Poetry that cleaves
This is poetry that seems to me to cleave — in both contradictory senses of the word. It clings to tradition, using rhyme, repetition and reference to religious texts; while splitting off to create new and unexpected juxtapositions. For example, from ‘The Sole and the Salmon’:
On Judgement Day, the six-winged Seraphim exclaimed:
‘Brexit! Brexit!’
and the Cherubim banged on their drums: ‘Trump! Trump!’
and then, later in the poem:
Fortify your heart for the present twists the past.
The pamphlet contains nine poems and three pages of notes plus a note of explanation running to over 14 lines under ‘Acknowledgements’. This note states: ‘If there is one fact that holds equally true for the few poems that appear in this pamphlet, it is that they are all my semi-self-translated exodus poems. With one exception, all the pieces have already been published either in Persian or in English’.
What I found interesting is that — in an apparent attempt to add clarity — that note includes certain phrases (‘semi-self-translated’ and ‘with the exception of one’) which, for me, simply beg further questions.
That fragmentation is part of the project is obvious from the ‘Contents’ page on. For instance, although only two pastorals are included in the pamphlet, the note to ‘Pastoral 1’ tells us that they come from a sequence of eleven poems and that, ‘When read in sequence, the pastorals present themselves as a quasi-biblical conduit through which the youthful responses of the speakers to their out-of-placeness are articulated.’ Perhaps the repetition of phrases and use of rhyme are designed to balance some of this inevitable uncertainty?
The blurb says that, ‘several poems have appeared at exhibitions of image and text in Liverpool, Munich and Abu Dhabi’, and in the notes Davar states that ‘From Sea to Dawn’ was, ‘written in response to two ‘moving paintings’ by Rokni and Ramin Haerizadeh and Hessam Rahmanian, consisting of short bricolages of footage of the refugee crisis’.
I’m reminded of my first encounter with The Waste Land: the weight of supporting material both counters and extends my uncertainties. I’m left cleaving to and from a poetry of fragmentation, transition and displacement.