Poetry seems like a most precious gift for oneself. A bit of luxury, as it doesn't fill in time like a novel, with hours of reading on a winter day. Poetry needs empty space and time around it. To pick it up, read some lines, put it down, pause.
So I have been buying poetry lately, checking out fine publishing houses like the Icelandic Sine Wave Peak or the translations in the World Poet Series of the Poetry Translation Centre in London.
I am also lucky to have poet friends, who send me treasures from as far as Japan. Ikhda, by Ikhda and The Goldfish by Ikhda Ayuning Maharsi Degoul, published by The Emma Press, arrived in December. Ikhda's sensual poetry was the perfect solace at the end of very nonsensual year.
Because Ikhda Ayuning Maharsi Degoul knows how to elicit the erotics of language, its bliss. "Rich, warm and heady" says the introduction to Ikhda, by Ikhda. And "sumptuous" is written on the back cover of The Goldfish.
What is sumptuous about a goldfish, you might wonder? An excerpt:
"It was noon. A jet plane discovered the sky. White marks and a blue background. I have been talking to myself about what will happen in the next nine months. Questioning life, domiciled.
Womanised. Shaping the points of construction. House, homicised. I see my goldfish doesn't move anymore in the fishbowl. I take it in my bare hands, put in the toilet, flush it away."
And here an excerpt of my favourite poem Lys in Ikhda, by Ikhda
I have had intercourse so many times with my past
I remember on Sunday morning
big snails and slugs were vined on my buds
satisfying themselves
with pleasure that resonated