 Love - Letters to a Brigand
Sheri Laizer
Jaf Press
This new collection of poems by Sheri Laizer deals with three main subjects: the myths and images of ancient cultures; contrasts between East and West; and the exploration of various levels of love - love of individual, love of country, love's ideal.
Laizer has lived and worked in the Middle East since the mid '80s and has become closely involved with the struggle of the Kurds for national recognition of their usurped homeland. Several poems are concerned with Kurdistan and the culture of the Kurds.
In these poems, the style is closer to the literary traditions of the Middle East than it is to the contemporary language of Western poetry. Poetry still occupies a dynamic place in Middle East life and literature as an expression of popular, political and personal feeling.
Sheri Laizer is a writer and broadcast journalist. She also promotes world music. Other titles include: 'Into Kurdistan - Frontiers Under Fire' (Zed Books, 1991), 'Maelstrom' Photographs & Poems (Samurai Books, 1981).
Contents
Frontier Lines
War Zones / 1
Love-letters to a Brigand / 3
Mountain Lines / 6
The Valley of the Kings / 9
Concad’Oro / 11
EinGedi / 12
Cairo / 12
Sinai / 13
The Red Sea / 13
Khamseen / 15
Near East / 15
Old Desert Mothers / 16
Lebanon / 16
The Passion / 17
Jerusalem / 17
Istanbul / 18
Simrin Manzarasi / 20
Frontier Lines / 21
In the Traditions of Myth
Ishtar / 23
Euridice / 31
Magdalene / 33
Pharaoh You Lay / 35
Tongues / 37
The Buried City (Babylon) / 40
Sumerian Love Song / 43
The Song to Dumuzi / 45
The Song of Geshtinanna / 48
The Jade Goddess / 49
Wat Arun / 49
The Persian Gardens
The Persian Gardens / 51
The Garden’s Neglect / 54
The Night Track / 55
The Sweet Waters of Asia / 56
Poem at Brighton / 57
Winter Love Lyric / 58
Xmas / 58
The Conjuring / 59
The Blue Rider / 60
Chrysalis / 61
Saxophone / 62
Returning from Germany / 65
Feminism / 66
Seven Tones / 67
Highway, Highway / 68
The Lovers’ Pictures / 70
Divided the Light / 72
The Forge / 72
The House of Isolation / 73
Waitakere / 74
Passion Under Penalty (Agire Evina Bindest) / 75
Unsheltered / 78
Mr. Boss / 81
Illustrations
Front Cover: Kurdish Peshmerga
Kurdistan of Iraq, 1991
Rebellion, March 1991 / 5
Conversation, Luxor, Egypt / 14
Snow in Istanbul, 1987 / 22
Tomb of Isa, Jerusalem, 1983 / 30
Couple, Luxor, Egypt, 1983 / 43
Sundown, Nile, Egypt, 1983 / 54
Brazier, Auckland, 1980 / 65
Kurdish villagers, Kurdistan of Turkey, 1987 / 78
Music of the Kurds, 1991 / 84
INTRODUCTION
Although I had been living in various Middle East countries since 1983 I didn't get close to the Kurds and their extraordinary culture until two years later, when I found out what was going on in Kurdistan itself: Turkey, until 1990, denied even the existence of the Kurdish people and the word 'Kurd' was not to be written or spoken freely. Their music has been banned, their literature and stories forbidden. Elsewhere in divided Kurdistan, Kurdish culture has been, and continues to be, heavily censored and suppressed by the central governments in Baghdad, Tehran and by assimilation and relocation practices in Damascus.
Poetry and songs are a people's cultural right, they express a person's strongest thoughts and feelings. Today, I see that the Kurdish people are denied their fundamental cultural and human rights, that my friends who write and sing are censored, tortured, imprisoned and killed for their work.
Several poems in this collection were inspired by Kurds and Kurdistan, and the title itself denotes the Kurdish 'peshmerga', those who 'go before death' to defend their country and their people who have seen little in the way of freedom. To the central governments which deny the Kurds a separate existence, the 'peshmerga' have always been called 'brigands', 'outlaws', or by the, popular derogative name most commonly used now, 'terrorist'. But it is clear, in fact, that they are the greatest lovers of humanity and human liberty by staking everything on achieving these.
Sheri Laizer
I
Frontier Lines
War Zones
(For Kurdistan)
I - I don’t confess love to enemies
Against the hollowness and the heat
The massacres and the trespass
Of ideals when I look into your face
And know what most I’d miss
As they blindfold us with exile and distances
The sun operates with knives of heat
As your voice falls serious
Going out across the blistered wilderness
Animals like us
Running ahead of guns
Separated into herds across the borders
II - Torchlight comes across the ruined orchards
Your arms dark and sure as walls
Holding close in shelled-out houses
Our hands pressed up against the wounds
Waiting for the gun-butt knock of spies
To gag our mouths with silence
The garden is a war zone
Struck at the root
Its roses ravaged
Shadows weighing down as winter comes
War planes and black statues
The dumb hymn of the towns
III - There is no release under such a moon
With its clouds curdled
Mustered under frozen starlight
And snow falling heavily upon the soul
All is motionless now
The children have become photographs
Stiller than still
…..
Sheri Laizer
Love - Letters to a Brigand
Jaf Press
Jaf Press
Love - Letters to a Brigand
Sheri Laizer
Love Letters to a Brigand First published in U.K in 1991
by Jaf Press, 24 Muschamp Road, London SE15 4EF.
Copyright © Sheri.J. Laizer, 1991
All rights reserved
All photographs © Sheri Laizer
ISBN(Pbk) 187405100 3
Typesetting & Design by Jaf Press
Printed by Venus Printers (London) Ltd
Telephone: 071-609 1881
This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not,
by way of trade or otherwise, be resold, hired out or otherwise,
circulated without the author's prior consent in any form of
binding or cover other than in which it is published.
Love - Letters to a Brigand
Sheri Laizer
JP
Jaf Press
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