{"id":5733,"date":"2024-02-26T12:31:00","date_gmt":"2024-02-26T12:31:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.booklit.com\/blog\/?p=5733"},"modified":"2024-08-02T13:43:39","modified_gmt":"2024-08-02T13:43:39","slug":"hanna-komar-ribwort","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.booklit.com\/blog\/2024\/02\/26\/hanna-komar-ribwort\/","title":{"rendered":"Hanna Komar: Ribwort"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Hanna Komar\u2019s Ribwort<\/em> (2022, tr: 2023) is a poetry collection that calls for healing, using the titular plant as a metaphor for soothing emotional wounds. It\u2019s a bilingual edition, showing the poems in their original Belarussian alongside the poet\u2019s translations. The first section showcases a series of personal poems that examine the poet and what has scarred her, while the latter part lifts us beyond introspection into the heart of a wider movement, of protest and solidarity as the wounded woman comes to represent her wounded motherland.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The opening poem, Dublin Night<\/em>, sees Komar sitting in the Irish capital somewhat dissociated from the party atmosphere around her. Inviting the salve of another to \u201cwrap around me \/ like ribwort\u201d it hints at a need for affection and consolation, something that recurs through these poems. In Not What I Wanted Her To Be<\/em>, she longs for a bedfellow to comfort her, using her mother\u2019s methods as an example (\u201cwhen I\u2019d get sick as a child \/ she\u2019d check my temperature \/ and give me medication \/ rather than lying next to me\u201d) of what she doesn\u2019t want.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Beyond familiar relationships, there are love interests, equally damaging. In Advice<\/em>, a passing woman suggests her best outcome in life is to be married. In Through The Dark Woods<\/em> she realises she\u2019s not at the centre of the world, which becomes clear later in the quick one-two of Sharp<\/em> – where \u201csimply a rib removed\u201d is a scalpel cut across the nature of a man \u201clooking for \/ other smooth-skinned bodies\u201d – and Non-Monogamy<\/em>, where:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n

my river
nourishes plenty of life
but can\u2019t 
quench the thirst
of your roots
which are searching for 
other springs.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

But there are other concerns that link to inner turmoil. In Listen<\/em> Komar castigates herself for not taking advice. In The Quiet of My Body<\/em> a stomach churns as she struggles to grasp \u201cmy deafness to the polyphony of fate\u201d. In A Book From the Sky<\/em> her need for expression is in want of a voice. (\u201cNo matter how many voices \/ teach me to speak \/ I remain illiterate\u201d).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Literacy, through many voices, comes when the poetry shifts to the national, observing the 2020 protests in Minsk. A dramatic account, based on an oral interview, of a couple\u2019s taking to the streets against \u201ca wall of police\u201d, leading to torture and imprisonment. When Komar writes \u201cAnd I limped \/ and limp-ed \/ and lim-p-ed \/ all the way to jail\u201d we can practically see the pained movement. Where set-backs exist, hope and determination blooms in We Couldn’t Find You<\/em> (\u201cwhen it\u2019s over \/ i will help you paint \/ these bare walls \/ white \/ red \/ white\u201d), and the resistance is encouraged – at Niamiha, \u201cOne enough is not enough\u201d; at Pu\u0161kinskaja \u201cwe\u2019re ninety-seven percent \/ and each one of us brings flowers.\u201d – in the call for a better world for those Belarussians suffering, as Spring<\/em> notes, \u201cthe accident of birth\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It\u2019s clear that the two sections work in tandem, with the first seeing Komar look to heal herself with the metaphorical ribwort, finding a voice, and in the latter part, on the streets of Minsk, a means to use it. Where the reflective poems are short and personal, their experiences pan out to the universal and timeless. The immediacy of the more blatantly political poems are charged with both anger and the freshness of the experience. Closing poem, When It\u2019s Over<\/em>, licks the bruises of recent years but sings with resolve (\u201cwe will tell \/ how we survived\u201d) for the future, of the country, and those caught up in its turmoil for whom candles stay lit.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Hanna Komar\u2019s Ribwort (2022, tr: 2023) is a poetry collection that calls for healing, using the titular plant as a metaphor for soothing emotional wounds. It\u2019s a bilingual edition, showing the poems in their original Belarussian alongside the poet\u2019s translations. The first section showcases a series of personal poems that examine the poet and what Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":5646,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":true,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[320],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5733","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-komar-hanna"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.booklit.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/08\/41un6d0G92L._AC_UF8941000_QL80_-2.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6Pon-1ut","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.booklit.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5733","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.booklit.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.booklit.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.booklit.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.booklit.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5733"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.booklit.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5733\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5783,"href":"https:\/\/www.booklit.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5733\/revisions\/5783"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.booklit.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5646"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.booklit.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5733"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.booklit.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5733"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.booklit.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5733"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}