最少從閱讀那許多已故白種人詩人的詩歌，我學會了寶貴的一課：我投身於詩歌深受感動。我是知道的；這是委予文學形式之上的一個宏大重擔。而當我第一次讀到南非詩人 Koleka Putuma 的〈埋葬〉(Burial) 的首句：「我們輪流互相埋葬 (We took turns to bury each other)」讓我感到那重擔跟本不算甚麼。
冬季是讀詩的詩光。每年這時侯大自然變得那麼戲劇性，而我們只能企圖以最好的方式去配合。當事情那麼黑暗與陰鬱，讓你感到一點戴維斯 (Bette Davis) 的 《揚帆》(Now, Voyager) 的味道，就沒有比沉迷於一個陌生人的詩句裡更好了。當 Putuma 在〈在公眾場所〉(In Public) 寫到：「(你的沈默對這嘈雜之地過於響亮) (your silence is too loud for this noisy place)」，而當外面的風捲起之時，感覺仿似我的心也跟著飛揚。從她朗讀其作品〈水〉(Water) 中，傳統模式與種族隔離的歷史冒起了沸騰的情感，令我頓時淚流滿面。
Why winter is the perfect time for poetry
Our pop culture expert on wallowing in the words of a stranger when things are dark and gloomy
Bim Adewunmi
Sat 23 Dec ‘17 06.00 GMT
‘When things are dark and gloomy, you feel a bit Bette Davis in Now, Voyager.’ Photograph: Rex Features
Until school forced me, I do not remember consuming much poetry. Finally, I went beyond the pop culture nuggets of Auden and Larkin and the sonnets, and instead learned to dissect Heaney and Hughes and “conflict poetry” to the standards of an exam board. The curriculum tried: my first Walcott came in Year 10 or 11, and Love After Love is perhaps my favourite poem, still – but well, you know.
At least I learned a valuable lesson from reading the works of those many dead, white poets: I go to poetry to be moved. I know; it is a spectacular burden to place on a literary form. And yet when I first read, “We took turns to bury each other”, the opening line from Burial, a poem by South African poet Koleka Putuma, it felt to me like that burden weighed nothing at all.
Winter is the time for poetry. Nature gets dramatic at this time of year, and we attempt to match it as best we can. There is nothing better than wallowing in the words of a stranger when things are dark and gloomy and you feel a bit Bette Davis in Now, Voyager. When Putuma writes “(your silence is too loud for this noisy place)” in In Public, and the wind picks up outside, the feeling in my chest is something akin to flight. When I saw her perform her poem Water, a blistering take on stereotypes and the history of apartheid, I burst into tears.
Her poetry makes me feel angry and vulnerable, which can be good things, even when they’re not exactly welcome. Everything is subjective, of course. I hold to the romantic notion that certain poems come to us as and when we need them the most.
