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Robert Chiwamba
Translated from the Chichewa by Benedicto Wokomaatani Malunga
He bears the name of a father
he has not seen.
Now and again, he asks the troubling question:
Where is my father?
My response is always one.
I also once loved deeply,
only not to be favored by
love's cooperation and sympathy.
It is not all of us
who were created to love and be loved in equal
measure.
You must be tired, my son.
Go and find solace in sleep.


Moyo

Dzina la bambo ali nalo
Bambo ake sanawapenyeko

Nde akakhalakhala amandifunsa
Bambo anga ali kuti

Yankho langa limakhala limodzi
Nanenso ndidakonda padzana
Koma chikondi sichidandimvere

Sitonse amene tidalengedwa kudzakonda
n'kukondedwa
Kagone watopa mwana
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Life treats us all differently. As complex as life is, so is love. Imagine looking at the complexity of life using the lenses of failed love! This is what 'Life' the poem attempts to do.

Robert Chiwamba on "Life"
David Roderick Interviews Oliver de la Paz

"I was a lonely kid then. An only child attending a small Catholic school where there were maybe twelve other students. Tapping away on the typewriter was a private thing. A thing that gave me a little bit of agency. I lived in my head and the landscape of The Diaspora Sonnets speaks to that. There was a lot of 'nothing' in that place in Eastern Oregon, save farm plots and hissing sprinkler heads. There was a lot of driving past nothing and imagining that you could be someplace else. Writing truly let me escape. "

via THE ADROIT JOURNAL
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What Sparks Poetry:
Robert Matt Taylor on Philip Levine’s What Work Is


"Even to my jaundiced eye it read like a perfect condensation of the big feelings of that moment. This is a thing that only poetry can do, I was reminded. “Scouting” and many like it in the book comprise a poetry of awakening, of simple amazement at being alive, at having lived and at the living still to be done, of making meaning out of the morass of experience, time, and trouble."
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