Anos Ku Ta Manda E-Book

Yasmina Nuny

• Herausgeber: Verve Poetry Press
• Kategorie: Poesie und Drama
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2021

Seitenzahl: 34

Beschreibung

Yasmina Nuny's debut, Anos Ku Ta Manda, is as fresh and vital as her performance style. She writes both in English and Kriol, her mother tongue, to portray plural and untranslatable existences. Her collection – so powerful – begins with an exploration of her country Guinea-Bissau, that remains accessible through language and family. Following this welcome into her home, Yasmina offers a more intimate reading of her musings and experiences of love and relationships. The final voice that we find in the collection is a political one, exploring both the trauma and joys of Black womanhood. Anos Ku Ta Manda is defiant and the experiences it explores are informed by Yasmina's relationship with God.

Leseprobe

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Yasmina Nuny is a poet from Guinea-Bissau. She was born in Portugal and raised in different African countries before moving to the UK for her studies.

She began performing in 2016 at open mic events around Birmingham and owes a lot to the second city for her development as an artist. She has since been featured at events like Heaux Noire (London), Funkenteleky (Birmingham) and the Verve Poetry Festival R.A.P. Party (Birmingham).

Yasmina has also had her poetry published in two other Verve collections, including The Poetry Jam Anthology Wild Dreams & Louder Voices (2018) and Nafeesa Hamid’s Besharam (2018).

Twitter: @yasmeeener

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/yasminanuny

PUBLISHED BY VERVE POETRY PRESS

Birmingham, West Midlands, UK

www.vervepoetrypress.com

[email protected]

All rights reserved

© 2019 Yasmina Nuny

The right of Yasmina Nuny to be identified as author of this work has been asserted in accordance with section 77 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

No part of this work may be reproduced, stored or transmitted in any form or by any means, graphic, electronic, recorded or mechanical, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

FIRST PUBLISHED MAR 2019

Printed and bound in the UK

by Imprint Digital, Exeter

ISBN: 978-1-912565-19-1

ePub ISBN: 978-1-912565-96-2

Cover Image Design by Patricia Bandora

Garandi k jungutuTa ma oja lunjudi ke mininu k sikidu.

Noh kontinua bata garandi son.

CONTENTS

Part One - Ami

Haikus

Gazing

Directions for a journey home

Bissau bedju

Self

Nha retaguarda

Bariga

Bissau Daily

Part Two - Kerensa

Haikus

The voicemail I would include in my mixtape of only ballads

Staying soft

Transatlantic love

Lessons on love as explored by the cast of the best television series out there

Grey

Underneath guiding lights and hidden from cold places

Tongue twister

Imagine love

Part Three - Libri

Haikus

Free

Best consumed by

A BLACK woman walks into a church

Expletives

Audre taught me

When Kanye ain’t read the footnotes – After Jasmine Mans

A word to the Black Girls

Introducing Darnell Thompson-Gooden and Ayọ

Glossary and acknowledgements

Anos Ku Ta Manda

Ami

I

Graffiti is the

best student DIY when

schools do not function.

II

You called it state of

siege. Now that you can see them,

please pay attention.

III

Bissau is burning.

The presidential palace

is quite unbothered.

IV

Deus kuma “bô bim,

n mostra bos kaminhu

di vitória.”

Gazing

There is something romantic about homes I am never in long enough to demystify.

I place bent and burnt buildings in poetic pictures, construct them for consumption,

for foreign and half-foreign gazes, like mine,

it is almost imperial.

So, I deconstruct the romance; pull fibre from fibre to find inconsistency

and instead notice that the black star emblem cannot pull away from my skin.

The familiarity of home will not allow it.

Light is consistent so long as you have a candle handy.

I read my Kriol by it.

My custom by it.

My politics by it and the romance dims.

Enlightenment will do that,

as will the tyres burning in the capital,

and I know that in remaining, or returning,

Guinean has always been.

Directions for a journey home

I know of transience; lived it.

Short periods at a time.

Contexts of now only threaded by expectations of what’s to come;

But they are fragments, nonetheless.

For now, I exist here.

Older, hopefully wiser.

That is to say that I am not likely to get lost and/or forget my way back to

roots, when it is only a prayer away,

only a generation ahead.

Only God and mother, and the Amen at the end of these journeys,

and years, and                                                                               separations,

and oceans, and borders/and lonely mornings, and

goodbyes.

Nostalgia is bittersweet. But we move.

We write of the movement; joining the fragments through sentences, separating with comas, enjambments and

semi-colons instead of full stops until God,

the final Amen,

Amen.

Bissau bedju

Bissau ku nha pape kunsi na si mininessa ka parsi ku Bissau di ahos.

Cidadi na garandi, ma i na luta ku si bedjussa.