Abstract
Brazilian novelist and poet
Try suggesting to novelist and poet Paulo Scott though, that Nowhere People, his novel about the struggle of a young indigenous girl from the Amazon, was a story he shouldn’t have told, and you’ll receive a good-natured scoff. The light-skinned author, who claims a book of poems he wrote about the invisibility of dark-skinned Brazilians is his least discussed work, is happy to speak for the unheard.
Novelist and poet Paulo Scott
“I know that a few leaders read the book and thought that it was a very important contribution to their fight,” he said of the response to Nowhere People. “If you talk with the indigenous leaders, they will say to you that the war they started to fight centuries ago is still on, because the annihilation and holocaust is still happening.”
Musing on the issue of his own ethnicity, he said: “It’s crazy but I am considered white, but my father is black, my younger brother is black – real dark-skinned. The main issues here in Brazil are connected with this necessity to find an identity, and it’s necessary to talk about these unequal situations.” He says these issues always influence his thinking when choosing things to write about, and he has often given up on projects because he was “too inside the political view”.
When he does find that subtlety, though, he always has something to say. “Maybe my poetry isn’t quite deep or quite original. When you see the poetry from all over the world, you can say that I’m not the best poet, but still I have my strange voice,” he said.
That voice is tangible in the poems published below by Index on Censorship, translated into English for the first time from his acclaimed collection Mesmo sem dinheiro comprei um esqueite novo (Even Without Money I Bought a New Skateboard).
CREDIT: (left) Renato Parada; (right) Eva Bee
Here, Scott looks inwards, examining his own life, but he also takes aim more broadly at the listlessness of his country. His generation, the generation which fought against Brazil’s military dictatorship, has failed spectacularly in Scott’s eyes, despite all it promised. He wants Brazilians to stop looking for some “other” they can blame, and take responsibility for the future.
“Here in Brazil we want to be Americans, we want to be part of the ‘American way’, and sometimes we are blind, we can’t see what we are. I’m talking about myself but also about my generation, about the difficulty to find a way out of your situation, and about the difference between fiction and reality,” he said.
Perhaps in a letter
the convenience of just being someone strange with strange ideas isn’t enough any more you wanted to with all your strength and now you’ve turned into a kind of unbreakable monster and the camera that was accompanying you doesn’t exist any more and all you think about is how to get by the dream others envy is nothing but the only way to get out of bed before the clock in the kitchen strikes noon beginners make up that they drank with you and stayed up all night with you and got up to all sorts in bed with you – all lies so in a party with free whisky a cute girl with short hair comes up close to you and says she feels sorry for you says you’re becoming as pathetic as the characters you invented what’ll be left of everything? literature? what the hell’s the point of literature when you’re happy and in love? (to love is something that’s never completed) I’ve got to write down that never is a person too old I need to get back on form we’re hypnotised wanting to be djs and radio-show hosts playwrights and film-makers we should be a source of hope – what a ridiculous generation that swore never to promise what it couldn’t deliver the birds sing at six in the morning here in rio de janeiro – you alone are responsible throw out the shortcuts try not to blame anyone else
Adverbs
the poet is expected to wash his hands before and after using the urinal and not to get distracted by the temporary disrepair (or even the malformation) of the tiles on the bathroom wall if there are tiles on the bathroom wall and someone waiting at the table the poet is expected to be stone and, being stone, to wait at the table until the others tire of the team game that solitude is until (being invariably stone) he really is stone and someone unaware comes to clean him with water, disinfectant and scouring pad and sets up à la IKEA a barbecue grill that possibly will never be used the poet is expected to be decisive but not necessarily good-looking and to like pets and children and a fair settling of accounts and surfing in Santa Catarina and being of stone (and a godfather) to remember to send birthday cards, trying never to be reckless when talking about the future or love because in the universe of collections of stones nothing’s more cheesy than a letter that’s hurried but still a love letter
The medal girl
the medal girl is the girl with the medals earns her living presenting medals in swimming competitions it’s a job like any other and could be good fun if the other girls were the kind to have a laugh the athletes don’t have a laugh because they’re focused and need to win not every athlete appreciates the medal girls being the medal girl is just one of the jobs of our medal girl – this month she’ll also be a hostess at a party a party in the early hours of Christmas Day she’ll earn almost ten times more than she earns as the medal girl, but she won’t have time time to sit and chat – the medal girl had eight different jobs this year and the year’s not over the medal girl will earn a red dress for working at the party – to be part of a moment of victory is to be part of a moment of beauty the medal girl is evidence of beauty and of luck – beauty isn’t luck or intelligence an athlete needs to be intelligent the medal girl has family, but they’re not from here the medal girl woke up – beauty, the dress, the party the medal girl makes an effort: our medal girl beauty is a present
Rubber
come, hide your feet slip them into this water it’ll still be good for me to wash in everything’s perfect but carry on, go on – possibly hostile to what’s left pretending not to know that I can be sad but I can’t be sad by your side
CREDIT: Pixabay
Translated by