Tag: john berger

note_05.1 Angela Carter on Wilson Harris “the Guyanese William Blake”, 1985

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Angela Carter and Grace Paley on the Tube, c.1987 © Kate Webb

Angela Carter and Grace Paley on the Tube, c.1987. Ph ©KateWebb

“KW: Will you start by giving me your impression of Wilson?

 AC: He’s got these curious hooded eyes, he never looks at you straight. And this wonderful sing-song voice, this vatic, musical accent. He’s very impressive. But I don’t want to give you the wrong impression because he’s not like John Berger: it’s obvious that he never set out to be impressive. I can only say about his presence that when he said to me about my son, “You have a wonderful little boy”, I felt it was some kind of blessing.

 KW: Why do you think he’s such an important writer?

 AC: Until very recently there was nobody writing anything remotely like him in Britain, nobody writing fiction with that particular kind of poetic intensity …

on my review of mourid barghouti’s i was born there… in today’s Independent

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Screenshot 2018-03-12 10.30.56

MB by Rex Features The Independent
Horror, and happiness: Mourid Barghouti ( Rex Features )

I Was Born There, I Was Born Here,

By Mourid Barghouti, trans. Humphrey Davies

GUY MANNES-ABBOTT | FRIDAY 04 NOVEMBER 2011

 

Mourid Barghouti’s first volume of memoir, I Saw Ramallah, is a classic of the genre and a uniquely clear-eyed account of returning home after 30 years of serial expulsion. Barghouti is also the poet of displacement in general as well as its specific Palestinian form. In between the first and this second volume of memoir came Midnight & Other Poems – a first selection from many volumes of his poetry.

I Saw Ramallah wove a life of enforced absences into a moment of return to that city and the author’s home village of Deir Ghassanah in 1996, with prose of poetic concision. It ended with Barghouti recrossing an indelibly memorialised bridge over the Jordan river to collect a permit for his son Tamim, so they could return together. “He will see it. He will see me in it, and we shall ask all the questions after that.”

I Was Born… is that collection of “questions” Continue reading “on my review of mourid barghouti’s i was born there… in today’s Independent” →

on mourid barghouti’s i was born there, i was born here due 7 Nov in UK

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Deir Ghassanah from the restored ‘ruins of al Khawas’ tomb & masjid [Ph. G Mannes-Abbott 2010]

The much anticipated arrival in English of a second volume of Mourid Barghouti’s memoirs is now close enough to touch… Indeed, I have it here in my happy fingers. My efforts to try to read it in Arabic, with only a basic grasp of the language, met an honourable end without ever getting close to the uniquely precise presence of its author in his words…

Publication of I Was Born There, I was Born Here is November 7th and Mourid will be appearing at Oxford University, the Bristol Festival of Ideas, and London’s Southbank Centre. I’m reserving comment on the book for reasons that will become clear, but if you’ve never seen Mourid’s words come to life in his voice right in front of you then waste no time in getting hold of a seat or a ticket at these events… Continue reading “on mourid barghouti’s i was born there, i was born here due 7 Nov in UK” →

on narrating gaza, a view from europe in babelmed [gaza four]

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It’s 2 years since Israel’s last assault on Gaza, in which it dropped white phosphorus in to school playgrounds. Narrating Gaza attempts to break a terrible silence on the subject by enabling Gazans to tell and show their stories -in remembrance and resistance.

I’m extremely pleased and gratified that my little essay has also been published by Babelmed here. In fact, it’s now up in English on the narrating gaza site itself here. Check Babelmed’s homepage here.