The poetics of displacement(somali oral verse in exile).

[burahadeer]

http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=young%20notable%20somalis&source=web&cd=14&cad=rja&ved=0CDEQFjADOAo&url=http%3A%2F%2Fislamicamagazine.com%2F%3Fp%3D492&ei=7KxOUKDYNeTu0gGv5ID4Cg&usg=AFQjCNFu0AxzYm6mNZJHRBxB-VpyxCXhXQ

[burahadeer]

By Rahma Bavelaar

Now you depart, and though your way may lead

 

Through airless forests thick with hagar trees,

 

Places steeped in heat, stifling and dry,

 

Where breath comes hard, and no fresh breeze can reach

 

Yet may God place a shield of coolest air

 

Between your body and the assailant sun.

 

And in a random scorching flame of wind

 

That parches the painful throat, and sears the flesh,

 

May God, in His compassion, let you find

 

The great-boughed tree that will protect and shade1

[burahadeer]

This poem is a gun

 

This poem’s an assassin

 

Images mob my mind . . .

 

This pen s a spear, a knife

 

A branding-iron, an arrow

 

Tipped with righteous anger

 

It writes with blood and bile 2

[burahadeer]

Indeed Canadians welcome refugees

 

And do not let them starve

 

Yet one is always unsatisfied and broke

 

For the little we get

 

Hardly suffices our food and shelter.

 

They are strange people coming from everywhere

 

Never notice you or even greet you

 

Each one keeps to himself

 

Always hastily locking his door.

 

I feel isolated and sick with loneliness

 

Deprived from my beautiful Africa

 

And the land of my inspirations and songs.

 

I must be contended with the fate

 

That my God has reserved for me.

[burahadeer]

prominently in the new wave of Somali verbal expression.

 

THE LANGUAGE OF EXILE

 

Hirsi

 

the oppressed deceived

 

screened off enclosed

 

disowned killed buried

 

slaughtered for those

 

astray saddled for greed

 

hobbled from behind

 

perpetually dangling

 

stick thin destitute

 

without compassion

 

empty of the grace of God

 

i pass you this message

 

to ring pour forth harmony

 

setting to rights

 

to spread loyal honesty

 

be it perhaps God willing

 

at dawn recite it

 

press it into thoses stubborn ones

 

from mindlessness 4

 

alliterating in “d”

 

forging the path

 

easing the poem’s affirmation

 

I summon y ou ring it

 

a balm accepted

 

if truth only heals

 

that they descend

[burahadeer]

One Somali lady whose poetry I recorded in London told me about the difficult years she spent alone in Saudi Arabia, where she worked as a janitor after she had lost her husband and only son in the civil war. Like many Somali elders, who are often illiterate, she stayed in touch with relatives abroad by sending them voice-messages on audio tapes. As she belongs to a lineage of great poets and is a capable composer herself, her messages often contain poems. In one instance she composed a poem for her brother in Somalia to complain about his sons who did not show consideration for the difficulties she was facing in Saudi Arabia and kept asking her to send money. She cunningly pointed out that the children of her husband by his second wife did support her, even though they are not socially expected to do so, unlike her nephews who are blood-relations. As the poem above, she addressed her complaint to an imaginary friend called Haali:

 

Oh Haali I clean people’s toilets!

 

The ones who should take care of me are all working

 

“She doesn’t send us any money “they all grumble

 

May Allah support Ali who didn’t do me wrong

 

I am receiving help from the men born to my co-wife

 

While my nephews are not doing a thing 6

 

After receiving the message, the poet’s brother apologized to her and reproached his sons. Message sent, message received!

 

In spite of the continuing popularity of the classical genres of poetry among first-generation Somali migrants, there is now a growing group of young Somalis who were brought up in the Diaspora and feel little connection to the rustic language and countryside imagery of the gabay and buraanbur, let alone being able to compose in it. Some of them are now exploring new ways of creatively expressing their cosmopolitan identity and, perhaps unsurprisingly, often choose to do so verbally.

 

Rap, with its roots in social and ethnic struggle and its strong emphasis on verbal skills, has a natural appeal for young Somalis in the West, and a plethora of Somali “MCs” have “stepped up to the mic” since the mid-90s; some rhyming in Somali and others in English. The most successful of them is the Somali-Canadian rapper K’naan. Now in his late twenties, he fled as a 9-year old with his family from Mogadishu in the early 90s and eventually settled in Toronto, where he developed his brilliant lyrical talent. Now a regular on MTV, K’naan has stayed true to his roots. His lyrics are a testimony to the troublesome journey of the Somali people and an indication that their legendary eloquence will find new forms for exile and will continue to pay tribute to the place where it all began:

 

In a conservative form, I wanna ask you a few things before I conform, to the popular belief about where I was born, are they still thing still killing popping the corn, how’s the horn, how’s the love wave in the ocean morn, how are the young, do they still possess the poetry tongue, and do they still greet sincere like the depth of the lung, how’s the nomad, did the herds graze well this year, from the news to what I know the growing gab ain’t clear, how’s the earth, how are the stars under we conversed, do you still await on change like a new moons birth, does it still flood, ancient wisdom parallel with blood, do you still see, the painted vision only script deep, or did y ou fight off the plight of the colonized mind, what of the rainy season, do the kids still burry seeds and, get taken with uncertainty like me scared of leaving? How are the poets, the women and the orphans torn, I miss em all like old opportunities gone, what of the elders, story tellers and abandoned homes, miss em all like childhood reminiscefull songs …?

 

Rahma Bavelaar

Issue 16

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[Baashi]

Where is the Somali version?

[burahadeer]

it's hard to google with no name of poet or poetry itself.