PREAMBLE
The waiting is nearly over. The home nation need a win to secure their place in the second round, but the West African opposition, packed with flair and attacking intent, won’t make things easy for them. Hello and welcome to another day of tenuous parallels between the football world cup and its poetry equivalent. The Missing Slate may have an international audience, but our roots are in Pakistan and it seems reasonable to suggest that Mehvash Amin has home advantage in today’s match-up.
She also has a formidable opponent in Kwame Dawes, a multi-talented actor, musician, professor, editor and critic who also ranks among the best poets of his generation. He was born in Ghana, but grew up in Jamaica and is currently Professor of English at the University of Nebraska. He is the director of Jamaica’s Calabash International Literary Festival, and his awards include a Forward Prize for Best First Collection (1994), a Pushcart Prize (2001), and an Emmy (2009). He has described himself as ‘the busiest man in literature today’, and is the author of over thirty books of poetry, prose, drama and criticism.
Mehvash Amin is currently editor-in-chief of HELLO! Pakistan, and was editor of lifestyle magazine Libas International for 11 years. Her poetry has been published in an anthology, ‘Tangerine in the Sun’, and in a number of international magazines, including Vallum and Sugar Mule. ‘Karachi’, the poem chosen to represent Pakistan in the Poetry World Cup, was among The Missing Slate’s Pushcart nominees last year.
              
At dawn, the courthouse, grumpy the town—the men move as a worn thin pants smelling of old food, for the truck, for the planter, bags, for the constable, for with his special bloody unit… ~ Kwame Dawes Karachi We must learn to quarter fear, Instead, it is etched like of buses burnt on the road, The rat-a-tat of gunfire ~ Mehvash Amin RESULT: Pakistan won by 28 votes Editor’s note: If, for any reason, you’re unable to vote in the poll, please leave the name of the poem/country you’d like to vote for in the comments. READ MORE… Kwame Dawes’ Poetry Foundation page. Kwame Dawes’ ‘Memos to Poets’. Youtube interview with Kwame Dawes. Kwame Dawes talks to George Ttoouli, via The Poetry Society. ‘Duppy Conqueror’ reviewed by the NY Times. Vallum’s Poets from Pakistan issue, including work by Mehvash Amin. The South Asian issue of Sugar Mule, including two Mehvash Amin poems. Soniah Kamal interviews Mehvash Amin. Blaine Merchand’s ‘Reading Pakistan’ essay, from Vallum.
as looming shadows, scowls over
body of thick coats, cotton, shirts,
smoke and cigarettes; stand waiting
for the landowner, for the money-
the loiter police, for the colonel
dice it, serve it on plates
in manageable portions.
a hologram against the sky,
starting out of the sockets
where they root
like indestructible fungi.
shatters the silence into pieces
of a stone requiem…
