Post by makoval38 on May 21, 2012 15:02:45 GMT -5
Valzhyna Mort was born and raised in Minsk, Belarus during and after the years of the Soviet Union. Her country “crawl[ed] from the ruins of a bombing” after the Soviet Union had disintegrated and was reborn and could barely stand on its own two feet. She grew in a poverty in a place where “famine is nutrition/ poverty is wealth/thirst is water,”. When Mort grew older, she attended the middle-school in Minsk where she learned Belarus as a second language. She had realized that Russian was the dominant language in her country and that in order to grow away from the gaping hole of a country that the Soviet Union had left behind it was the duty of the Belarusians to embrace their own culture and language.
Mort has tied in the idea of the rebirth of her home by creating a dominant perspective of a little child in her poetry who is both a representative of her home country and of the people who have just been reborn. Since Belarus was one of the most dependent countries on the Soviet Union, the post-soviet years were very hard for them and they were forced to face the world as children. The use of a child’s perspective provides a unique and very innocent viewpoint of the ways a child views the horrible and crumbling world described in Mort’s poetry.
After publishing her first book I am as thin as your eyelashes she was acclaimed as “ risen star of the international poetry world” by the Irish Times. Her poems were viewed as electrifying as she depicted the struggles of her country as it tried to establish its own identity. Her passion towards her country and its language were evident through the pages of her work of poetry. She also received the Crystal of Vilenica award in Slovenia in 2005 and the Burda Poetry Prize in Germany in 2008.
When she first came to America in 2005 her first impression of New York was “TA-DA”, and that it was a magical place where ”a tailed magician/is pulling New York/by the ears of skyscrapers”. America was the land of opportunity, a place that was considered very foreign compared to the world she had just left. The idea of going to America was always intangible like the “internet, the telephone to America,” The contrast between the shiny, new, and magical America and the crumbling country of Belarus is evident through her poems.
However, even after moving to Washington D.C., Mort never let go with her ties to her own culture. References to the post-Soviet era still saturate the majority of her poetry and the first ever bilingual Belarusian-English book of poetry titled Factory of Tears was published in the United States. Her ties to her language are evident through her persistence in writing in the Belarusian language an advocating for the use of it as she says “we ourselves are the language”.
Her poetry has reminded each and every one of us that it is important to embrace one’s culture and one’s language. We are honored that Ms. Valzhyna Mort was able to join us and please join me in welcoming Ms. Valzhyna Mort!
Words: 530
Mort has tied in the idea of the rebirth of her home by creating a dominant perspective of a little child in her poetry who is both a representative of her home country and of the people who have just been reborn. Since Belarus was one of the most dependent countries on the Soviet Union, the post-soviet years were very hard for them and they were forced to face the world as children. The use of a child’s perspective provides a unique and very innocent viewpoint of the ways a child views the horrible and crumbling world described in Mort’s poetry.
After publishing her first book I am as thin as your eyelashes she was acclaimed as “ risen star of the international poetry world” by the Irish Times. Her poems were viewed as electrifying as she depicted the struggles of her country as it tried to establish its own identity. Her passion towards her country and its language were evident through the pages of her work of poetry. She also received the Crystal of Vilenica award in Slovenia in 2005 and the Burda Poetry Prize in Germany in 2008.
When she first came to America in 2005 her first impression of New York was “TA-DA”, and that it was a magical place where ”a tailed magician/is pulling New York/by the ears of skyscrapers”. America was the land of opportunity, a place that was considered very foreign compared to the world she had just left. The idea of going to America was always intangible like the “internet, the telephone to America,” The contrast between the shiny, new, and magical America and the crumbling country of Belarus is evident through her poems.
However, even after moving to Washington D.C., Mort never let go with her ties to her own culture. References to the post-Soviet era still saturate the majority of her poetry and the first ever bilingual Belarusian-English book of poetry titled Factory of Tears was published in the United States. Her ties to her language are evident through her persistence in writing in the Belarusian language an advocating for the use of it as she says “we ourselves are the language”.
Her poetry has reminded each and every one of us that it is important to embrace one’s culture and one’s language. We are honored that Ms. Valzhyna Mort was able to join us and please join me in welcoming Ms. Valzhyna Mort!
Words: 530