YVETTE CHRISTIANSĖ
A reading by the author
Tuesday, 03/24 7 PM
Sulzberger Parlor
3rd Floor Barnard Hall
Poet and fiction writer Yvette Christiansė was born in South Africa under apartheid and immigrated with her parents to Australia at age 18. Her work has been published internationally, and her poetry collection, Castaway, was a finalist for the 2001 PEN International Poetry Prize. Her acclaimed first novel, Unconfessed, is based on the life of a slave woman in the Cape Colony and was a finalist for the 2007 Hemingway/PEN International Prize for First Fiction. Christiansė received her PhD from the University of Sydney and teaches in the English department at Fordham University. Sponsored by the Barnard Africana Studies Program.
Here is one of her poems: Dark Days Come September
Do not ask, the gods have put on their masks,
covered their hair, and rains have washed
down the coast, hard on the edge of lightning.
Do not ask, go quickly and buy wine
that I may think less, sing more, smile
and put my face up, ready, as ready as ever
for the sun I have been waiting for the sun,
and when it comes full bore and round,
I will swallow it like an egg.
-Yvette Christiansë |
