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In the opening lines of his well-known poem, Robert Frost observes: ‘something there is that doesn’t love a wall’. The poem, entitled ‘Mending Wall’, deals with a stone wall dividing the properties of two neighbours. One of them, the narrator in the poem, argues that there is no need for it. He grows apple trees and his neighbour grows pines, and as he jokingly points out, there is no danger that his apple trees would ever ‘get across and eat the cones’ under the other man’s pines. The wall is therefore just a wall of prejudice, a manifestation of a rigid and conservative mindset, represented by the other neighbour who keeps repeating his father’s maxim that ‘good fences make good neighbours’, and seems unable to outgrow this worldview. The narrator tells us that his narrow-minded neighbour ‘moves in darkness’, refusing to reply to the question of what it is he is ‘walling in or walling out’. (Frost 1973: 193-4)
The mysterious entity which ‘doesn’t love a wall’ and keeps degrading it turns out to be Nature itself. In the form of cold weather, ‘frozen ground swell’ and the activities of small animals, it ‘makes gaps even two can pass abreast’. Symbolically, Frost suggests it is the design of Nature that the two neighbours should be able to walk through life together, without barriers between them. By implication, it is also their inner nature, the innermost self of the two men, that urges them to transcend the boundaries of their isolated egos and experience a more profound human connection.
The same motif appears in the poem ‘Walls’ written by Phyllis Coard. Here a nine-year old child listens to her parents planning to build a wall ‘to enclose their house’. As the parents explain, the wall is needed ‘for privacy’, ‘to prevent the neighbours staring into our yard’; and at the same time, to hide from sight the neighbours’ ‘disreputable disgusting behaviour’. The plan is for the barrier to ‘wall in’ the child’s family, with its conventional way of life and set of moral values; and at the same time, to ‘wall out’ the identities that the parents perceive as the potentially threatening, destabilizing Other: a foreigner, an alcoholic, a mother bringing up her baby as a single parent, a woman having an extramarital affair and quarrelling with her husband. However, the child whose parents are planning to build the six-foot wall experiences it as a threat of prison: ‘I measured six-foot in my three-foot nine year old mind:/it reached nearly to the sky.’ The wall threatens to interfere with the child’s natural inquisitiveness, preventing her from expanding her experience and getting in touch with these different lives surrounding her household.
The same as in Frost’s poem, Nature here also represents a positive force thwarting human intention to create unnatural and unwholesome barriers: for Phyllis Coard it is, more precisely, the native soil which is experienced as a loving, animate entity encouraging the child to grow and
learn about the world:
alone
on a dry lawn
my face crushing pale prickly grass,
watching small crawling creatures pass
close to my eye
in a wavering line,
feeling my country’s sinewy body
pressed against mine (…)
(Coard 1991: 16)
Ultimately, the native soil comes to the defence of the child’s inner
freedom. The earth turns out to be so hard and dry that it is impossible to lay
the foundations for a wall:
(…) one day, with joy, I realised
there wasn’t enough money
to pay workmen
to break with a pick
that nine-month dry-season rock
to lay the foundations
for a six-foot wall
or for any wall at all.
(…)
with tightened throat, I recall
my hard-earth country’s adamant defence
of a curious child’s open-hearted innocence;
and through the dust, and past these sounds of doom
there swirls towards me across
sharp-scented grass
the soft, free air of home.
(Coard 1991: 18-20)
The poem ends on an encouraging note, suggesting that it is possible to overcome physical and ideological walls, and that in this struggle one is aligned with the very forces of Nature. In order to fully appreciate the significance of these hopeful lines, however, it is important to set them against the disturbing life circumstances in which the poem was written. It was written in 1991, at a time when Phyllis Coard was incarcerated as a political prisoner in Richmond Hill Prison in Grenada. She had been arrested by the United States forces who invaded the island in 1983, an act of unlawful aggression which met with worldwide condemnation.
In the early 1980s, Phyllis Coard was the Secretary for Women’s Affairs in the People’s Revolutionary Government in Grenada. During their time in power, the members of this Grenadian government did tremendous good for their country. They brought free medical care and free education to Grenada, effected the doubling of the number of doctors on the island and helped raise literacy. They inaugurated a healthy, independent industry and reduced considerably the rate of unemployment. Through the efforts of Phyllis Coard, a maternity leave law was introduced for the first time on the island, as were training programs enabling women to enter the male preserves of engineering and civil service.
When the United States invaded Grenada, Phyllis Coard was captured along with a group of other government and military leaders. The group, which became known as the Grenada 17, was charged with the murder of Prime Minister Maurice Bishop. Phyllis and most of the other defendants were originally condemned to death by hanging, a sentence which was later commuted to life imprisonment.
The trial which resulted in these verdicts was notorious for its flaws and irregularities. The members of the Grenada 17, including Phyllis Coard, were tortured by the occupation forces. Some of them signed confessions of guilt under torture, which were later used as essential evidence in their trial.
The poet writes about this ordeal, and other injustices she and her colleagues suffered, in her prison diary entitled, U.S. War on One Woman. A report written by Amnesty International likewise points out that this group of political prisoners was subjected to ‘cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment’.
Amnesty documents their imprisonment aboard US naval vessels, where many of the 17 were kept in wooden crates or metal containers for days, suffering heat, engine noise and various humiliations; and later on, their subjection to lengthy interrogations and torture. (AI 2003: 6-13) After the verdicts had been delivered, the cruel treatment towards the Grenada 17 continued. For the first eight years, fourteen of them were imprisoned on ‘death row’. The Amnesty report describes:
Two sets of gallows were constructed in the centre of the prison grounds, in plain view of the prisoners. While on death row, the inmates were confined in cells measuring 3 metres by 2 metres without running water or toilet facilities and with the lights permanently on. Additionally, the prisoners were subjected to food restrictions as a means of punishment, often forced to live on bread and water for weeks at a time. (AI 2003: 29)
The Amnesty report goes on to say that ‘the conditions under which Phyllis Coard was held were particularly bad. As the only woman among the Grenada 17, she was often held in de facto solitary confinement with no access to other prisoners, recreation or visitors.’ (AI 2003: 29-30) The foreword to the book of poems by Phyllis Coard, That Other Wall, published in 1991 by her support group, likewise describes the extremely difficult circumstances in which the poems were written:
Since her imprisonment, Phyllis Coard has been in solitary confinement most of the time (…) Denied proper medical attention, exercise, letters from her children and all but the most brief and infrequent visits, she endured her isolation and enforced separation from her family with tremendous strength, courage and dignity. This collection of poems [was] written during some of her darkest moments (…) (Coard 1991: 1)
In her book, U.S. War on One Woman, the poet explains that singing, writing and reciting poetry actually constituted an essential tactic for survival. ‘I counteracted the enforced isolation by keeping as “busy” as possible. I spent a lot of time singing (…) Singing is one activity they simply can’t ban. Another “unbannable activity” in a prison is the composing of poetry, as well as its recitation.’ (Coard 1988: 51)
The poetry of Phyllis Coard transcends physical and metaphorical walls in various ways. In her poem ‘From an Isolation Cell’, she states her choice ‘to live among the Great Ones’ of human history, who may be long dead, but whose rich humanity and ‘quick thinking’ nevertheless provide her with spiritual support. In a poem entitled, ‘From Planet Earth, New Year’s Day 1991’, the poet looks at the contemporary world with concern and compassion, expressing solidarity with people suffering hardships and injustice worldwide. It is a poem which displays an all-encompassing awareness of fratricidal wars, drug addiction, abuse of women, pollution, third world hunger, nuclear proliferation and other problems of humanity, urging us to grasp the indivisibility of human well-being. The poem ‘Little Prison, Big Prison’ outlines the conditions in Richmond Hill Prison, and then turns this description into a metaphorical statement on life in Grenada in general, plagued by poverty and political repression in the aftermath of the United States occupation. ‘Rainy Season’ is written for the poet’s three children. It is a poem of encouragement, expressing profound faith in the perseverance of positive human values and glorifying life itself, ‘with its capacity/ to survive and to evolve’.
The foreword to the collection of poems mentions that in the 1990s a more humane regime was introduced in Richmond Hill and that conditions for the prisoners have generally improved. However, the mental, physical and emotional abuse and stress that Phyllis Coard endured during the first 7 years of her imprisonment have taken a heavy toll. She was diagnosed with cancer in 2000, and granted only temporary release for treatment. She is currently receiving medical treatment in Jamaica.
While there is no wall imagery in the writings of Flora Brovina – a poet, human rights activist and pediatrician from Kosovo – it is certainly possible to discern in her poems and in her life’s work a struggle, similar to that of Phyllis Coard, to transcend various walls of prejudice, ideology and repression. Brovina had worked in the Pediatric Ward of the Priština General Hospital until the early 1990s when, the same as hundreds of thousands of other ethnic Albanians in Kosovo, she was fired from her job, as a part of the repressive measures of the Serbian regime. She responded by starting another health clinic and distributed health care information on various matters. Similar to the Jewish pediatrician Janusz Korczak on the eve of World War II, she also used the clinic to provide shelter to orphaned children, regardless of their nationality. In 1992, she was one of the founders of the Albanian Women’s League. This feminist group took a principled stand that the crisis in Kosovo should be resolved peacefully. In March 1998 they organized demonstrations in which thousands of women participated. They held up blank sheets of paper to indicate that nothing had been signed, that all options were still open and that it was still possible to reach a peaceful solution. (Elsie 2001: 8-9)
I have dedicated my whole life to children, and children do not choose their ethnic origins, children do not know what ethnic group they belong to if their parents do not tell them. As to my patients, I have never divided them according to their ethnic origins, according to religion or to the ideological affiliations of their parents. (…) I am one of the persons most involved in the humanitarian work in Kosovo; I have sacrificed my health in order to help women and children (…) (Elsie 2001: 10)
During the war of 1999, when the Serb authorities embarked on a brutal campaign of mass expulsions of ethnic Albanians, Brovina resolved to remain in Priština for as long as possible in order to provide medical aid to the inhabitants. In April 1999 she was abducted from Priština by a group of Serb paramilitaries and later sentenced by a Serbian court in Niš to 12 years in prison on charges of ‘conspiring to commit hostile acts related to terrorism’. Her lawyer argued that no valid evidence for these charges had been presented. In her final declaration at the trial, Flora Brovina said:
At the time of Brovina’s trial, a counter-wave of ethnic violence was taking place in Kosovo, in which hundreds of thousands of Serbs were now the victims of mass expulsions. Brovina expressed her solidarity with the victims and her desire to work for the reconciliation of the two communities:
If I were free now, I would still have much work to do. I would be helping those who are currently suffering most. It is not the Albanians who are suffering most in Kosovo at the moment, it is the others, the Serbs and Roma, and I would work with all my might in order to help them. (Elsie 2001: 10)
I am very sorry that I’m not free, that I’m in jail, that I’m not able to influence more what is happening now in Kosovo (…), to help those who are expelled and displaced. (…) I would do anything to help reconcile the Serbian and Albanian communities. I urge all Albanian intellectuals to raise their voices and speak out against violence and in favour of reconciliation. Other peoples have also fought, they’ve engaged in even more extensive wars, yet now they are reconciled. (Brovina 1999: 1)
Robert Elsie (Translator)
Well-known writers throughout the world, such as Seamus Heaney, Derek Walcott and Charles Simić, sent letters of support to Brovina and protested against her imprisonment. The writers of the Serbian PEN club likewise demanded her release. (Elsie 2001: 12) With the change of government in Yugoslavia, Flora Brovina was released 19 months later, in November 2000.
As the translator Robert Elsie points out, the poems of Flora Brovina ‘cannot be interpreted as political verse to any great extent’. (Elsie 2001: 11) Her lyricism is most often intimate and focusing on deeply personal impressions. Some of the poems, however, do reflect the poet’s feminist, humanitarian and political preoccupations. A group of poems addresses issues pertaining to the struggle for emancipation and equal rights of Albanian women. In a poem entitled ‘To a Woman’, the poet asks her: ‘What are you holding/ In the pallor of your face/ (…) What are you hiding’ and suggests some possible answers: her unfulfilled desire for tenderness, her tenth pregnancy or her age. In ‘Portrait of an Old Woman’ there is a similar urge to use poetry to give voice to the feminine, to woman’s hidden hopes and fears, and acknowledge the wealth of her inner life: ‘In the silence of her tightly pressed lips/What exquisite tales lie hidden’. Poetry is also seen as a refuge for an overworked woman; the poet tells her, ‘Hop into my verse/ And have a rest’. Other poems, such as ‘The Year 1981’, ‘The First Lesson’, ‘The Demonstrations’, ‘The Curfew’, ‘Freedom’, focus on the plight of Kosovo Albanians, on persecution, mass arrests and other forms of repression inflicted by the Serbian regime during the 1990s. ‘The Year 1981’ bears witness to the poet’s principled dedication to the politics of nonviolence, describing how the demonstrators opposed an army tank by throwing flowerpots on it and covering it with flags. ‘The First Lesson’ demonstrates a belief in the indestructibility of life similar to that which is found in the poetry of Phyllis Coard. Of the missing young men who may have been arrested or killed by the Serbian police, the poet says:
Bring me
No medical certificate,
No paper from parents, police or state,
Say only missing,
We will heal your wounds with flowers
And wait for you
(Brovina 2001: 59)
Refusing documents which would certify death and so lead to the loss of hope, the poet transfers the destiny of the missing people into the realm of poetry and flowers, with the perpetual renewal of vegetative life implying that hope must endure.
In fact, the poetry of Flora Brovina, as Robert Elsie argues, is for the most part the poetry of vegetation, of plants and growing things, and correspondingly, of the children growing in wombs, of ‘births, umbilical cords, amniotic fluid and suckling breasts’. (Elsie 2001: 11)
Sometimes these motifs are also intertwined with political issues, as in the poem ‘Lost Childhood’, dedicated to the poet’s two sons. The poet depicts the harsh circumstances in which the two boys are growing up by saying it is demanded of them to break a nut open with their teeth even though they still haven’t got any molars. She asks, ‘Where is the childhood of my sons’ and says she can only offer them a fairytale instead. The poem expresses universal concerns and anxieties shared by all mothers bringing up their children in an atmosphere of violence and political unrest.
By comparing the poetry of Phyllis Coard and Flora Brovina, as well as their life stories, one notices that although they are historically and ideologically very different, they still move the reader the same way and provoke basically the same ethical response. There is much to be found in common in Brovina’s and Coard’s adherence to progressive ideas, their admirable conduct in the face of adversity, as well as in the injustice done to them. Such insights, however, are often blocked by our partisan allegiances and ideological obstacles to our cognition. One possible way of applying the wall metaphor would be by pointing out that ideological walls tend to prevent us from perceiving the similarities of human rights issues raised in diverse political contexts worldwide. Like the stone wall in the poem of Robert Frost, the poetry of Phyllis Coard and Flora Brovina exposes such ideological walls as ultimately unnatural, and contrary to our most heartfelt human urge for sympathy and connection.
Tag: #NatašaTučev #PhyllisCoard #FloraBrovina #PrisonDiaries #PoliticalPrisoners #Grenada #Serbia #CallmeByMyName #USWarOnOneWoman
Nataša Tučev is Assistant Professor of English Modernism and Twentieth-Century Anglophone Literature at the Faculty of Philosophy, University of Niš, Serbia. She has published two book-length studies: The Secret Sharers: Joseph Conrad’s Literary Characters (2017) and Inner Emigre: Seamus Heaney’s Poetics (2011). Her notable literary translations include Byron’s Childe Harold and Coleridge’s The Rime of the Ancient Mariner.
References
- Amnesty International (2003): The Grenada 17: The Last of the Cold War Prisoners.
http://web.amnesty.org/library/Index/ENGAMR320012003?open&of=ENG-GRD (IV, 2007). - Brovina, F. (1999): Words of Flora Brovina. http://www.annuaire-aufeminin.net/ENGLbioBROVINA.html (IV, 2007.)
- Brovina, F. (2001): Call Me by My Name. New York: Gjonlekaj.
- Coard, P. (1988): U.S. War on One Woman. London: Karia Press.
- Coard, P. (1991): That Other Wall. Tottenham: The Phyllis Coard Support Group.
- Elsie, R. (2001): ‘Introduction’. Call Me by My Name (F. Brovina), New York, Gjonlekaj, pp. 7-12.
- Frost, R. (1973): ‘Mending Wall’. The Norton Anthology of Modern Poetry (ed. R. Ellmann and R. O’Clair), W. Norton
& co., New York, pp. 193-194.