Travel mode

Watching the world from different angles in this issue of your fresh poetry shot

Down below
a small town faintly lights
up. Is that Germany beneath us?
Is it the town we once
travelled to?

I really like to travel, see other places, experience them. I don’t consider myself a real traveller, though. To me, a real traveller has great adventures, goes to experience the amazing things in the world, Rough Guide or Lonely Planet in hand. Someone who goes to Macchu Picchu hiking the Inca Trail.

Of course, I know that’s not what a real traveller is. It’s a 1990s commercial version of what a traveller is. A real traveller looks at the world to learn something new. A real traveller wanders and wonders. That is what I do.

And wandering through the air from Copenhagen to Amsterdam, I wondered whether the town I saw below was one I may have visited before.

It could very well be.

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Poetics of life

The world changes. Much of the discovery our ancestors did, resulted in questionable possession of cultural artifacts in Western collections. I love going to museums and learning about the world, but when I recently saw two mummies in a European museum, I knew that learning about them could have been achieved differently. A way that acknowledges the value of these artifacts to not just the world, but also to the cultures they were taken from.

A few years back I was in Athens, and visited, of course, the Parthenon. I saw there, on the spot, how amazing it would be to have a (more) complete frieze on display. There, where it used to be.

I do not wish to requalify the things that have been done in the past. It has happened the way it did. Now, with evolved knowledge and understanding, we can maybe act in a way that fits with these times. I believe the restitution of artefacts is a powerful new chapter in our attempts to understand each other better.

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Poetry elsewhere

Looking at the world from above. If you have wings, you can. But what do the creatures with wings see when they look at us? 26thAvenuePoet explores the lives of 2 birds and more in the poems of this newsletter issue. Enjoy Things With Feathers:

Things With Feathers

Reading poetry in a language you don’t really understand can also feel like travelling. It takes you to a dimension that gives new meaning to the work and the poet’s language. Even though the English poems of Emanuel Souza already are delightful, I also like reading his work in his Brazilian Portugues. Enjoy experiencing Ecoar.

Autumn has arrived in the Northern Hemisphere. A season of beautiful colours inspiring poets. Many go outside and let themselves be inspired. The poems they (we) create, are like little postcards taking you to all these beautiful colourful autumn landscapes. Like this one by Jodie Meyn. Enjoy (almost at the bottom of the post) the poem An Autumn Burlesque:

After You've Gone