A Word from the Third-World

A collection that will age gracefully

Third Word: Post-Socialist Poetry, edited by Lana Derkac and Thachom Poyil Rajeevan, Monsoon Editions, Rs. 200.



Third Word is a collection of “post-socialist” poetry from Albania, Slovenia, Bosnia, Bulgaria, Hungary, Ukraine and Croatia, edited by Lana Derkac and Thacham Poyil Rajeevan, in an attractive volume by Monsoon Editions. But, as Raje evan warns, don’t expect an “academic chronology of post-socialist poetry”; this is quite an informal collection, which appears to have benefited from not being constricted by a too severe theming or timelining.

In his introduction (not without typos), Rajeevan describes these poems as “straightforward, unambiguous, with moorings in culture and society” and as voicing the political and historical dilemmas that the poets have lived with. Through the volume you can see that, in the rich images and connections the poets make between language, resistance and the forging of tools for a new world in the foundries of the word.

It’s impossible not to be stirred when one poet after another speaks of loss of language and meaning, of memory and home and by the way they teach themselves to use words, grammar, speech, the visual language of dream and nightmare to map a land as yet unformed, to measure and know a land where language must be seeded anew. You can’t but feel the life; the urge of the word, especially potent in the hands of poets determined to renew speech and language.

Almost every other poem in this collection has images of nature, of trees, of moss and wet, of forest, mists and wind and almost all are quick to transmit to the reader in equal portions both a sense of loss as well as of what else there is left in this world.

There are far too many poets and poems to make any kind of sensible analysis within this review, but my favourites were Primoz Cucnik, Iztok Osojnik, Xhevahir Spahiu, Tone Skrjanec, and actually many more! But the poems of Delimir Resicki were very disappointing. Except for one brilliant image: “Europe has a new nightgown”. Third Word, even with the errors that are far too many to leave without mention, is definitely a collection that will age gracefully!