Sunday 11 October 2009

Welcome from Jonathan at DMU

Dear All,

I just want to echo Simon Perril's words below, and welcome everyone to this blog from both sides of the Atlantic. This is a great virtual space to publish and share work from and about places distant in geographical space (and even time).

Places are geographical spaces, but they're also memories, histories, moments, relationships, representations, texts - and this is what makes them so powerful as starting-points for poetry, fiction, memoir, scripts.

So I look forward to reading your work, and wish you all the best for the new academic year.

Jonathan Taylor (lecturer, DMU).

P.S. to help 'set the ball rolling' for the year, here is something I wrote on my Summer holiday in Cyprus this year:


CYPRIOT DIRECTIONS

... no, you go slow-slow long the road –
the big one that is going to Limassol –
and is few miles,
and then is turn left from roundabout
which does not have Church
of St. Nektarios on it,
and ....

... no, I not knowing number of exeet,
but it certainly no have church
or saint on it,
and you going left,
and some other turns also –
left-right and such –
and when you get to hospeetal,
ring up on thees number,
and ....

... no, I not knowing hospeetal name,
but ees not big one where
cousin Thekla having ankle broken –
it is near there,
but if you see the Orphanides,
or Father Stavro playing the backgammon,
you know you going too far,
and ....

... no, I not knowing street name,
but is right or left where
Uncle Vassou smoked last Cubans
he save from old farm,
when you were five
and when he still have old donkey
from village, and ....

... no, not his wife, donkey,
you remember?
It called Robinou,
and lived its last years looking sad,
tied in Limassol car park,
where people being kind
and feeding it the artichokes,
but Sotiroulla ate one of them,
and she had ache of stomach for two days,
and it was from that other Stavro –
not the backgammon one –
and he was trying to poison Robinou
to get the parking space,
and we so cross
we almost wish he one of the Lost,
and ...
and ...


... and no, endaxi,
I not very kala at maps –
seence I made to come south,
I forgetting the way everywhere –
seence I leave Athankou,
seence that 1974,
I no finding my way anywhere,
I no finding my way back.

No comments: