Poetry
Trotji
Not translated into English
Synopsis
This first collection of poems in Sranan Tongo brings together short pieces in which the poet meditates on the beauty of his country and on what damages it. Rather than the barricade, he chooses dreaming, reflection and rest, in sonnets nourished by Dutch poetry of the 1880s and by Symbolism, in which elements of Creole popular culture nonetheless surface. The book shows that a language regarded as street speech, banished from school, can carry a subtle poetry.
Context
Published in 1957 by the Noord-Hollandsche Uitgevers Maatschappij with the help of the linguist Jan Voorhoeve, this slim volume of sixty-seven pages was the first collection of poetry in Sranan Tongo. Its impact earned the language the standing of a literary language and made its author the founder of modern Surinamese literature, followed by Corly Verlooghen, Johanna Schouten-Elsenhout and Michaël Slory. The novelist Edgar Cairo saw in it the imprint of the Dutch sonnet and of a Christian upbringing. The poems were reprinted in 1977 in the complete poetic works, then reissued in 1990.
Who it is for
For those who like brief, meditative poetry and want to watch a literature take shape in a Creole language.
Prizes and reception
Regarded as the birth certificate of the country's modern literature, it set a school from its publication and remains in print.
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