This event was organised by the Australian Studies Centre of the University of Barcelona, Spain, together with the Centre for Peace and Social Justice of the University of Southern Cross, Lismore, Australia, directed by Dr Susan Ballyn and Dr Baden Offord respectively. 5, 2011), entitled Food for Afterthought, I have had the honour and pleasure of dealing with a series of challenging essays derived from the congress Food for Thought, held from 1st to 5th February 2010 at the University of Barcelona. I argue that Shire’s poetry constitutes the ocean not only as a deathly space, but also as generative: it offers up the possibilities of passage and movement, however dangerous they may be.Īs the guest editor of the present issue of Coolabah (No. The simultaneously violent and transformative potential of these three water spaces take root in her oceanic imaginaries and thus the ocean emerges as a troubled but enabling site of multiple exchanges. Shire’s poetry can thus be placed within a triadic structure as it forcefully speaks towards three different water spaces: the Indian Ocean the Mediterranean and, less directly so, the Black Atlantic. In her work, we can find renditions of specifically located transoceanic trajectories which reach across various different water spaces: her poems connect the East African diaspora via the Northern Indian Ocean first to Northern Africa and the Middle East and from there via the Mediterranean to Europe. This notion of oceanic relationality lends itself to analyses of the work of Somalian-British poet Warsan Shire. The following article posits the ocean as a connective, affective space.
0 kommentar(er)
