Andre Naffis-Sahely Quotes
Poetry either pulses with real life or it's just an aborted simulacra. There's no middle ground.
Fear knows no borders, and the terminology of hate has seeped into every aspect of life.
One cannot simply decide to write apolitical poetry, in the way one decides to drink lemonade instead of tea, it's far more subliminal than that.
Everyone wants to be open and inclusive, but nobody wants to pay for it. It's the biggest roadblock to translating living writers, especially poets.
I've heard of translators collaborating closely with their authors, sometimes even living with them for a while, but that's not me.
I can't quite see the point of poems like "Wittgenstein Goes for a Walk with A Hawk in Sherwood Forest." I know they're trying to be clever, but they're not.
As Trevor Noah recently quipped, the US appears ready to crown its first African dictator: Donald Trump.
The average political poem - especially the kind that wears this label all too proudly - is both dull and full of brow-beating triteness.
Most of us have been subjected to terrible political poetry at least once or twice in our lifetimes, and so we tend to shy away from it.
When it comes to the challenges of the actual process, I soldier on as best I can, on my own.
I'm of the opinion that poetry is always political, and cannot help but be so, regardless of the poet's intent, given that refusing to deal in politics is in itself a political act.
The West is anxious about becoming another Africa, and it has dug deep moats in the hopes of preventing that, but it's too late: it has already become another Africa.