In Sampsonia Way —a narrow alley on the North Side of Pittsburgh—has become a bustling avenue traversed by writers from all over the world. Croatia, Cuba, Macedonia—just to mention a few—have been represented here.

Just here, I could meet Meena Kandasamy from India. She is a poet, essayist, and fiction writer who describes herself as a grass-roots activist and travels around the globe to talk about the problems in her country with a fresh point of view.

Just here I could have long conversation with Maxine Case —my friend now—and compare the racism in South Africa and Guatemala. Not that different in essence, we agreed.

Just here I could hang out with Glaydah Namukasa, from Uganda, and Marius Ivaškevičius, from Lithuania, and discover their countries through their writing.

The odds may be slim that these writers and 10 others would all travel through tiny Sampsonia Way to recite their poetry or to enjoy a fellowship. But those are exactly the kinds of synergies that City of Asylum/Pittsburgh achieves through events such as the Jazz Poetry Festival.

These writers came to Pittsburgh thanks to the ongoing partnership between City of Asylum and International Writing Program of the University of Iowa.

In this issue Desiree Cooper tells a vivid story about the relationship between these two strange attractors. Do you also want to know what writers from around the world think about Pittsburgh audiences?  Read here.

Let us know your experiences with the writers of the International Writing Program of the University of Iowa. Have you attended Jazz Poetry or been to a reading? Let us know your experience.

First time I saw Oliver Lake —the well-known composer, saxophonist, flautist, and bandleader— it was in rehearsal for Jazz Poetry 2008, organized by City of Asylum/Pittsburgh. His music gave me goose bumps and made me dance in my chair.

Oliver is known the world over. Nikola Nadzirov, a poet from Macedonia, called him a “giant musician.”

Oliver has travelled to many countries and, in each of those places he has answered hundreds of interviews —most of them related with his music. I wanted to explore another side of him and go beyond his normal profile. I was interested in his work not only as a musician, but also as a writer and visual artist.

Taking advantage of the fact that he is creating COA/P’s new “house publication” on the facade of 320 Sampsonia Way, I sat down with Oliver and we talked and laughed for a while. What a great time we shared!

Do you want to ask Oliver Lake something else? Let me know and I’ll pass along your questions and post his answers.

Read the interview.
Click here to read Silvia’s bio.

Award-winning poet Lynn Emanuel describes her new collection, Noose and Hook, as one that “summons America before the bench.” In this book, Emanuel explores America’s wars, food, poetry, painting, death—and oh yes, dogs—with her unique brand of wry humor.

READ “HANG DOGG” FROM NOOSE AND HOOK

READ Sampsonia Way‘s interview with Lynn Emanuel and Terrance Hayes.

CLICK HERE to purchase a copy of Noose and Hook.

HANG DOGG from Noose and Hook, by Lynn Emanuel, © 2010. All rights are controlled by the University of Pittsburgh Press, Pittsburgh, PA 15260. Used by permission of the University of Pittsburgh Press.

Photo: © UNESCO/ Marco Dormino

When the earthquake struck Haiti on Jan. 12, 2010, I had just returned to Pittsburgh from Indiana University to join the staff of Sampsonia Way. I immediately wanted to write about how the disaster affected writers. In order to do that, I had to get a sense of what the literary scene was before the earthquake.

As I began my research, I discovered that information on Haitian literature was hard to come by in the United States. Like many Americans, I knew the name of the novelist Edwidge Danticat, but few other Haitian writers came to mind. Through the help of two invaluable sources—Carrol Coates, professor at Binghamton University, and Jean Jonassaint, professor at Syracuse University—I came to appreciate that the struggle of Haitian writers began long before the earthquake.

Through repressive dictatorships, exploitative American occupation, and endemic poverty, Haitian writers—with tenacity of resourcefulness—have created and sustained a vibrant literary community on the island. It was inspiring to cover the efforts of these writers. I was particularly drawn to the story of Marie Vieux-Chauvet, who spoke out against brutality in her beautiful novellas Love, Anger, Madness.

The story of Haitian writing is not complete without considering the sizable diaspora of writers. Yanick Lahens reflected in 2003 that “exile is one of the dimensions which … gives Haitian culture its coherence.” Writing this article also gave me a chance to explore the importance of diasporic literature. Lahens elected to remain in Haiti and part of her account of the earthquake appears in the article.

One of the issues that came up over and over again was that of the responsibility of the writer to respond to catastrophe. Jonassaint implies that a writer’s first responsibility is to their craft, while others argue that writers have a duty to respond—in their writing—to the needs of their community.

I’d love to hear readers’ comments on this issue. Does the writer have a particular responsibility to society and, if so, what is it? Please use the comment field below.

Click here to read Elizabeth’s bio.

Photo by Renee Rosensteel

When I learned that both Terrance Hayes and Lynn Emanuel published new collections of poetry in the same month, I thought it would be fun to interview each author for Sampsonia Way. However, editor Silvia Duarte had a better idea: Why not bring Lynn and Terrance together for a conversation?

Spending a couple hours discussing literature with these two poets was a dream come true, and I am excited to share the resulting interview with you.

The conversation covered topics such as Southern culture, poetic form, and humor. One issue that we kept returning to was the issue of voice. Lynn said of writing in the voice of a dog, “If I had a voice I had everything else.” Terrance spoke about “bearing witness” to the speakers in his poems and being “privy to their minds.”

Another issue that arose was politics in literature. This reminded me of the conversations I had with Haitian writers on the relationship between the writers and their community. Terrance and Lynn raised an intriguing possibility by distinguishing between “political” and “socially engaged” poetry.

In this interview the idea of the responsibility of the artist is looked at from a new angle with the concept of good art being “virtuous.” Is or should art be virtuous? And what would it mean to call a poem “virtuous”? Is literature a moral activity?

Click here to read Elizabeth’s bio.

We are all excited about this issue of Sampsonia Way magazine. With over 30 pages of original content it is our biggest issue yet. We present an overview of Haitian literature, have a conversation with poets Terrance Hayes and Lynn Emanuel, talk with jazz great Oliver Lake, and a report on how writers from all over the world have come to Pittsburgh as the result of a relationship between COA/P and the University of Iowa.

We are excited to talk with you about the complex issues presented in these pages—ideas about what constitutes free expression, how we define “politics,” and the role of the artist in society.

We are committed to conversation. We want to hear what you, our readers, think and give you an opportunity to debate the ideas presented. That is why we will be dedicating the next couple weeks to blogging on the stories in this issue. Each blog will offer the opportunity to add comments and provide information to us, and we hope that you do so.

To help encourage interactivity we invite you to join our fan page on Facebook. Here we will post our latest content for your enjoyment and comments. As an added bonus, for every 100 fans added to our fan page we will announce one winner of a free City of Asylum/Pittsburgh t-shirt. See our Facebook page for more info.

Devastating Earthquake hits Haiti
Haiti Lies in Ruins
Grim Search for the Untold Dead

The poorest country in the western hemisphere
they repeat like a curse.
Nearly 200,000 may be dead.
See it all on High Definition TV
before falling asleep.

There will be images of the untold dead.
The nameless ones to pity or ignore,
depending on how we feel that night.

Close your eyes and see a girl
in her blue school uniform, bent over her lessons.
Her mother at the stove hums and stirs with a wooden spoon
the milk and sugar to make douce lait.

When the earth surges like a wave they both fall
to their knees. They sing Beni Swa Leternel
Blessed be the Lord.
Rattling roof, crumbling house, concrete to dust.
Waiting in the dark
for the end of the world.

Beneath the rubble the mother’s voice echoes,
until by dawn it is hardly a whisper.
Light a candle for me.

There is always time for a miracle,
Schoolgirl rescued among the ruins.
Narratives of redemption, sell.
The reporter composes a face well practiced,
compassionate concern.
You see, miracles really do happen.
(Cut to commercial.)

They were not always nameless, the untold dead.
For every face the camera does not capture
there is a name, and memories
of murmured songs half-remembered
and sweet milk.

Even the uncounted, the forgotten, the unseen
and unknown, the ones on rutted roads
shrouded in white with scribbled cardboard signs,
even they, have a name.

Remember the nameless,
before turning away.

READ the suggested reading list of Haitian literature prepared by Nadine Pinede and Danielle Legros George

Click here to read Nadine’s bio.

As of this writing, Cuban dissident Guillermo Fariñas has completed more than 100 days of a hunger strike to demand the release of 26 prisoners of conscious who have health problems.

His protest began after his friend Orlando Zapata Tamayo died in prison following more than 80 days of fasting. Fariñas claims he was arrested and beaten on the way to his friend’s funeral.

I first learned of Fariñas’ protest on Yoani Sánchez’s blog. He was less than one month into the strike, but Fariñas’ body already showed the effects of starvation. Now he is terrifyingly thin.

Fariñas lives in a country where people who speak-out against the government are routinely brutalized and jailed. Unable to protest with his voice, he uses his body to express his dissent and petition his government.

Sánchez wrote, “When this kind of protest, a protest of empty stomachs, happens in a country we have to question whether they have left citizens any other way to show their lack of consent.”

A similar sense of desperation drove Liberian activist Leymah Roberta Gbowee to organize a sex strike to end the civil war in 2003. She encouraged the nation’s women to withhold sex from their male partners until they put down their guns. She even offered to pay prostitutes for lost wages.

Gbowee continues to work for peace. Mostly recently, she spoke at the Daily Beast’s Women in the World summit. There she urged Michelle Obama to convene a summit of African First Ladies to address the issue of sexual violence.

As an editor and writer, I tend to associate free expression with writing. But these activists have challenged and expanded my ideas of what constitutes “expression.” I have come to see the body as a site of articulation that is as powerful as the written or spoken word.

This idea raises difficult—and exciting—questions for me in terms of how we can protect and promote this type of expression on Sampsonia Way.

What other examples do you know of of body protests? Please use the comment field below.

Click here to read Elizabeth’s bio.

Photo by Renee Rosensteel

On April 27, novelist Sofi Oksanen visited Sampsonia Way to give a reading with Christos Tsiolkas and Tommy Wieringa. The event was sponsored by City of Asylum/Pittsburgh in partnership with PEN/America. While she was here, Oksanen sat down for a conversation with Sampsonia Way editor Elizabeth Hoover.

In her 2008 novel Purge, a young woman escaping the sex-slave trade ends up in the backyard of an Estonian woman who survived sexual assault at the hands of Soviet occupiers. While at times disturbing, the book is a strong testament to women’s resistance and survival in the face of violence.

In this interview, Oksanen talks about how oral history informed this book, as well as how she thinks artists can respond to trauma, her love of language, and the meaning of the word “feminist.”

Purge was ranked No. 1 on the Finnish bestseller list when it was first published. It has been translated into 25 languages. She is also the author of two other novels and the winner of the 2009 Finlandia Prize.

READ an excerpt from Purge.

In Purge there are terrible silences in these women’s lives because of sexual trauma, yet they tell the story of their traumas with their bodies—in gestures and flinches. What is the significance for you in translating the story of their bodies into a body of language?

My motivation had to do with the way certain people’s history is silenced and has no written form. The experience the women in my book have with sexual violence doesn’t have language.

Aliide is the older character in the book and is in her 70s. She doesn’t have language to talk about this kind of experience. When I think about my grandmother’s generation, it is obvious that they wouldn’t tell these stories out loud, but they must express it somehow. They express it through the reaction in their bodies, because if you are a human you have to react somehow.

Despite these silences, women manage to communicate with each other and recognize each other’s shared experiences. Can you talk about how you came to understand the way women tell their stories of trauma in ways that are indirect or even nonverbal?

As a child, I heard a story about my older relative who was a young girl during World War II and was living with her mother in the countryside. One day, they found a wounded solider in their backyard. They decided to hide the solider in their house and wait for a better time, but someone in the village turned them in. Then the secret police came and took the girl in for the questioning. They weren’t interested in the old mother. When the girl came back the next morning, she was physically OK, but she never spoke again. I guess adults all understood what it meant, but I didn’t understand then.

While researching the book, I read everything I could get my hands on about sexual violence. I read the memoir of a woman who was raped by a man who smoked. She couldn’t stand the smell of smoke because it always made her fear. I started to think that this was very important because if you can’t talk about something your reaction must be even stronger. In a way that becomes another language—one without words.

Why is oral history so important to you?

What if you live in a country were certain types of expression are forbidden? You still need to talk about what is going on, so you use expressions that are not direct.

At a certain time in Estonia wasn’t possible to use the word occupation or resistance movement. Nobody said, “member of the resistance movement.” They said “forest brother.” When I was doing research, it was very strange for me to read the words “member of resistance movement,” because I was used to hearing, “Oh he went to the forest.”

It makes the world totally different when you read about it instead of hearing about it. Written history has a greater importance or legitimacy. I learned Finnish history from the books and it is a very different kind of history.

Often it seems like the women are left out of that official history.

I have heard a many stories and legends of the Forest Brothers, but no legends of the women who supported them. Even though there is no way the Forest Brothers would have survived without help from women and children.

Women at war are considered to be less active than men. Women can’t have weapons, for example, which is an odd thought because you have to ask, why aren’t they allowed to protect themselves? The idea is if women don’t have weapons they are protected in a way because they are out of combat. But in truth this fact means they can’t protect themselves.

I think the resistance that these women do is very active and very rebellious. In that sense, they are not actually victims because they are active.

It was interesting to me that the male hero spends the entire book hiding in a closet and the women are the ones who are out in the world and in danger.

Yesterday I was in Washington and this man asked if this book is fantasy.  He said, “There is no man who could stay in a closet.”

That is something I hear quite often and it is always men who say that. Anyway, the book is based on a real story. There were a lot of men in hiding in closets and secret cupboards. I never thought that it was something a man wouldn’t do.

Is it somehow shameful for a man to stay in a closet? I never thought about it like that.

On your blog you wrote, “art solves trauma.” I’m interested in what you think art can do in the face of trauma.

I don’t know if it ever can be solved totally, but I think literature has a great power. If you think of numbers: 10,000 people were killed there or 1million are starving in Africa. Numbers aren’t something people can feel empathy toward. These are horrible things, but we don’t actually feel them. If you don’t feel them, why take care of them.

On the other hand, if you have a face for something—someone singular—then you can identify with that person and feel empathy. You can’t feel empathy toward millions, but you can feel empathy for one single person.

That is why movies and books are so powerful, because there is a central character who is a human being, so there is love, hate, passion—all of these universal feelings. Through those feelings you can relate yourself to somebody who is living in a totally different world or in a totally different culture. They just become humanity.

That can be a double-edged sword, because there is always the danger of sensationalism and voyeurism. Some of your scenes are quite explicit. Was sensationalism a concern for you?

I think that sensationalism is more of an issue in the news because art has different means. In literature you can use symbols, metaphors, and language that is for aesthetic purposes. Poetry cannot be sensational. It’s too highbrow. But that is a very good question, because when you think about heroic stories—those are great tools for propaganda.

During the Georgian war, people on both sides would stream these news stories with images of women crying and children crying. Through those types of stories, you can really justify horrible things.

Of course, you can also write a novel or a poem that is propaganda, but it won’t last. I think propaganda is more obvious in literature. Perhaps I am putting too much of my faith in literature.

Women’s bodies are always used as part of the propaganda machine.

Somehow women are always representing the land or nationality. Women can be made into a symbol for anything. And you know a symbol is, by definition, not a person.

Your mother is Estonian. Can you talk a little bit about the importance of the Estonian language to you?

I write in Finnish and I doubt I am ever going to write in Estonian. Estonians really wish I would, but it is an even smaller language that Finnish.

Estonian is a very musical language, a very beautiful language. It’s more musical than Finnish and that has affected how I write because I try to write in a musical way.

In Purge, I tried to create a musical language experience, but I am not trying to take horrible things and make them more beautiful. The language does give a kind of distance that might be easier for the reader. Because people want to protect themselves, but the language can open your heart to something you don’t want to know.

Can you talk about why it is so important to you to call yourself a feminist?

I had never actually questioned calling myself a feminist until I published my first novel and journalists started to ask me that question. But it just always seemed so obvious. If you think that women are equal to men, obviously you are a feminist. But I believe strongly in the differences between genders. In Finland, it seems like a woman has to be a man to be considered equal.

Click here to read Elizabeth’s bio.

Photo by Renee Rosensteel

On April 27, novelist Tommy Wieringa visited Sampsonia Way to give a reading with Sofi Oksanen and Christos Tsoilkas. The event was sponsored by City of Aslyum/Pittsburgh in partnership with PEN/America. While he was here, he sat down for a chat with Sampsonia Way editor Silvia Duarte.

In this interview, he profiles himself, telling stories and anecdotes about his childhood as well as describing his writing process. He laughs easily—especially when the comments are ironic and sharp―and talks about his affection for his characters, who can be universal, although they are stuck in a small village in the Netherlands.

Wieringa’s 2005 novel Joe Speedboat has been translated into ten languages, most recently English. The book was a best seller in Holland. He is also the author of two other novels and a recipient of the F. Bordewijk Prize.

READ an excerpt from Joe Speedboat.

This novel describes many characters which are, in one way or another, trapped in a small village. Why was this topic relevant for you?

I played Rugby in a small village for almost 20 years, and there were players who had big dreams. There was one big man ―almost two meters tall― and a very strong player with the mind of a poet; his dream was to explore the world. After years and years of considering it, he sold his house in the little village and went for his world trip. First, he went to the north of Europe, and he met a woman in Sweden and stayed there. After two years, they broke up and he went back to the village and got a job as a road worker.

So in the end, he couldn’t get out, he couldn’t stretch his wings, and he came back to his cage.

And this story struck me in a very sad and beautiful way. With him, I saw how that works, and in many ways the characters Joe Speedboat and Frankie Hermans are like him.

And Regina Ratzinger―another character― is like the rugby player too. Despite the fact of traveling around the world, she came back to the village, where she remained remembering her “exotic” experiences in a pathetic way.

If your mind is the size of the cage, you come back to the cage. Regina is a particular character; she is a post-hippie. I know a lot of woman like her—they dye their hair with henna, they are interested in astrology, and suddenly they decide that not only they are going to be vegetarian, but their whole family is going to be vegetarian too. Regina has a lot of knowledge and intelligence but she doesn’t know where to use it, because she came back to the village and has spent most of her time in the house.

All these trapped characters are reflected in the last sentence of your book: “We are still here.” How did you end up writing this sentence?

It is the loneliest sentence of the whole book. When I was writing the novel, I knew what the last sentence had to be. I knew that everything that lead to that sentence was right, that everything that diverged from that sentence had to go away.

For that reason was quite easy to write the book; that sentence was my goal. It encloses all the melancholia, all the sadness of the characters.

Is Lomark ―the fictional town in which the book is set― a mixture of the cities where you grew up?

Yes, I grew up in these farm villages—very Catholic—slowly transitioning to industry, and I made use of them. When I was writing the book, I thought back and I saw how these villages looked, how they smelled, and how people lived there. I am unable to write about cities because there are so many things in them to write about. I like to write about small villages, where small things have a big meaning.

Why and when did you start to write?

I felt powerless as an adolescent; I was not able to understand anything that was happening to me. Through writing, I was recreating scenarios and through them I gained a little understanding of love, sex, and my place in the world. I grew up with my father in a very, very large farm house, it was two hours away from school, so I had four hours each day to think about what was happening to me and I wrote like a maniac.

I also understood that language is power and writing is energy in a different form. Things that seem meaningless in life take on light and meaning when you write about them well. And I actually realized that making good use of sentences and trying to control language made me lucky with girls. When I really liked a girl and I was too shy to tell her, I wrote her a letter ―of course a very bombastic letter― but still mine were better than any of my classmates.

You were expelled from school when you were 17; rebelliousness seems to be part of your personality. Your main characters are rebels too. Frankie is a rebel from his wheel chair through observation and writing, and Joe is a rebel through the action of making an airplane. Which of these characters reflects you more?

I think both of them illustrate me in a way. But some characteristics of Joe Speedboat—a guy who likes action—are so far away from me; I never drove a motorcycle, for instance. Actually I grew up more as a girl until I started to play rugby; I had my secret world in diaries and poetry. But on the other hand I was against teachers, against police, etc. I had this problem with authority that caused me a lot of trouble.

But, again, being a girl is really close to me. When I was 15 or 16, I looked like a girl, I had long hair and a pretty face that could be boyish or girlish. I was even whistled  at by construction workers. When I started becoming more masculine, I got rid of the diaries and I began to write prose.

Frankie Hermans is an uncommon paraplegic; he writes in his diaries about everything that happens in the village, and he is the narrator of the book despite the fact he can’t talk. Was it a complex process for you, as a writer, to create that voice and make it believable?

For me that voice was believable since the beginning, because there are cases like Frankie’s in the world. Imagine the voice of Stephen Hawking who is not able to speak, but is one of the greatest minds on earth; he communicates and we actually imagine his strong voice. It’s amazing that someone who is in a wheel chair, unable to move, explains the cosmos.

To write through this character was easy because I just had to remember how it was to be young. But on the other hand, I had a technical problem to make him sound good. How can I make clear what he wants if I couldn’t use dialogue. However, I felt so close of this voice ―and so comfortable writing it― that after I finished Joe Speedboat and started writing a new book, his voice came back to me; I had to wait for a year until this voice evaporated and I could find a new one.

Other of your characters, Arthur Metz ―a novelist― says that every book written without a personal vendetta is a failure.  What do you think about this statement?

I think he is very right about that; there is not great literature without a personal vendetta. This book is a vendetta for me, and it’s very funny that no one in Holland asked about this character or his statement.

Could you describe the process behind your research and its importance?

I read in a newspaper that E. L. Doctorow said that there is not a real need for research; he said that what you should do is use your imagination. Well, I disagree, I like to go with people and ask them many, many questions. The funny thing about research is that it always gives you a little more than you expected.

Also I like to research because it’s nice to leave your desk, go out, and interview the former world champion of arm wrestling or Joost Conjin, who built his own airplane. I love to give my books a strong factual foundation; facts have to be right and strong. Joe Speedboat went to the Dakar Rally in a bulldozer, but before I wrote that part I wanted to be sure that a bulldozer could run at 120 kilometres per hour. I consulted a technician and he gave me more than I asked. He told me, “Well, to make a bulldozer run 120 kilometres per hour, you should adjust this and that, and also that.”

Your book has sold over 300,000 copies. Did you expect such great success of your book?

I was afraid that people couldn’t relate with the book. I was afraid that people saw it as a boys’ adventure book. I know you don’t have to think about readers when you are writing, but sometimes, when you have a bad day or when you are drunk, you do. As you know, most readers are women between their forties and sixties and I thought: how would they possible relate to this boyish view. But readers bought the book and that still surprises and pleases me a lot.

Click here to read Silvia’s bio.