And the Secrets are Shouted-Whispered | by Gia Mawusi
And the Secrets are Shouted-Whispered is a new pamphlet of poems in English and Portuguese, and a short story, by Gia Mawusi.
‘In between the silence / the sound of zagaias,’ begins the poems of And the Secrets are Shouted-Whispered. This is a world where, ‘the dreams of tomorrow / clash with the nightmares of yesterday’; where, ‘Hopes are not reality, struggle is’; where the clanging bells of dissonance ring louder than the quiet music of continuity. Yet the sentences of these poems stagger and sway to a continuing beat: from Mozambique, to Portugal, to the ‘seagulls and pigeons’ of a town in England; the edges of an outside environment—where ‘the light / hits the townscape / just right’—stalk the edges of inner thought.
Sharp observations and contradictory feelings come alive and tremble in this ‘new world’: a world that wasn’t born into a hollow vacuum, but is the consequence of History, both nearby and seemingly faraway. But they are threatened by the constantly shifting scenery: the quick glance behind, and the long look forward, each foot moving in front of one another, their only option to continue, as, ‘The town and roads I walked yesterday / are no more.’ Here, in the depths of present-history, the only certainty can be that ‘We are all living on borrowed time’—as honest and as doubtful as another day’s dawn chorus of birdsong, as the Mucambira tree standing ‘proud and tall’; as the ‘colourful cloths’ adorning a body.
And where is poetry in all of this? Here, it assumes its generative role as ‘The Lie-Truth that shouts / Within the soul.’ The speaker stands and moves within the pentacle of her own poetry, her own Histories, from which ‘foremothers look ahead’. But the future vanishes the moment she turns to look at it. And still, it is spoken: ‘Yet… / I hope’. She lives for a reason: to speak of memory, of survival, of reality and fantasy, of both the whole and the fragmented all at once—and even it: this thing they call hope. In this moment it is worth remembering James Baldwin’s words: “The place in which I’ll fit will not exist until I make it.” Or: ‘And the zagaias will sound again / to remind us of who we were before / who we can become again.’ — red herring press
Contents
Zagaias
A Poem in 3 Takes
The Fence
RUÍNAS / Ruins
Too many foreigners / The fear voices
Between Yesterday and Tomorrow
I am who I am
INSTANTÂNEO / Instantaneous
O MICROSCÓPIO / The Microscope
Black
SOLIDÃO / Solitude
RAIOS DE SOL / Rays of Sun
Northern Sea
War
GRITO / Scream
Within the Waves (Short story)
“Peace and a Dove”: a conversation between Gia Mawusi & Lotte L.S. about poetry and everything in between.
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68 pages, A5 | Edited, typeset & published by red herring press in Great Yarmouth.
Cover illustration by Zoja Petrošiūtė | First printing March 2024.
£5 including UK shipping. | £10 including shipping to rest of world. | £3.50 to Great Yarmouth residents: collect from red herring press, 135 King Street, Great Yarmouth (or get in touch).
Free to anyone who can't afford it. Get in touch: redherringpress@tuta.io