NZEPC - Nine Exiled Poets - Bronislava Volková

new zealand electronic poetry centre

Bronislava Volková

Bronislava Volkova left Czechoslovakia in 1974 during the Communist rule of the country. She lived for two years in West Germany before emigrating to the United States where her career took her to several different universities and states. In the process of her exile, she became a poet in her lost mother tongue and eventually a bilingual one. The paper she will give, ‘Exile Inside and Out,’ covers also her family history of exile (her parents left Czechoslovakia in 1939 and returned after the war), as well as the psychological and emotional consequences of her own exile. Further, she is interested in how exile forms human personality and how it shapes the world around us. The question of inner and outer exile is touched upon, as well as the question whether one’s exile can be ended.

LEAD ME TO A ROCK HIGHER THAN ME

In it
not here
I have my home.
I get scared of angry pools –
the traps of the world.
I get scared of the loyalty which flitters
among its own
in the solitude of the underbelly
in the darkness of ever hungry throats.
Lead me
toward your delectable shores.

from Proměny/Transformations,
bilingual limited edition, Explorer Editions, Bloomington / Prague, 2001.

GREY SMUDGES FROM THE TROUGHS OF PASSIONS

long past
without a hearth
in the thicket of little bells’ ardent invocation
and dignified tenderness…

A sorry look! This wasteland inhabited by so many
walls
like a crushed child
who won’t be healed
by sobbing
nor
by a promise
nor
by the earth’s lap weary of chained
love.
Endless symphonies:
invocations of the sun
crucifixions of darkness.

Angels
Yes
with higher voices
may
tap on the window of heaven.

Silence wide open

from Entering Light/Vstup do světla,
bilingual limited edition, Explorer Editions, Bloomington / Prague, 2002.

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Last updated 13 August, 2003