind. Others focus on the emotions of leaving and settling, most obviously nostalgia and longing. Bhaswati Ghosh’s evocative poem remembers home and a grandmother’s life, ending with the plaintive question of grandparents, ‘Why don’t you come?’
A theme, which runs through all the poems, is that of network, connection and relationship. In Camele-Ann White’s poem a family of daughters is brought alive in the spoken language tones reminiscent of the Jamaican monologue tradition. A number of poems focus on grandparents, while Tiago Dias addresses his small daughter, in his language of adoption, Swedish. Simone Toji ingeniously reworks the theme of Cavafy’s Waiting for the Barbarians with a barbarian daughter addressing her city-dwelling father. Two of the poems and translations are, indeed, the work of mother and daughter creative teams: Liudmila Voloshchuk and her daughter Ganna Andriushchenko, Priscilla Okoye and her mother Nkoli Uzochukwu. The experience of displacement throws up new possibilities.
The collection starts and finishes with two poems which move beyond the immediate network of relationship. In the first poem, by Abíọ́dún Abdul, the poet, settling in Leeds in the confusion and unsettlement of arrival, reflects on the story of David Oluwale, wondering like so many about the dark, chaotic side of the society she has landed up in, while at the end detecting hopeful pathways home. The final poem, by Reza Khalilzadeh, imagines the world, where the stranger is welcomed, going beyond the focus on immediate network and connection and is a moving call to make compassion the guiding principle in relationships between people, not just the people we know and are already connected with, but specifically those we don’t know, the strangers.
Mike Baynham
Editor, Other Tongue, Mother Tongue
The themes of the poems span many aspects of the migration journey. Some explore the uncertainties of the road, of being on the move and in-between. Basir Ahang invokes the long trajectories of border crossing and at last making his story heard. Bakr Al Jabr’s suitcase on its wheels trails behind him on his journeying like a pet dog. Alberto Quero provides a tally of the symptoms of exile. For others, the disorienting experience is of being not at home in your own country, of being somehow an outsider. The bereaved father in Musembi Ndaita’s poem is somehow exiled from the familiarity of his home village through losing his life partner. The voice in second generation Maria Iotova’s poem fails to find acceptance as a ‘proper’ Greek, having the wrong skin colour. Elena Georgiou’s country has been torn apart by war. Others again explore the sense of settlement and at homeness, either through place or relationships, Giada Nizzoli finds it in her chosen London suburb of Twickenham, in Julia Niro’s poem there is in a tender and grounding moment with a lover. Juliana Castañeda explores the stories she tells herself to feel safe in an unsettling world. Lily Ingabire’s Internal Exile asks how to handle overflowing feelings of dispossessed love, which reaches out, echoing Reza’s concluding poem, beyond individual and network to encompass humankind. Others focus on the emotions of leaving and settling, most obviously nostalgia and longing. Bhaswati Ghosh’s evocative poem remembers home and a grandmother’s life, ending with the plaintive question of grandparents, ‘Why don’t you come?’
A theme, which runs through all the poems, is that of network, connection and relationship. In Camele-Ann White’s poem a family of daughters is brought alive in the spoken language tones reminiscent of the Jamaican monologue tradition. A number of poems focus on grandparents, while Tiago Dias addresses his small daughter, in his language of adoption, Swedish. Simone Toji ingeniously reworks the theme of Cavafy’s Waiting for the Barbarians with a barbarian daughter addressing her city-dwelling father. Two of the poems and translations are, indeed, the work of mother and daughter creative teams: Liudmila Voloshchuk and her daughter Ganna Andriushchenko, Priscilla Okoye and her mother Nkoli Uzochukwu. The experience of displacement throws up new possibilities.
The collection starts and finishes with two poems which move beyond the immediate network of relationship. In the first poem, by Abíọ́dún Abdul, the poet, settling in Leeds in the confusion and unsettlement of arrival, reflects on the story of David Oluwale, wondering like so many about the dark, chaotic side of the society she has landed up in, while at the end detecting hopeful pathways home. The final poem, by Reza Khalilzadeh, imagines the world, where the stranger is welcomed, going beyond the focus on immediate network and connection and is a moving call to make compassion the guiding principle in relationships between people, not just the people we know and are already connected with, but specifically those we don’t know, the strangers.
Mike Baynham
Editor, Other Tongue, Mother Tongue
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