Notes from the Dream Kingdom

Description

“The genesis of this long poem lies in a twelve-year sojourn in Saudi Arabia, where I worked, teaching at a university in the oil-rich eastern province of that country. It began as a meditation on the experience of migration, loss of home, relocation and cross-cultural encounters. Ultimately, the poem became an exploration of what it means to find “home,” both physically and emotionally, personally and politically.

The first part alternates between Saudi (KSA) and South Africa (SA), which is something migrant teachers would experience at least once a year. Since the personal is always also political, the poem is set in the political milieu of colonial encounters, both in the south and the north.

A friend who read this first part recommended the inclusion of alternative, antiphonal voices. So, the second part was born, including the voices of three (adult) children, two girls and a boy. They are meant as the children’s perspective on the disrupted and disrupting world of the adults, lost parents, broken families, strained society, a kind of writing back. The third part is a collection of varied voices, representing disparate elements of current experience in both the south and the north, showing the need for social regeneration, but also its difficulty.”