NVN Saturday: GATHERING (CLOUDS)
by Indran Amirthanayagam
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We are gathering in Kansas City, poets and publishers, writers and editors: our people, friends, colleagues, rivals. But I am skipping the encounters. I don't want to rub anything or anyone except for the keyboard where I compose this letter of resig- nation, aware of the moving staircase, the precipice, rocks falling from the sky, aware of train. bus and car wrecks to come, bombs dropped on friends' homes and cultures, fireballs rolling through Chile's Viña del Mar, vine now of fire and mourning, through hills near Valparaiso where I fear cobblers and tailors and hardware stores with their giant signs have become ash, in memory, thy kingdom come, thy will… how can we explain our suicidal impulse, this expelling of hot gas, assaulting of children and women in Gaza, famine threatening that strip, and Ethiopia again in 2024. Are you ready for Live Aid once more, the concert for Bangladesh? How can we reply when the prompt calls for murder, by climate, by dictator?
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Indran Amirthanayagam is the translator of Origami: Selected Poems of Manuel Ulacia (Dialogos Books). Mad Hat Press has just published his love song to Haiti: Powèt Nan Pò A (Poet of the Port). Ten Thousand Steps Against the Tyrant (BroadstoneBooks) is a collection of Indran's poems. Recently published is Blue Window (Ventana Azul), translated by Jennifer Rathbun. (Dialogos Books). In 2020, Indran produced a “world" record by publishing three new poetry books written in three languages: The Migrant States (Hanging Loose Press, New York), Sur l'île nostalgique (L’Harmattan, Paris) and Lírica a tiempo (Mesa Redonda, Lima). He edits The Beltway Poetry Quarterly and helps curate Ablucionistas. He hosts the Poetry Channel on YouTube and publishes poetry books with Sara Cahill Marron at Beltway Editions.