'Easing' the Arab Spring

Amatoritsero Ede

“Naming of Parts” is Henry Reed’s long poem about the Second World War and the first of five related sections in his 1942 collection, Lessons of the War. In the narrative poem under focus a drill Sergeant instructs recruits in the use of simple weaponry in a matter-of-fact and conversational tone:

This is the lower sling swivel. And this
Is the upper sling swivel, whose use you will see,
When you are given your slings. And this is the piling swivel,
Which in your case you have not got…

A second voice – that of a distracted recruit who is also a poet – mentally echoes the clipped military speech of the first speaker. The repetitive echo of the daydreaming soldier-poet's meditative ruminations matches or even surpasses the Sergeant's calm and conversational tone. But the soldier-bard transforms the prosaic and colloquial thoughts of the drill Sergeant into impassioned poetry. The latter's running commentary and monologue is married to the former’s poignant observations about a sublime spring environment, which fires the poet-recruit’s wandering imagination:

To-day we have naming of parts. Yesterday,
We had daily cleaning. And to-morrow morning,
We shall have what to do after firing. But to-day,
To-day we have naming of parts. Japonica
Glistens like coral in all of the neighboring gardens,
And to-day we have naming of parts

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Contemplating the Titanic Poetically

George Elliott Clarke

The sinking of the S.S. Titanic, 100 years ago, off the south coast of Newfoundland, still resonates, in part, because it was a catastrophe for which there is no photographic record. Commentators are thus forced to imagine it, to try to realize its horror and shock; to be, in metaphor, witnesses and survivors. So, in the wake of the maritime disaster, three poets take up the task of contemplation, one immediately and two others decades later, but all moved to consider the Titanic’s maiden – and fatal – voyage.

(Indeed, the Titanic’s foundering conjoins two separate states: the virginal and the mortal; in a sense, the ship’s sinking resembles a pathetic Virgin Death – with all the poignancy associated with the dying of a maiden.) All three accounts are irreverent. After all, the Titanic’s loss presents a “reality check” for anyone who thinks that technology is, in any way, a match for nature.

Routes and Roots

Poet, Amatoritsero Ede, in conversation with novelist, Madeleine Thien

Amatoritsero Ede: It is our pleasure at MTLS to be able to get you to sit down with us. We know you have a busy schedule. Thank you! First, lets talk about your move (?) from Canada to Germany. Are you on a break from Canada or do you now live in Germany or you are simply travelling?

Madeleine Thien: I’m in Germany because my partner, Rawi Hage, won a fellowship here from a German institution that brings writers, composers, filmmakers and visual artists to live in Berlin for a year. So it’s been a break of the most wondrous kind! I’d been to Germany three or four times, and to Berlin once before, but having the chance to live here, to meet other artists and be part of the cultural life, has been incredibly lucky. It’s fed my writing and my life.

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