Maria da Conceição de Deus Lima (Santana, 8 de Dezembro de 1961), mais conhecida por Conceição Lima, é uma poeta natural de Santana da ilha de São Tomé, Estudou jornalismo em Portugal e trabalhou na rádio, televisão e na imprensa escrita em São Tomé e Príncipe. Em 1993 fundou o semanário independente O País Hoje. Na altura exerceu a função de directora do mesmo até a data da sua extinção. É licenciada em Estudos Afro-Portugueses e Brasileiros pelo King's College de Londres. Já publicou poemas em jornais, revistas, e antologias em vários países. Em 2004 publicou O Útero da Casa pela editorial Caminho de Lisboa e em 2006 publicou A Dolorosa Raiz do Micondó pela mesma editorial.

Maria da Conceição de Deus Lima (Santana, December 8, 1961), also known as Conceição Lima, is a Santomean poet from the town of Santana. She studied journalism in Portugal and worked in radio, television and in the print press in her native country. In 1993, Conceição Lima founded the weekly independent publication O País Hoje (The Country Today) which she directed and wrote for during its circulation. She received a degree in Afro-Portuguese and Brazilian Studies from King's College in London. Her poetry has been published in newspapers, magazines, and anthologies in several countries. O Útero da Casa was her first book of poetry and was published in 2004 in Lisbon by the Portuguese publishing house Caminho. Her second book (also poetry), A Dolorosa Raiz do Micondó, was released in 2006 by the same publisher.

A CASA

Aqui projectei a minha casa:

alta, perpetua, de pedra e claridade.

O basalto negro, poroso

viria da Mesquita.

Do Riboque o barro vermelho

da cor dos ibiscos

para o telhado

Enorme era a janela e de vidro

que a sala exigia um certo ar de praça.

O quintal era plano, redondo

sem trancas nos caminhos.

Sobre os escombros da cidade morta

projectei a minha casa

Recortada contra o mar.

Aqui.

Sonho ainda o pilar –

uma rectidão de torre, de altar.

Ouço murmúrios de barcos

na varanda azul

E reinvento em cada rosto fio

a fio

as linhas inacabadas do projecto.

In O Útero da Casa, Ed. Caminho, 2004

THE HOUSE

Here I wanted my house built.

It was to be tall, permanent, made of stone and light.

Of porous black basalt

brought from Mesquita.

The roof-tiles made

with mud from Riboque,

red as the heart of the hibiscus flower.

There would be a vast glass window

to give it a certain public air.

The backyard would be smooth and round

open to all paths.

Upon the ruins of the dead city

I laid the plans for my house

standing proud against the sea.

Right here.

I even dreamt of a dock –

tall and grand as an altar.

I can hear the murmur of boats

From my blue verandah.

In face after face I trace

The unfinished lines of my plans.

Translation copyright 2007 by Amanda Hopkinson. All rights reserved.

A LENDA DA BRUXA

San Malanzo era velha, muito velha.

San Malanzo era pobre, muito pobre.

Não tinha filhos, não tinha netos

Não tinha sobrinhos, não tinha afilhados

Nem primos tinha e nem tinha enteados

Era muito pobre e muito velha

Muito velha e muito pobre.

Era pobre, era velha san Malanzo

Pobre e muito velha

velha e muito pobre

Era velha e pobre

Era pobre e velha

Velha pobre

Pobre velha

Velha

Pobre

Feiticeira.

In A Dolorosa Raíz do Micondó, Ed. Caminho, 2006

THE TALE OF THE SORCERESS

San Malanzo was old, so old.

San Malanzo was poor, so poor.

No children nor grandchildren,

Still less step-children, even nephews.

She was so very poor and so very old.

Old and poor she was, San Malanzo,

Poor and very old.

She was old and poor Old poor-- Poor old-- Old Poor Sorceress.

Translation copyright 2007 by Amanda Hopkinson. All rights reserved.

OS PEQUENOS TIRANOS

Os pequenos tiranos

que fundaram um reino ao pé da sua tristeza

Os pequenos tiranos que não conquistaram os mares da China

nem os domínios do Manicongo

Os pequenos tiranos que tarde escalaram o tejadilho

e do alto avistam um globo minguado

Os pequenos tiranos arrastam p'los corredores

sapatos que iluminam a sua missão

e engendram em timbradas pastas secretas linhas de acção.

Vendam os olhos à faísca que na dúvida tresluz

e sussuram o édito em minúsculos conclaves

porque temem das palavras o eco e o rasto

Vivem barricados nos próprios passos

pois ser suave e ser lento, julgam,

é ser clarividente é ser sábio.

São homens estreitos e magros e lentos

os pequenos tiranos

que sonharam suspender os ponteiros dos relógios.

Não sabem que são cegos e tiranos os ponteiros dos relógios

e quando a tarde derrota a urgência do memorando

trancam devagar a porta do seu reino

e naufragam num mundo que agrava

o peso do corte dos seus fatos.

Os pequenos tiranos

são homens estreitos e magros e lentos

que não conquistaram os mares da China

nem os domínios do Manicongo

Temem das palavras o rasto

e sussuram o édito em vazios conclaves

para ampliar o eco da sua perpétua infância.

In 'A Dolorosa Raiz do Micondó'

 

PETTY TYRANTS

Petty tyrants

who founded kingdoms at the foot of their sorrow

Petty tyrants who will never conquer the China Seas

or the realms of Manicongo

Petty tyrants who climb the roofs of their shacks

and survey the waning world from on high

Petty tyrants tear the shoes off speeding runners

who illuminate their messengers' way

and produce clandestine plans of action in sealed portfolios.

They blindfold sparkling eyes letting no light enter

and whisper proclamations in closed conclaves

fearful of words with the power to echo or leave traces.

They live immured by their footfalls

for to be gentle or slow is, they judge,

to be both discerning and wise

They are meagre, narrow and slow men,

these petty tyrants,

who dream of stopping the clocks.

They don't know that clock hands are also blindly tyrannical

and when evening destroys the urgency of their appointments

they gradually bolt every door to their kingdom

shipwrecked in a world which aggravates

the evil weight of their deeds.

The petty tyrants

Are meagre, narrow and slow men

who will never conquer the China Seas

nor the realms of Manicongo.

They fear words that leave traces

and whisper to the public in empty conclaves

to amplify the echo of their perpetual childhood.

Translation copyright 2007 by Amanda Hopkinson. All rights reserved.

Recusa / Denial

Recusa [Maria João Cantinho]

Pedem à mulher que se sente
e sossegue o fogo dos gestos,
pedem-lhe que ilumine a noite
que há no seu corpo. Pedem.
E ela morde os lábios,
um não, o grito.

Pedem à mulher que se cale
e que não escreva a loucura
que traz nas mãos, o tropel
que avança no seu ventre. Pedem.

E pedem-lhe que siga,
que deixe de ler as estrelas
quando ela já nada pode. Pedem.

Pedem-lhe que deixe de amar a madrugada
e que não acredite na liberdade.
Não existe, dizem.

Mas a mulher traz a ferocidade nos pulsos,

não dorme e vela a noite como um lobo,

aperta os lábios, não chora,

dança, nua e descalça, sobre o fogo das palavras,

não teme a escuridão nem as feras

que descem da montanha para a ver.

A mulher conhece o som

do coração da terra,

escuta a fala das árvores, o salto do tigre.

E ela sabe que só a dança

salva o grito. Luta.

O corpo desarmado e nu,

o canto selvagem

que nasce de si,

na desvairada recusa. Dança.

                                              [The Titeux Dancer - c.375-350 B.C., Louvre]

Denial [Maria João Cantinho]

They ask the woman to sit down

To calm down the fire of gestures

They ask her to light up the night

that inhabits her body. They ask

And she bites her lips

in denial, a scream.

They ask the woman to shut down

and not to write the madness

that she has in her hands, the clatter

that grows in her womb. They ask

And they ask her to follow on,

to stop reading the stars

though she cannot do it. They ask

They ask her to stop loving the dawn

and not to believe in freedom.

There is none, they say.

But the woman wears wildness in her wrists

she doesn’t sleep, and wakes all night like the wolf,

she tautens her lips, and refuses to cry.

She dances, naked and barefoot, over the ember words

fearless of the darkness, of the wild animals

that come down the mountain to watch her.

The woman knows the sound

of the heart of the earth

She listens to the trees’ talk, to the jumping tiger.

She knows that only the dance

can save her scream. She fights

her body unarmed and bare,

the savage chant

born from herself

in frantic denial. She dances.

[in Sílabas de Água, 2005 - trans. H. Barbas]

Fifty Years of Women Writers in Prison

8 March 2010 – International Women’s Day

2010 marks the 50th Anniversary of the Writers in Prison Committee (WiPC) of International PEN, which has since 1960 helped many hundreds, if not thousands, of writers attacked for expressing their ideas and speaking their minds. Throughout the year PEN members will be celebrating the courage of these writers and the work of the Committee. Central to the campaign are 50 emblematic cases of writers for whom PEN has campaigned in the past half century. Among them are fourteen women who have suffered imprisonment and even death for their writings. On 8 March Women’s Day, the WiPC celebrates and commemorates all women writers, past and present, who have suffered arrest, attack and even murder for having spoken out.

Among the first cases worked on by PEN’s WiPC was that of Musine Kokalari, who, by the time the Committee was established in 1960, had already been imprisoned for 14 years. She was the first woman writer to be published in Albanian but fell foul of the authorities in 1946 and was sentenced to 20 years in prison. She was released into a job as a street sweeper in 1964 and died in 1983. All her work had been destroyed and PEN hopes to be able during this anniversary year to publish a piece for the first time in over 60 years.

Women’s rights activists have found themselves at the forefront of the struggle for free expression. One of those is Nawal El-Saadawi, known internationally for her feminist writings and an outspoken critic of the Egyptian government. Saadawi was imprisoned between 1981 and 1983 and has over the years since received death threats, had her books banned and harassed by the authorities. Less well known but nonetheless influential, was Alaíde de Foppa de Solórzano a leading Guatemalan writer and activist who ran a weekly feminist radio programme in the late 1970s which, among other issues, highlighted the oppression of Mayan women. She was among the 45,000 people who disappeared during the internal armed conflict in Guatemala in the 70s and 80s. She was last seen in December 1980, 30 years ago.

Another woman writer who was among the thousands who disappeared in the Americas during the same period was Alicia Partnoy. She, however, survived her ordeal and returned after six months in prison where she was beaten and tortured, to tell her story. She now lives in the USA.

Nien Cheng also wrote a searing account of her own imprisonment in China in Life and Death in Shanghai. In 1966 Cheng was accused of being a spy for the UK and incarcerated for six and a half years. During this time she was subjected to interrogation, torture and solitary confinement. In October 1978 government officials apologised for Nien Cheng's wrongful arrest and imprisonment. In 1980 she left China the USA. She died in 2009 aged 93.

In the Americas today, outside of Cuba, there are few countries that imprison writers, but since the 1990s there has been an alarming and consistent pattern of murders, particularly of journalists who disclose corruption. Today Lydia Cacho, a Mexican journalist and campaigner against child sex abuse, lives under constant threat. She was briefly detained in 2005 and although she was eventually acquitted of defamation of a businessman she implicated as being involved in child pornography rings, the threats continue.

In the 70s and 80s, as today, women in Iran found themselves the target of oppression. Shahrnush Parsipour has had the dubious honour of being imprisoned both under the Shah in the mid 1970s, and by the Revolutionary Guard in the early 1980s. Parsipour, like many other writers who survive prison, find themselves in exile. Poet Maria Elena Cruz Varela left Cuba in 1994 after two years in prison and now lives in Spain. Martha Kumsa, an Ethiopian journalist and Oromo rights activist is now in Canada after nine years imprisonment without charge during which time she was subjected to physical abuse and torture by prison guards. The controversial Bangladesh author, Taslima Nasrin, who fled death threats and a trial for her “blasphemous” writings in 1994, remains unable to return to her home country and continues to write challenging articles for which she is still threatened. Sihem Bensedrine, a journalist and activist from Tunisia has suffered endless harassment, brief arrest and threat for over a decade, and now lives outside her country, returning as often as she can to maintain her work as an advocate and activist for democracy and human rights in Tunisia and the broader Arab world.

For decades, writers in the Soviet Union were sent in their thousands to gulags, prisons and psychiatric units. Among them was Irina Ratushinskaya, whose poetry smuggled from prison has become a standard text for the study of the literature of incarceration. She was freed in 1986 after four years hard labour and came to Britain. She has since been able to return to Russia. The fall of the Iron Curtain brought new dangers. Where in the past imprisonment had been used to silence critical voices, it is now the gun. Since 1992, 52 journalists have been killed in Russia, including nine women. In 2006, Anna Politkovskaya, a courageous journalist who covered all kinds of dangerous assignments, from Russian army human rights abuses in Chechnya, to local corruption, was herself assassinated

One the world’s longest serving political prisoners is the Burmese writer and opposition party leader, Aung San Suu Kyi, held under house arrest for 14 of the 21 years since she was first arrested in 1989. In February 2010 the Supreme Court in Burma rejected an appeal by Aung San Suu Kyi against an extension of her house arrest.

Women writers under attack today

Women continue to be imprisoned, threatened and killed for their writing today. Of the 900 writers and journalists who had suffered attacks recorded by the WiPC during 2009, 52 are women. Three of them are among the emblematic cases featured in PEN’s 50th Anniversary campaign: Lydia Cacho, Sihem Bensedrine and Aung San Suu Kyi. Here follows outlines of three others.

PEN’s annual Day of the Imprisoned Writer on 15 November 2009 featured Natalia Estemirova, a journalist and rights defender working for the acclaimed rights group, Memorial, in Chechnya, was abducted and murdered, shot in the head and chest in a nearby woodland, on her way to work in Grozny. Estemirova was a close colleague of Anna Politkovskaya, and the two women had collaborated in disclosing abuses.

Parvin Ardalan, a leading and award-winning Iranian writer, editor and women’s rights activist has been under threat since 1997. She has been repeatedly arrested, interrogated and harassed, summoned to court on numerous occasions and has been subject to travel restrictions and heavy surveillance. Ardalan left Iran for Sweden in September 2009, after being invited to give a talk by the Swedish feminist magazine Bang. If she is returned to Iran, the persecution against her would resume. Olaf Palme Award for Parvin Ardalan

Tran Khai Thanh Thuy , a Vietnamese novelist, poet, essayist and editor of the underground dissident magazine To Quoc (Fatherland), has been under heavy surveillance and harassment since September 2006 for her writings published online. She was arrested at her home in April 2007, where she had already been under house arrest for six months. She was convicted of ‘causing public disorder’ and released after her trial, but still faces three years under a surveillance order.

For further information on International PEN’s Writers in Prison Committee go to Because Writers Speak Their Minds or contact:

Sara Whyatt, International PEN Writers in Prison Committee, Programme Director sara.whyatt@internationalpen.org.uk

Call for Solidarity: Freedom and Gender Equality in Iran

Call for Solidarity: Freedom and Gender Equality in Iran 

 

We (a group of Iranian feminists and women’s rights activists) demand an end to state-led violence and repression, as well as the immediate release of all political detainees in Iran. We invite all women’s rights defenders, activists, organisations, and networks worldwide to demonstrate their solidarity with the Iranian women’s movement and the broader movement for democracy in Iran by organising initiatives under the slogan “freedom and gender equality in Iran” throughout March 2010.  
 
Over the past thirty years, the Iranian women’s movement has been at the forefront of the struggle for freedom and equality in Iran. Gender discrimination intersects with other forms of subordination – whether based on class, ethnicity, political orientation, religion, and so on. Thus, the peaceful resistance of women and men in defence of gender equality in all social spheres – legal, political, cultural, economical, etc. – has profoundly impacted the Iranian movement for democracy. Iranian women have long demanded freedom and gender equality; they have employed both individual and group strategies, initiated various campaigns, and faced insults, threats, arrests and imprisonment in the process. Many of these women are currently in prison. 
 
Over the past eight months, the grass-roots protest movement that emerged following the disputed presidential elections has been suppressed by mounting violence. Physical and psychological violence – through arrest, torture, rape, extended imprisonment, and even execution – has been exercised against civil and political activists in Iran. As of now, numerous women activists from various movements – women’s, workers, students, civil, and political – are detained and/or have received heavy sentences. The list of detainees grows everyday.  
 
These circumstances, along with a new wave of arrests of women activists, have granted the authorities space enough to expedite legislations of a further gender-discriminatory nature, such as the “Family Support Bill,” which aims to further limit women’s rights in the name of ‘strengthening’ the family. For the past thirty years, Iranian women have been subjected to a range of discriminations justified by the Sharia-derived laws. On the 30th anniversary of the Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW), to which Iran is not a signatory, the women of Iran are facing increased discrimination. Fifteen years after the Fourth World Conference on Women and the drafting of the Beijing Platform for Action, in which the government of Iran participated, the Iranian government has yet to abide by its international obligations and work towards the elimination of discrimination against women.  
 
During these critical times, the transnational solidarity of feminists and women’s rights activists with their Iranian counterparts is not only limited to the struggles of women; it also supports the broader movement for democracy in Iran. Various civil rights movements in Iran have long been in communication with both the transnational Iranian and the international communities. Global solidarity is crucial to giving voice to their repeated calls for freedom and equality in Iran. 
 
We invite all women’s rights defenders, activists, organisations, and networks worldwide to demonstrate their solidarity with the Iranian women’s movement and the broader movement for democracy in Iran by organising initiatives under the slogan “freedom and gender equality in Iran” throughout March 2010. 
 
 
Suggested Strategies for Action 
 
Below, please see some of the ways in which you can show solidarity with Iranian women. These are only examples; please feel free to be creative in your expression of solidarity. 
 
 
• Mark the 8th of March by focusing on the situation of women in Iran in publications, blogs, public lectures, demonstrations, and community gatherings; 
 
• Organise local events that focus on the current struggle in Iran as part of the World March of Women;  
 
• Feature the slogan “Freedom and Gender Equality in Iran” on websites, Op-Eds, flyers, advertisements, public demonstrations, as well as in other innovative actions taken by activists, artists, feminists, and intellectuals; 
 
• Keep in touch with us through our email iran.genderequality@gmail.com, blog, Facebook group , and Twitter page, where we will cover the news and reactions regarding the worldwide “freedom and gender equality in Iran” initiatives. Our goal is for these pages to also become virtual spaces for debate and engagement between feminists and women’s rights activists worldwide and those in Iran; 
 
• Make short films and take pictures of your local “freedom and gender equality in Iran” actions. We will gather these and publish them on the internet pages mentioned above. A YouTube channel dedicated to these footages might be set up in the future.

Poema para uma mulher de Burka / Poem for a woman under a Burka

Poema para uma mulher de Burka [Maria do Sameiro Barroso]

Chegavas junto a mim, como um animal
faminto,
que a luz para a sua sede implorava,
não vivendo o agora, nem o hoje
nem o sempre,
apenas os relógios parados,
suspensos do tempo amedrontado
que sobrava dos detritos

dos banquetes de serpentes.

Poem for a woman under a Burka [Maria do Sameiro Barroso]
You came to me like an hungry
animal,
begging light to its thirst,
not living now, not today
nor ever,
only the stopped clocks,
suspended from the frightened time,
left on the debris

of the banquets of snakes.

How many roads must a woman walk down, before you call her a human being? The answer is not blowing in the wind; it is buried in the earth. And it would be easy to let it come into the surface but for the insane search for truth, when we already know for a long time that there is no truth, no unique truth, no reason but myriads of reasons, and each one with its front face and many hidden faces. Masks turn too easily into skin.

Perhaps things become clearer, if we replace the search for truth through the patient daily work for sense. Sense of justice for us and our environment, in which we live with our loved ones. They are just like us under threat. The fragility may turn into energy with the running of the ink – even when we tip the words on the computer we feel ink running under our feet and flow into the earth. Terra incognita.

Welcome to our writing forum.

Teresa Salema