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April 2021

Sigrid Kingma was the RIXT poet of the month February 2021. You can read her original Frisian poems of that month here. The translation of one of them – ‘Brass hats’ – is published here.

Photo: Geart Tigchelaar
 Brass hats
  
 He won’t hang up
 streamers for himself
 celebrates survivals
 with drawn blinds
 and closed doors
 sensitised friends
 saved pocket money at the bank
 for a new bicycle
  
 Spoiled brat that
 fights fumigation
 looks for soft words
 to lie with
 or confesses smirking
 that he forgot
 who buttered his bread
 only yesterday
  
 Still, crystal clear
 is the memory
 that it was treacle that
 spilled on the paperwork
 the sticky fingers 
 licked clean in the echo
 of the whistle blow


© Sigrid Kingma
Translation: Trevor Scarse
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March 2021

Tsjisse Hettema was the RIXT poet of the  month February 2021. You can read his original Frisian poems of that month here. The translation of one of them – ‘the light and the wind’ – is published here.

Photo: Geart Tigchelaar
 the light and the wind
 dance
 around the house at the edge of the cliff
 something
 shifts from black to grey in me
  
 I too would like to
 dance there to keep me
 like a tearaway maybe
 in check
  
 the exuberance of colour
 the space of the house
 the stairs that lead up from my head
  
 the cliff holds everything surprisingly tight
 together
 it leashed me against its side
 which means
 I’m looking for the narrow path
 that slowly upwards pulls my head down


© Tsjisse Hettema
Translation: Trevor Scarse
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February 2021

Aggie van der Meer was the RIXT poet of the  month February 2021. You can read her original Frisian poems of that month here. The translation of one of them – ‘The geat Xi Jinping’ – is published here.

Source: Pixabay

The Great Xi Jinping

they greet
they bow
then demand to speak first

he, Xi, perplexed
his power, awarded to him
his strong hand and purpose
will not be taken away by no one
was there any other way open
to them, to him
was there another choice?

he won’t bow down
lest he becomes afraid
his wrath will guard him

now that he knows of their mistake
he’ll save them

the first word,
he will say
remains my due
as is the last

in their silent defence
already threatening
they know that his fear
will force him to imprint
his law, his will and thoughts
on their lips
in their heads

no day when they can forget
no night it won’t hound them
no way out to be found
not for them, nor for him
the last word, he says, has been said

let the world know.

© Aggie van der Meer
Trans. Trevor M. Scarse

 

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All the same

At the poetry festival Transpoesie in Brussels, in September 2019, Elmar Kuiper was this year’s Frisian poet who was invited to read from his work. During his stay he wrote a prose poem about one of his nightly walks through the city.

Photo: Elmar Kuiper


All the same

At the end of a literary evening in Brussels, I drank a Kaapse Pracht with a South African, whom I, miraculously, was able to understand. “A Frisian has a cruel tongue” I proclaimed and ducked out, staggered across a broken-up street and heard a load of sharp s’s and the hard g of an Arab shouting at me even at this late hour. I looked nervously around me and hurriedly crossed the intersection. Near the Holiday Inn our eyes met each other. She sat bolt upright, on a piece of bubble wrap, in the doorway of a restaurant and had wavy hair and dirty cheeks. Wrapped up in a drab blanket she looked me up and down. The white of her eyes became a puddle in which I almost drowned. “Help me, sir,” she whispered, soft as a summer rain, and I reached, generously minded, into my pocket and folded my wallet open, yet not even a penny rolled out of it. “These are hard times for poets as well,” I snapped, as if it was nothing, but she didn’t say anything and just shook her head.

© Elmar Kuiper
Translation: Trevor M. Scarse
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Oyster

Next Sunday there is a presentation of Unlân, the debut collection of poetry by Gerrit de Vries.  ‘Oyster’, the poem below, is a pre-publication. More information about the presentation, you find here

oyster

in the end there is only one question
can you live with yourself or not

like an oyster
naked on a tray
I lie before you
you may
cut the pearls
out of my body
but please
no lemon
no salt

Translation: Trevor M. Scarse

 

oester

úteinlik is der mar ien fraach
ast mei dysels wol libje kinst

as in oester
neaken op in skaaltsje
lis ik hjir foar dy
meist my
de pearels wol
út de bealch snije
mar asjeblyft
gjin sitroen
gjin sâlt

© Gerrit de Vries
Ûnlân (Hispel, 2019)