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Poets are like frogs — they have super-sensitive
skins. Frogs breathe and drink through theirs. They are the bio indicators
of the country’s health. Too much Roundup weedkiller or methoprene
in the atmosphere and they develop malformations and die out. But here
in the town of Pabirze in north-east Lithuania, the frogs are abundant.
Since the Russian regime ended in 1993, barefooted eighty-year-old Aldona
Jaronyte is single-handedly working the land beyond her back garden. She’s
recreating the landscapes of the agrarian order, marshalling swamps into
a system of ponds and mossy walkways, and she’s doing it for love.
She always works barefoot, so as not to harm the earth. When I first arrived
I thought the chorus came from magpies in the trees. Then I spotted my
first marsh frog inflating white vocal sacs in his cheeks. Soon I spied
armies of them (yes, a group of frogs is an army). The harder I looked
the more I saw: large green frogs in the water and small brown frogs on
the grass, peeping between their benefactor’s toes.
Lithuania is a good antidote to London, which in these days of ‘poetry
wars’ can feel claustrophobic. The island mentality is still with
us, alas, so it’s good to get out for a fresh perspective. In Lithuania,
poetry is what couldn’t be written under the Russians. If you wrote
the wrong kind of poem you risked more than exclusion from the current
clique. You could be, and often were, dispatched to a Siberian gulag.
Now that that’s over there’s a party atmosphere. And during
their nationwide Poetry Spring festival (our National Poetry Day and Poetry
International rolled into one) everyone’s celebrating. Locals are
joined by international guests which is why I’m here, reading to
hearteningly young audiences. For these teenagers, it’s cool to go
to a poetry reading. Even children sit patiently waiting for the translation
to follow. They want to be poets when they grow up.
Everywhere I’ve toured — from Vilnius University to a Witch
Museum in a hamlet — there’s a sense that poetry is important,
that poets are this country’s royals. The annual crowning of the
poet laureate takes place at Kaunas, and is the culmination of contests
in assorted towns, each with its own laureateship. Kaunas — home
of the Devils Museum, where 2000 devils from all over the world are gathered
together. Hitler and Stalin are there, along with a multitude of mischief-makers
from Lithuanian folklore. Back in the Writers’ Union bar in Vilnius
— headquarters of the festival — there’s the ex-minister
for culture (also a poet), the conductor of the National Orchestra, a
playwright, factory workers, this year’s crowned poet laureate, and
prostitutes. The Poetry Café Covent Garden this is not.
UK poetry has not had to suffer under a repressive regime. Let’s
keep the air circulating, the options open. In the pages of Poetry London,
that’s what we aim to do. Poetry, like the toad, can shed its skin,
roll it into a ball, and eat it. It’s useless to set rigid rules,
when the muse might require poets to eat their skins and hop off into
the unknown in glistening new robes.
In this issue you’ll find poems from New South Wales, Denmark, Slovenia,
Kurdistan, France, America, the UK, and of course London, that most international
of cities, where every poet is inflating his or her vocal sacs lustily
in the poetry ponds. From Lithuania we present two leading poets —
wide-open poetry that deserves more recognition over here. This issue
contains some impassioned anti-war poems, poets attending to the all too
real quarrels we might better concern ourselves with, which threaten liberty
and the environment, and stunt the human spirit into growing five front
legs out of its eyes.
This October, Poetry London goes to New
York to take part in Brit Lit: New Writing from the UK and Ireland. We’ll
discuss the dynamic connections between UK poets and the American literary
magazines and small presses. We are grateful to Rattapallax Press, the
British Council, the Council of Literary Magazines and Presses, Poet’s
House, and Baruch College for the Performing Arts for organising and funding
this conference.
I will be taking a break for one issue, back in March. Martha Kapos,
Assistant Poetry Editor, will edit the next issue’s poems. Her first
collection, My Nights in Cupid’s Palace, will appear in June 2003.
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