I recently twice had the privilege of seeing the poet Carolyn Forché speak and read from her work. Later this year Forché’s memoir is being published, and I have to say I’m thrilled that this is the case. The memoir is addressed to the poet Ilya Kaminsky—a former student of Forché’s (who, incidentally, did his Bachelor's degree at Georgetown) whose first book, Dancing in Odessa, I’ve read recently. (There should be a review of the book and his reading at Georgetown as part of the Lannan series sometime soon.)

As well as being considered one of the best poets writing in the America today, Forché is also widely known for her commitment to work in human rights: in 1978 she went to El Salvador, writing poems at the same time as working with human rights networks to document what was happening in El Salvador. The portion of her book she read touched on this experience: it was an account of her visit to an El Salvadoran jail during which she witnessed men being kept in boxes—she afterwards learned that some men were kept in these boxes for months at a time. It was amazing—in an awful way. To hear that read in the author’s voice, ahead of its publication, was a real privilege.

This time in El Salvador was the beginning of a long career dedicated to the cause of human rights, and, too, to the work of poets working out of what she terms conditions of extremities. To listen to Forché talk about her career is to realise how little most people ever do. In addition to her direct work in the human rights fields, she has translated the work of other poets, and encouraged her students to get involved in translation: one effect of her teaching is that she has former students scattered all over the world. I understand this—sometimes people tell me they don’t understand how I do as much as I do, but when I hear Forché speak, I feel that I’m not doing enough. I at least feel that the Independence Day Project is doing a little both to increase my knowledge and also to contribute to a sense of poetry in the world.

As a result of this dedication to human rights and the poetry that emerges out of these conditions of extremity she put together the anthology Against Forgetting: I’ve been reading it on and off over the last few months—there’s so much to discover. (All I can say is buy it: buy it now.)

She read, too, a new poem: this was also dedicated to Kaminsky, as she recently took him back to his native city Odessa: I wish I had been able to take down the poem, but instead it washed over me. I look forward to her next book of verse too—I saw her speak in 2003 in San Francisco when her last book was being launched at City Lights. At the time I couldn’t stretch to a hardback, so I bought The Angel of History, which I read a few days later in Central Park. When I had finished that, I went to a bookshop and read the whole of the then-new Blue Hour over a coffee. (There is definitely an advantage to the chain bookstores: they can be used as libraries.) Blue Hour contains an amazing “abecedary” poem—the longest of its kind I have read in English, and a tour de force.

One of the things she talked about that fascinated me more than anything was the way she talked about Paul Celan: talking about how, out of World War II, he chose to write in this German language that had been broken by Nazism. Celan has been an important poet to me for quite some time—I especially appreciate John Felstiner’s translations, which at times coil back into that broken German. German—another language I have to learn, just so I can see how Celan refigures it in his work.