{"id":4150,"date":"2022-11-17T10:29:10","date_gmt":"2022-11-17T10:29:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/english-news\/?p=4150"},"modified":"2022-11-17T10:29:10","modified_gmt":"2022-11-17T10:29:10","slug":"first-year-student-has-poetry-published-in-online-literary-journal","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/english-news\/2022\/11\/17\/first-year-student-has-poetry-published-in-online-literary-journal\/","title":{"rendered":"First year student has poetry published in online literary journal"},"content":{"rendered":"

Congratulations to first year English Literature and Creative Writing student Hyla Etame, who recently had her poem, ‘Love Letter to My Fatherland<\/a>‘\u00a0\u00a0<\/em>published by the online literary journal Blue Marble Review<\/a>.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

For Hyla, the piece is of great personal significance. \u2018In this poem, I long for an ancestral home that I have yet to go to,\u2019 she explains. \u2018Many first or second-generation immigrants can relate to this, and I love how even the most intimate of subjects can generate this feeling of connection.\u2019\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

As a student at Kent, Hyla\u2019s poetic craft has developed and evolved on her course. She continues:<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cMy course exposes me to a variety of texts which ignite my imagination. I hope to expand my portfolio while at uni so that I can share more of my work in the literary world.\u201d<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Dr Matt Whittle<\/a>, Director of the Centre for Colonial and Postcolonial Studies<\/a> commented on this success saying ‘The poem is very moving and evocative of the Cameroonian environment and atmosphere that\u2019s longed for. It speaks eloquently to the dilemma voiced by many postcolonial writers that migration opens up two worlds that one is both alienated from but also always connected to.’<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Love Letter to My Fatherland.\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

I long to walk on the shores
\nof your beaches,
\ntouch the cool Atlantic\u2014
\nA horizon of nothing.<\/p>\n

I want to taste your beer,
\nsmoke cigarettes with the middle-aged men
\nin the open-air bars that are in-service
\nfrom late afternoon to the early hours of the morning.<\/p>\n

To step into the terra-cotta clay mud
\nof your dirt roads in the countryside
\nand glide on the smooth pavement of Yaound\u00e9.
\nTo be stared at as I shop in the markets,
\nbe called \u201cforeigner\u201d, \u201cstranger\u201d, \u201cAmerican\u201d
\nin the native tongues.<\/p>\n

To speak broken French with my Francophone family,
\nnearly perfected English with my Anglophone side,
\nand eavesdrop on the surrounding conversations
\nspoken in Pidgin.
\nI know more than they think, ha-ha.<\/p>\n

To savor your smoked barracuda,
\nlong for it to be in every dish\u2026
\nTo glare at the statues commemorating imperialists\u2026
\nTo devour the fried plantains cooked as a midday snack.
\nTo be stung by your mosquitoes
\nas I hike in your national parks.<\/p>\n

To be embraced by my fellow countrymen and women
\nas if I had been born and bred there.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Congratulations to first year English Literature and Creative Writing student Hyla Etame, who recently had her poem, ‘Love Letter to My Fatherland‘\u00a0\u00a0published by the online … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":76779,"featured_media":4158,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1,87526,21640,872,124,178761,26567,178181],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/english-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4150"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/english-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/english-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/english-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/76779"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/english-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4150"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/english-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4150\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4156,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/english-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4150\/revisions\/4156"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/english-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4158"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/english-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4150"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/english-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4150"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/english-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4150"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}