Maram al-Massri, wat ook aan die komende Spier Digtersfees op 7 Mei gaan deelneem, is in Latakia (Sirië) gebore. Na haar studies aan die Universiteit van Damaskus het sy haar in 1982 in Parys gevestig. Volgens Bloodaxe Books se inskrywing op hul webblad is Maram al-Massri ‘n Arabiese minnedigter vir die moderne era. “She writes short, seductive lyrics of astonishing clarity and piercing candour, stringing them together like pearls in a story chain.” Dit is in verwysing na haar mees onlangse publikasie in Engels: Red Cherry on a White Tile Floor.
Michael Binyon van The Times word soos volg deur Bloodaxe aangehaal: “Arabic poetry … has developed an artificial code of rarified, unattainable longing that resembles the courtly love poetry of the European Middle Ages. To such a tradition, Maram al-Massri comes as a shock. She writes about all the taboo subjects – physical passion, faithlessness, adultery, loneliness, despair – with candour and intensity that would mark her out even to Westerners… Al-Massri recalls moments of violence and intensity in a clever mixture of dreaminess and half-light pierced by hard, precise detail. The lines sometimes suggest the old tradition… But elsewhere the modern world and contemporary imagery cut in … it is the combination of her modern, feminine individuality and the older Arab tradition that is so striking and wrenching”
By wyse van illustrasie volg een van haar gedigte.
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Women Like Me
Women like me
do not know how to speak.
A word remains in their throats
like a thorn
they choose to swallow.
Women like me
know nothing except weeping,
impossible weeping
suddenly
pouring
like a severed artery.
Women like me
receive blows
and do not dare return them.
They shake with anger,
they subdue it.
Like lions in cages,
women like me
dream . . .
of freedom . . .
© Maram Al-Massri (Uit: Red Cherry on a White Tile Floor, 2004: Bloodaxe)
‘A word remains in their throats
like a thorn they choose
to swalliow.’ !
Die gedig is vir my ‘n goeie voorbeeld van haar digstyl – mal oor die laaste paar lyne!