Oorblyfsel/Voice over | Poetry & Poetry Anthologies

Breyten Breytenbach

Protea Prize for Poetry (2010)

The collection includes poems in Afrikaans with the English version on the righthand page. Breyten calls these poems a ‘collage’, transformed ‘variations’ of Darwish’s work, with his own voice woven into the process.

“Mahmoud Darwish, the Palestinian poet (1941-2008), was a friend. ... Immediately after his passing, I started writing the series as fragments of a continuing dialogue with him. ... Over the following weeks I was to travel north – first to Catalonia and then on to Friesland ... The poems reflect this trajectory. Translation – that is, to proceed from one language to the other – is also a journey. Perhaps too, an attempt to draw the veil from the known face which has now gone silent. ... The images, and to an extent even the rhythms and the shaping, are his. ... The journey continues and the conversation will carry on, in the attempt to look for Mahmoud Darwish among the words.” (From the author’s notes in the book.)

Mahmoud Darwish is regarded as the leading poet of not only the Palestinian struggle but of contemporary Arabic literature. The main theme in his work is the anguish of dispossession and exile.

“for we shall be a people, oh my people, when we recognize / the exact beat of life’s passion and death’s urge.”