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  • A Year of Grace
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A Year of Grace

Monique Mbeka

I’m getting a year of grace
from my year of pain and rage,
my year of famine —
a year to study film
production in Kinshasa
and finally come of age.

My year of grace is beautiful
for framing my young ideas,
my hopes and fears;
for giving me leave to love
the world around me and a soul
pierced by a thousand stars.

The world declares itself in words,
my pen has come alive.
My old diaries babble
that life is horrible,
I’ll never write so well again,
only the same poems over and over;

but I’ve better things to do
than who what where when.
We are as ‘free’ as ever
we hoped, and I’m writing this while you complain.


Monique Mbeka

from Raw Material, edited by Peter Fallon (Ireland: The Gallery Press, 2011)

translated by Derek Mahon

Reproduced by kind permission of the author and publisher.

Tags:

African poetry Democratic Republic of Congo film and cinema grace learning trauma writing poetry

About this poem

This poem, representing the Democratic Republic of Congo, is part of The Written World – our collaboration with BBC radio to broadcast a poem from every single nation competing in London 2012.

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Monique Mbekab.1962

Born in 1962, Monique Mbeka is a filmmaker, poet, journalist and critic, whose family is from the Democratic Republic of Congo. Since 1995 she has lived and worked in Benin, involved in the production, distribution and promotion of African...
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