Yesterday I was in my favorite bookstore, Half Price Books looking shelf by shelf at the poetry section hoping something new had come in since my last visit. My eyes landed on a hard bound book, Contemporary Kazakh Literature: Poetry commissioned by the Ministry of Culture and Sport of the Republic of Kazakhstan, translated into English, printed in the United Kingdom, and published in 2019. The anthology includes thirty one poets and begins with a brief statement by the President of Kazakhstan Elbasy Nursultan Nazarbayev regarding the state program of Spiritual Rebirth – Modernisation of Kazakhstan’s Identity and sharing the rich culture heritage of his country worldwide. Knowing little about Kazakhstan other than it was home to the launch site of the Soviet space program, and knowing even less about its poetry, I bought the $4.00 book.
With the recent invasion of Ukraine by the Russian military I am acutely aware of how little I know about this part of the world. Even though I have read English translations of Russian and Polish poets, and even though Ukraine and Kazakhstan distinctly different nations, they do share some history.
Late last night I began reading the poems, a marvelous way to meet a people I will never meet, to look through a window they opened into their lives, to breathe in their spirit through the dance of their language, even though some is lost in translation from Cyrillic to English. My tongue became a gymnast as I attempt to pronounce the names of poets Kadyr Myrza Ali, Marfuga Aitkhozha, Lyubov Shashkova, and places like Majkudyk, Khvalynsk, and the Zajyk River. Regardless of the circumstantial differences between The United States of America and Kazakhstan, I met men and women like us, people on the human journey of family, friends, love, fear, war, hope, disappointment, and rich singular experiences seared into memory through the power of poetry, no matter what the original language.
The anthology is well stocked with notes explaining things English speakers wouldn’t know. Little did I know when I walked into HPB yesterday I would be taking a journey to Kazakhstan. I was glad to visit a country where poetry is taken seriously and poets are honored.
Contemporary Kazakh Literature: Poetry, Kazakhstan National Bureau of Translations &
Cambridge University Press, 2019, (ISBN 978-601-7943-43-1)