“Taken from the Press Release for the Acid & Ink exhibition from 1993: SARAJEVO SPECTRUM: by using the screenprint process, Steadman has created a series of images reflecting the tragic complexity of the Bosnian situation. It is a body of work born out of his involvement with a pressure group of prominent individuals, called SARAJEVO WITNESS, lobbying MPs to intervene and stop the senseless bloodshed.”
I keep a notebook of hand-copied poems that resonate. The earliest dates June 2017, the most recent, July 2023. In September 2023, I considered bringing it with me for my year-long stint in London, but I wanted to travel light.
Flipping through it just now, I came across a poem by the Indian/U.S. poet A.K. Ramanujan that is thematically linked to my previous post about suffering, cognitive dissonance, and other joyful ideas (link here). Note that Ramanujan died in 1993, so this poem was posthumously published.
[How Can One Write about Bosnia]
A.K. Ramanujan (1994)How can one write about Bosnia,
Biafra, Bangladesh, just to take
only the atrocities that begin with B,alphabetize cruelties,
eating persimmons and sleeping safe
in the arms of a lover, a wet moonin the mullioned window? How file away
the friend just dead of ovarian cancer;
a young breast cigarette-burned by a jealoushusband; where shall I put the old man who peers
through office windows looking for a yes
that’ll negate all no’s, or Bosnia motherswho lift their babies to strangers
squabbling for a foothold in lorries fleeing
to the borders where only death waitsgun and milk in hand, irony in his narrowed eyes
holding in one thought Bosnia, cancer,
persimmons, widows, serial killers,and you and me in our precarious safety?
Joel Goh 