Poems from Poetry London, etc. In Poetry’s power to speak the unspeakable: the Kurdish story she writes "I believe that poetry is the perfect medium to tell difficult and marginalised stories. It is perfect not only because it can challenge the dominant narratives and accepted realities, but also because it rescues us from apathy, reconnects us to our feelings, and helps us to continue resisting! It brings our rational side together with our emotions and makes us whole once again, ready to resist and defy". I think that poetry lost that aura long ago.
The first poem is far from inspiring. Later poems often repeat phrases - nothing wrong with that in itself, but it's an easy, ever available option with diminishing returns. Several pieces (e.g. "Life for us", "Living in Saqiz") are lists of details which I'd prefer to see as prose - the facts can speak for themselves. Nothing's very dense so it's not surprising that her short pieces fail. Punchlines like "I remember a country forgotten/ by everyone else" don't pack a punch for me.
"The Penelopes of my homeland" has its moments though they're diluted by the repeated phrases. The title's repeated twice in the poem. The Penelopes "wove their own and their children's shrouds". "Years and years" appears 4 times. "holding on to" and "without ever knowing that they" each appear twice. The Penelopes lived "without realising, without ever thinking that their dream was dead the day it was dreamt" yet in the final stanza they "died slowly/ carrying their dreams into their graves."
"Two pages" imagines a page writing a poem. I like the idea and the execution. But the next poem, "Three moments", is a disappointment overall. Part II has the best ending - "and the same question comes to my mind./ Why does the sunrise resemble the sunset?/ And again, you're not able to tell me"
"Our war" ends with "I can't remember what others took/ but I remember your stealing my eyes/ and hiding them in a tin full of darkness.// Because everyone was others I forgot/ but because you were me I could not", showing how external conflict might become internalised.
"Summer roof" ends unsurprisingly with "We never spoke,/ we remained on our separate roofs." Like too many of the poems in this book, I feel I understand it, that I've not missed anything, and that it's not enough. I like "Extracts from an autobiography" though.
The book ends with a few whimpers. "My children" contains a worthy idea (one I've seen before), but it's insufficient as a poem. It certainly doesn't "speak the unspeakable".
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