The Sahara Testaments

Well, loyal readers of this blog on which I sadly haven't written too much, know that I have been working on the translation of "The Sahara Testaments" Luckily for a venture like this I am surrounded by smart and kind people. I started out translating all two hundred poems. And then slowly I realised that publishing the full translation in Dutch side to side with the English would yield over 420 pages. Apart from the translation there were many cultural references, landscape elements, even political events which needed explanation.
Frank Devos was my first proofreader, and since we worked well together we would take several afternoons and comb thoroughly trough the translations. We realised more and more that publishing the complete volume in both languages wouldn't work for any publisher. Thus we came up with the idea of publishing the three first chapters. Still 133 pages. I must not only thank Frank but also Joke Van Leeuwen, President of PEN-Flanders and of course Tade Ipadeola for having written something that managed to stay with me, something that taught me a lot about Afrika and about writing. Joke caught still a few slip ups or inconsistencies in my spelling. So I am grateful that the text is now presentable to a publisher... Tade thanks for trusting me with your text. When the translation of the three first chapters of your book is published, we hope that you can come over. It would be wonderful that for the presentation you would read your poems in English and I could present them in Dutch. I'll have to sit down with Joke and she said she would approach the publisher Harold Polis. A new player on the Dutch/Flemish publishing market.

The day of writers in Prison

So many writers are in prison for exercising their right of freedom of expression. Some are in solitary confinement, some have been tortured, some are not allowed to have contact with their family. Some do not receive the mail we write... Although the prison directors sometimes keep all the mail that arrives for such a prisoner of conscience. That special day, for all the PEN-centers in the world is tomorrow Friday November 15.
A poem by Enoh Meyomesse, a writer from Cameroon:

Despair
you visited me that day
and a black night without
without moonshine
without firefly without genesis
without anything
to cut with the machete
such as the one where my steps
were lost behind the
shed of the village
oh God of the sky
a night
   ink black
comes down on me
and you oh earth
    yes you oh earth
        you had stopped
              turning

First poem from his book: Poèmes Carceral
written in the prison of Kondengui
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