by Kole Odutola

This is about one of the most disorganized travelogue you will ever read, so come along or cut short your ordeal. In any case if you must come along with me may I suggest that you should think of this attempt as a dream sequence; retold by a sojourner who did not have enough of the place he visited but still feels a strong commitment to record his feelings and field observations. This diary-like reconstruction is not only about my week-long visit to attend the 12th Poetry Festival which took place in Durban, South Africa, it is also an account of my personal inward journey and struggle. The inward journey became an inquiry into who a poet is and what poetry is all about. 

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Our grief is not a cry for war. I saw this sign in Union Square Park, New York. September 12th, 2001. We had gone there to put up signs for the Bangladeshi waiters killed in the Windows Of The World restaurant. The Bangladesh embassy was asleep at the wheel, so a small group of us had gone out to collect names. I looked at that other sign and thought, isn’t that obvious? Grief is mourning. Surely no one will try to turn this into a war cry. But I hadn’t been watching enough television. The next eight years many people bent mourning into rage and war. And the world isn’t any safer, in fact it’s worse.