#artistpoetcollaborations

[femmesfollesnebraska]

Naida Mujkić , poet

Thrilled to feature the poetry of  Naida Mujkić along with an interview. Enjoy!

Where are you from? How did you get into creative work and what is your impetus for creating?

That is a a key philosophical question. J Where do we all come from? I was born in former Yugoslavia, but not as a free human being, you know, because in those 7 years of my life in that country, I didn’t have the right to my own language and to my identity, as the basic right of every human being. I survived the hell of a Bosnian war, and now I live in a maybe free small country  that goes by the name of Bosnia, but I also spent some time in Australia and Austria.

What moved me to be creative is the agony of the war. Sad, but true, as is was the main topic of my writing and my life, and its influence on the life of every woman who was lucky to survive. So many woman were raped, and abused in so many ways in the past 25 years in my country, and I felt the need to use the language of art to express the my pain and pain of others. It doesn’t hurt less if you share your pain with another person, but pain becomes bearable.

Tell me about your current/upcoming show/exhibit/book/project and why it’s important to you. What do you hope people get out of your work?

Well, last year I tried to write my first novel. And it went well, for that six months, but then I leave it aside and went back to writing poetry. Now I have been working on a book that I call “Old Clock” and it is a book of poetry that includes a lot of poems about migrants from Asia whom I spent some time every day in trains and buses while travelling to work. 

Does collaboration play a role in your work—whether with your community, artists or others? How so and how does this impact your work? 

Couple of years ago I started a female poets group with some of my female poets friends and students. “Euterepes poetes group” was the name of the group. We tried to write some themed poems (about mass graves) and then performed it in the streets and parks of our town. I could not imagine my writing without other writers and poets, and so far I have friends among them all around world.

Considering the political climate, how do you think the temperature is for the arts right now, what/how do you hope it may change or make a difference?

Hmm, from its early beginning, from Sumerian and Akkadian ancient literature till now – it seems to me it was never right temperature for art and artist. Even today in some countries artists are imprisoned (and even dies) because of their art, because of the way they see and describes this world. This winter my son asks me “What is eternal in this world?”, and at that moment I stopped and think and gave him that one answer that I could give “Art is eternal”. But, the main thing always was that art helped changed the way people think, it pushes humans to woke up and think about their role and meaning of their existence in our world.

Artist Wanda Ewing, who curated and titled the original LFF exhibit, examined the perspective of femininity and race in her work, and spoke positively of feminism, saying “yes, it is still relevant” to have exhibits and forums for women in art; does feminism play a role in your work?

Feminism and its ideas liberate woman across the world. It set us free from the male dominance, but of course there are so many things we need to do until we truly can say that we are equal to men in all the ways there are. Some time ago in my home town it was forbidden for woman to drive bicycle. Can you imagine that? But that change. And I wrote about it.  

Ewing’s advice to aspiring artists was “you’ve got to develop the skill of wen to listen and when not to;” and “Leave. Gain perspective.”  What is your favorite advice you have received or given?

First time I left my son with my parents for a couple of days, a strange woman I’ve accidentally met said to me “Separation is a part of growing up.” Time pass, my son is old enough to take care of himself, I have my writing and work, and everybody are happy.

-

The city of birds

I had a dream that I've moved

To the city of

Cockcatoo birds

They're bringing shells to my

Feet

And little hearts of wood

There was a seaweed there too                            

And a woman's rubber boot

In front of my doors

In fact

It only appeared to be a woman's boot

As it was red and tiny

And I picked up the heart

And got back to the house

Inside everything is dead

Flower paintings are growing into the walls

Dead curtains from which dust comes off

And lies in the light on the floor

There're no flies inside

Because the windows are covered with thick

Iron grids

Birds are not inside

What the hell could the birds

Be doing in the house?

Ever since I came to this house

The rain hasn't fallen

My lips are cracking

My arms are cracking

The eyeball front

Is cracking

Pencils in my hands are cracking

The bread in the pan has cracked

So I don't know if I should bake it

Or leave it to the birds

The next morning

I found letters in the mailbox

They were cracking in my hands

"Come back", it said

But now the birds wouldn't let me come back

They wanted to hurt me

And I wanted to give myself to them

Their eyes are mesmerising me

The sea

Gets into the cracks on my hands

I feel its mystery

 Reminiscence

There is a woman residing in my wardrobe.

In the morning, she thinks I am sleeping,

so on the tips of her fingers she gets into the kitchen.  

She opens the fridge. I hear the glimmering of milk

in her throat, I hear her yawning and wiping her lip,

I hear her stretching, and afterward

her fingers cracking the shell of egg and sipping.

She takes a look out of the kitchen window a little bit

and returns to the closet again on the tips of her fingers.

A floor is antique, broken up and sometimes it screaks.

When floor screaks, she pauses and bites for a lip.

Beneath her it is a puddle of blood that has my face.

But we do not meet there, because it is late for great love.

How many times have we been flourishing and falling?

That tastes of rotten herbs, and those brown spots that blaze.

Corpses of mornings under my bed.

Now she does not know whether to go back

into the closet or fall out of the window.

At the street, a man is singing an unknown melody:

rain comes ... black clouds string in the sky…

Mornings are shorter every day, and

our apples of the eyes are spreading, as usual,

demanding the passion that keeps us alive.

No one believes that an unknown woman lives in my wardrobe.

'Everything is fictional,' they say. Rivers of illusions. Anxiety.

Only a man who is singing under the window, with lost feelings,

sees the lines of two shadows.

 Little Shoes

As he took his hand out of her panties Italian licked every finger, she got up and went to the door – obviously, that needed to be done after they honored their part of the deal – and he said “come back”.

“Come back”, he said. “I did not measure your foot”.

Of course he did not have to measure her foot, she could have told him her size. He did not need to bother, it would be more practical. He held sewing measuring tape in his hand and she took of her boot with the help of a wooden floor. That took time, since she was not wearing any socks, so the boot sticked to her skin. She felt ashamed for her dirty shriveled leg – she always thought that hygiene reveals alot about little girls. In her case: that she did not spend much time in her house, and that her mother is more involved in other things.

How did they say goodbye? Did they shook hands? Kiss on her hair?  She could not remember.

But she saw his face covered with tiny hair, without wrinkles and cube chaped glasses that gave him serious framing, It was a fair face, one of those that you could let yourself to it freely. She thought how her life could have been diferent if she could see that at that point. But, that was a long time ago, in the last year of war, and she did not know much about shoe sizes, or about faces.

- 

Naida Mujkić (1984) Bosnian poetess. She holds PhD in Literature. She was a guest artist at Q21 Museumsquartier Wien and Goten Publishing Skopje. She published 6 books of poetry and over 30 scientific papers.

~

Les Femmes Folles is a volunteer organization founded in 2011 with the mission to support and promote women in all forms, styles and levels of art from around the world with the online journal, print annuals, exhibitions and events; originally inspired by artist Wanda Ewing and her curated exhibit by the name Les Femmes Folles (Wild Women). LFF was created and is curated by Sally Deskins.  LFF Booksis a micro-feminist press that publishes 1-2 books per year by the creators of Les Femmes Folles including the award-winning Intimates & Fools (Laura Madeline Wiseman, 2014) , The Hunger of the Cheeky Sisters: Ten Tales (Laura Madeline Wiseman/Lauren Rinaldi, 2015 and Mes Predices (catalog of art/writing by Marie Peter Toltz, 2017).Other titles include Les Femmes Folles: The Women 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015 and 2016 available on blurb.com, including art, poetry and interview excerpts from women artists. A portion of the proceeds from LFF books and products benefit the University of Nebraska-Omaha’s Wanda Ewing Scholarship Fund.

Current call for collaborative art-writing: http://femmesfollesnebraska.tumblr.com/post/181376606692/lff-2019-artistpoet-collaborations

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