Border Lines: Poems of Migration

by Michael Waters (Editor), Mihaela Moscaliuc (Editor)

In this remarkable collection—the first of its kind—poets from around the world give eloquent voice to the trials, hopes, rewards, and losses of the experience of migration.

Each year, millions join the ranks of intrepid migrants who have reshaped societies throughout history. The movement of peoples across borders—whether forcible, as with the Middle Passage and the Trail of Tears, or voluntary, as with the great migrations from Europe, Asia, Africa, and Latin America to the United States and Western Europe—brings with it emotional and psychological dislocations. More recently, African and Middle Eastern peoples have risked their lives to reach safety in Europe, while Central Americans have fled north. Whatever their circumstances, these travelers share the challenge of adapting to being strangers in a strange land.

Border Lines brings together more than a hundred poets representing more than sixty nationalities, including Mahmoud Darwish, Czeslaw Milosz, Aimee Nezhukumatathil, Ruth Padel, Warsan Shire, Derek Walcott, and Ocean Vuong. Their poems offer moving stories of displacement and new beginnings in such places as France, Germany, Canada, the United Kingdom, and the United States. A monument to courage and resilience, Border Lines offers an intimate and uniquely global view of the experience of immigrants in our rapidly changing world.

Genres: Poetry

256 pages, Hardcover

Published September 8, 2020

About the author

Librarian Note: There is more than one author with this name on GR

Reviews

[Sookie · Rating 4 out of 5]

Poems from poets all around the world, indeed. Observations on experience as an immigrant, as a refugee; voicing experiences of hopes, joys,horrors and loss. Its a different kind of loneliness to exist elsewhere - by choice or by necessity. Most poems have this underlying tone of loss or loneliness.

CROSSINGS
The Iraqi Nights

We cross borders lightly
like clouds.
Nothing carries us,
but as we move on
we carry rain,
and an accent,
and a memory
of another place.

-- Dunya Mikhail

PROMISED LAND
In Memory Of Xiong Huang

who disappeared from Shanghai and whose body,his brother believes, is now on display in New York City in an exhibition of plastinated cadavers.

He traces aloud
the syllables of your given name. Imagines
the sound of a boy's now ossified heart.

-- R. A. Villanueva

MOTHERLAND
Movement

Voice, voice, only voice remains.
Voice seeping into time.
Why should I stop?

-- Sholeh Wolpe

LABOR
Mexicans Begin Jogging

What could I do but yell vivas
To baseball, milkshakes, and those sociologists
Who would clock me
As I jog into the next century
On the power of a great, silly grin.

-- Gary Soto

LANGUAGE
Arabic

The man with laughing eyes stopped smiling
to say, "Until you speak Arabic -
- you will not understand pain."

-- Naomi Shihab Nye

COMMUNITY
Border Lines

A weight carried by two
Weighs only half as much.

We seem to live in a world of maps:
But in truth we live in a world made
Not of paper and ink but of people.
Those lines are our lives. Together.

Let us turn map until we see clearly:
The border is what joins us,
Not what separates us.

-- Alberto Rios

[Halina Hetman · Rating 2 out of 5]

To cure myself of wanting Cuban songs,
I wrote a Cuban song about the need
For people to suppress their fantasies,
Especially unhealthy ones.
Rafael Campo, My voice

Збірка поезії, англомовної і перекладної, від і про іммігрантів. Розділена на шість тематичних розділів: Crossings, Promised Land, Motherland, Labor, Language та Community. Вірші здебільшого написані верлібром, тобто віршами для мене не є.

Тож я була неабияк вдячна Rhina P. Espaillat та Claude McKay за рими, а Andrei Codrescu - за ритм.

Найбільше мені сподобався вірш сирійської поетеси Відад Набі (Widad Naby) "The place is lit with memory". Вона дуже точно і ніжно передала стосунки біженки з її домом, залишеним, мабуть, назавжди - мені аж заболіло за Луганськом.

В збірці були також вірші українських емігрантів, але вони мені сподобалися не повністю чи не всі. Мені здалося, що наші люди страждають на меншовартість більше за інших. Можливо, я просто краще знаю контекст, коли йдеться про своїх, а поети інших національностей теж пишуть про себе самих дещо принизливо, я ж не в змозі це відслідкувати в їхніх роботах. Але судіть самі. Ось всі нащадки українців і їхні вірші, що увійшли в цю збірку:

1. Peter Oresick в вірші "Ruthenia" кличе Володимира Великого Vladimir the Great і, звісно, везе з Батьківщини vodka в якості сувеніру. Країну своїх батьків він не називає Україною, а тільки Русинією як заповідали справжні русинські сепаратісти. При цьому народився Петро в українській громаді в США і навіть написав цілу збірку віршів про Андрія-нашого-Воргола.

2. Gerald Stern, автор польсько-українського походження, в вірші "The Dancing" описує веселі танці в родинному колі. Пише, що звук, яким його тато задавав ритм гопаку, був схожий на пердіж.

3. Ilya Kaminsky з Одеси написав цілу "Elegy for Joseph Brodsky". Думаю, не треба зайвий раз згадувати квітучу українофобію Бродського, хоча, судячи зі статті на Вікіпедії про самого Камінського, йому це може й не муляє (His family was granted asylum to live in the United States in 1993 due to antisemitism in Ukraine - о, ці знамениті одеські погроми 93го...). Зараз автор ідентифікує себе як україно-американського єврея і роздає інтерв'ю про повномасштабне вторгнення.

4. Dzvinia Orlowsky в "When first stars appear" слухає разом із мамою, яка сумує за Україною, Bandurist Choir на Святвечір і чешеться від вишитої сорочки.

5. Susan Terris в поезії "Great Grandfathers from Szumsk offer advice to my children" думає, яку б пораду дали її прадіди з Шумська Тернопільської області, і не може придумати нічого окрім грязі, погромів та голоду, від яких не треба відвертатися. Якщо пам'ятати виключно таке, то не треба дивуватися, що пам'ятати не хочеться взагалі.

20 years time Asians may be partly accepted
Is then the Eastern Bloc migrants
will be targeted and rejected.
Dreadlock Alien

Румунка Claudia Serea в вірші "At Deb's party" згадала українця, який теж танцює (але, танцюючи, розповідає авторці про те, як працював продавцем в секонд хенді). Принаймні, він не глушить водку, на відміну від полячки з цього ж вірша. О, кліше, що робити з вами!

Що ж до росіян, то їх в збірці нема, тільки згадки в двох поезіях і аж цілий вірш "The Russian", написаний норвежцем. Але серія Everyman's Library Pocket Poets, яка видала цю "міграційну" збірку, випустила також ціле видання російських поетів, виказуючи свою лояльність.

Збірка "Border Lines" називається на честь вірша мексиканця Alberto Ríos, який пише:

The border is what joins us,
Not what separates us.

Така думка, я бачу, розповсюджена в цій половині земної кулі: Yesenia Montilla, дочка іммігрантів з Домініканської Республіки, питає в унісон, "...what is a map but a useless prison?".

Я можу відповісти такому способу мислення про кордони хіба що запрошенням відвідати мою зйомну квартиру в Харкові - допомогти зібрати речі і порефлексувати над необхідністю мати щось, що розділяє, захищає, мурує від.

Загалом, збірка мене скоріше розчарувала, тому одна зірочка за ідею і ще одна - за Відад Набі.

[Kristina Larsen (Reader's World) · Rating 3 out of 5]

En rigtig fin samling af forskellige typer digte, alle omhandlende at være fremmed et sted, ikke at høre til, kulturbånd og livet som immigrant. Digtene er meget vekselende i kvalitet, men der er helt sikkert nogle stykker som satte sig i brystet.

[Dylan Zucati · Rating 5 out of 5]

Over the course of a poetry book, you can glean the personality of a poet, see their soul spill out through their words. Reading a collection where no poet has more than one poem, you see instead the editor’s intent behind compiling. In Border Lines: Poems of Migration Mihaela Moscaliuc and Michael Waters divide poems gathered across decades into Crossings, Promised Land, Motherland, Labor, Language, and Community. These sections create the story, not of any one group or person, but of the sense all migrants can see themselves in. Maybe not every poem, maybe not every section, but keep an open heart and there will be words that strike a chord no matter your background. At least once the theory that we’re all migrants in one way, no matter where we come from, we are in a place that belongs to the land, we are only borrowing.

There were over a hundred poets in this book and no restricting form they had to adhere to. Some would make me stop and hold the power of the words before returning again to drink them in further, others I had to read multiple times before deciding that I’d probably never fully understand what the poet’s intent was.

The first half felt like a journey. Titled Crossings, Promised Land, and Motherland, it’s no wonder they carried a weight. Many of them invoked immigration and a departure of the land they called home, very few held optimism for their present or future. Most felt more like mourning than seeking the brighter future insinuated so often. Motherland marks a turning point, where the poets take a look back at the land they left behind, pulling parts of it forward into their modern lives.

Labor, Language, and Community follow, as if the collection itself has migrated to some new land, forming the newfound personality out of their fragmented lives. Labor holds space for the injustice of migrants taken advantage of, whether blatantly or in more subtle ways. Language is often reminiscent of the earlier sections, mourning the lost language that comes with assimilation. At the same time it challenges the notion that everything must be erased, that becoming a part of a new culture requires forgetting everything you held important prior. It flows nicely into Community which examines the multi-racial-generational-personal identity that has been brewing up to that point. Reflections of family seeing their current world through an older lens, rituals that bring home to an unfamiliar kitchen, confirmations that no matter what reason they had for leaving, this was their life and reflection could only inform the path forward.

Border Lines acts as a compass and map for finding poets who have lived long lives or are just starting to publish, all capturing similar concepts in universally different ways. You can pick it up to read from occasionally, or devote an entire day, however you approach there will be something that digs deep into your heart, to sprout when it’s ready.

[Jessi Waugh · Rating 4 out of 5]

In a book of over a hundred poems by various authors, there are bound to be some you like. I had a handful of favorites - about fishbones, iguanas, and a dancing girl. But the collection is more than its parts. It is a love song about the places people have left and a way to keep their memories alive. It is a way to honor the experience of leaving and making a home somewhere new, the experience of being “other.” It ins also a reminder that all are more alike than different.

[Meag · Rating 4 out of 5]

“Yes, who am I without you? Just a philosopher, like everyone else.” Czeslaw Milosz

This is why I love poetry collections based on a theme because you get to sample and be introduced to a variety of poets from across the world. Highly recommend this collection where you can find everyone from Kaveh Akbar to Ada Limón to reetika vazirani

[Valentine Wheeler · Rating 5 out of 5]

I loved so many of the poems in this - picked it up because it had work by two of my favorite poets, Omar Sakr and Naomi Shihab Nye, and came out of it with a dozen new folks to check out. Gorgeous. Had to take my time with it!!

[Elisabeth · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5
A very interesting collection that's diverse in voices, themes, and styles. Not every poem was a hit for me, but I enjoyed the impressions they provided.

[Ginny Ip · Rating 3 out of 5]

I love how it sounds to be loved so fiercely in another language.

[Renn · Rating 3 out of 5]

Border Lines was a New Suns book for our January 2021: Journeys, Exodus box. Read the full review here!

"I find it somewhat difficult to talk about this book as a cohesive collection, because it contains 122 poems by as many poets, from more than 60 different nationalities, all with vastly different styles. Some chaos is inevitable with any book combining the work of multiple writers, especially with a topic so broad and nuanced as migration. The book is divided into six thematic sections: 'Crossings,' 'Promised Land,' 'Motherland,' 'Labor,' 'Language,' and 'Community,' and the poets range from emerging to renowned. There are continents’ worth of experience in these pages, a cacophony of voices speaking their truth across the world.

Some poems speak of the harrowing experience of being a refugee. Others are several generations removed, having inherited bits and pieces of culture from their grandparents’ country of origin. Others still grapple with the complicated question of belonging as children who were born in one place and raised in another. By war and by famine, alone or with loved ones, these stories are carried along with the great tides of people who have always chosen to leave their countries behind in search of more, be that hope, comfort, safety, or home. There are poems in translation, bilingual poems, and poems written in English by poets to whom English is not a first language. The poems themselves range in quality from just okay to really good, and one of the strengths of a book like this, with so many different contributors, is that the ones that are really good will differ depending on the reader’s own experience of migration. The way some poems I didn’t like articulate certain experiences will resonate with someone far more than they did with me, and the ones I did like may be just okay to someone else. (Though it’s worth noting that there are some poems in here that are universally good and worth reading by everyone, from any background, too.)"

[Sonee Singh · Rating 5 out of 5]

A beautiful collection of poems on the immigrant experience across cultures and borders. Relatable and eye-opening.