Annual Seminar 2015 - Beatriz Pena Lima: 'Poetry to walk in someone else's shoes'

Poetry to walk in someone else’s shoes Beatriz Pena Lima

bpenalima@fibertel.com.ar

Billy Doesn’t Like School Really Billy doesn’t like school really.

It’s not because he can’t do the work but because some of the other kids don’t seem to like him that much.

They call him names and make up jokes about his mother.

Everyone laughs… except Billy.

Everyone laughs… except Billy.

They all think it’s OK because it’s only a laugh and a joke and they don’t really mean it anyway but Billy doesn’t know that.

Billy doesn’t know that and because of that Billy doesn’t like school really.

Paul Cookson (born 1961)

Poetry to walk in someone else’s shoes Beatriz Pena Lima (bpenalima@fibertel.com.ar)

1/5

Walking Black Home That day waz A bad day, I walked for Many miles, Unlike me, I did not Return any Smiles.

Tired, Weak And Hungry, But I Would not Turn Back, Sometimes it’s hard To get a taxi When you’re Black.

Benjamin Zephaniah (born 1958)

Poetry to walk in someone else’s shoes Beatriz Pena Lima (bpenalima@fibertel.com.ar)

2/5

Comeclose and Sleepnow It is afterwards and you talk on tiptoe happy to be part of the darkness lips becoming limp a prelude to tiredness.

Comeclose and Sleepnow for in the morning when a policeman disguised as the sun creeps into the room and your mother disguised as birds calls from the trees you will put on a dress of guilt and shoes with broken high ideals and refusing coffee run alltheway home.

Roger McGough (born 1937)

Poetry to walk in someone else’s shoes Beatriz Pena Lima (bpenalima@fibertel.com.ar)

3/5

Marrysong He never learned her, quite. Year after year that territory, without seasons, shifted under his eye. An hour he could be lost in the walled anger of her quarried hurt or turning, see cool water laughing where the day before there were stones in her voice.

He charted. She made wilderness again.

Roads disappeared. The map was never true.

Wind brought him rain sometimes, tasting of sea – and suddenly she would change the shape of shores faultlessly calm. All, all was each day new: the shadows of her love shortened or grew like trees seen from an unexpected hill, new country at each jaunty, helpless journey.

So he accepted that geography, constantly strange.

Wondered. Stayed home increasingly to find his way among the landscapes of her mind.

Dennis Scott (1939–1991)

In Memoriam (Easter, 1915) The flowers left thick at nightfall in the wood This Eastertide call into mind the men, Now far from home, who, with their sweethearts, should Have gathered them and will do never again.

Edward Thomas (1878–1917)

Poetry to walk in someone else’s shoes Beatriz Pena Lima (bpenalima@fibertel.com.ar)

4/5

Our History to Precolonial Africa And the waves arrived.

Swimming in like hump-backed divers With their finds from far-away seas.

Their lustre gave the illusion of pearls As shorewards they shoved up mighty canoes And looked like the carcass of drifting whales.

And our sight misled us When the sun's glint on the spear's blade Passed for lightning And the gun-fire of conquest The thunderbolt that razed the forest.

So did our days change their garb From hides of leopard skin To prints of false lions That fall in tatters Like the wings of whipped butterflies.

Mbella Sonne Dipoko ( 1936-2009)

Poetry to walk in someone else’s shoes Beatriz Pena Lima (bpenalima@fibertel.com.ar)

5/5