The 30th parallel north links several countries represented in the PTC archive, Mexico, Morocco, Israel, Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan Pakistan, India and China even glancing off the far south of the Japanese archipelago, sweeping between Tanega-shima and Sumanose-Jima, while totally avoiding Europe. Just like the PTC.
So to close up 2021 this podcast is a poetry collection of the 30th parallel north, featuring poems from the PTC audio archive, including:
Entropy in Wiesbaden by David Huerta From Mexico,
In Vain I Migrate by Abdellatif Laâbi from Morocco,
The Boat That Brought Me by Azita Ghahreman from Iran
Kabul by Shakila Azizzada &
Stay by Yu Yoyo
These poems are literally from around the world, points on a line that encircles the globe but the texts themselves shrug off such simple plotting, we will hear a Mexican reflecting on a German City, an Iranian arriving in Sweden, a Moroccan in lifelong exile, a Chinese poet dreaming of betrayal in Vietnam, and Kabul remembered from afar by a poet living in the Netherlands. This all reminds us that people, and poems for that matter, are not static pin drops on a map. People move about, meanings migrate, homes are lost and found.
So to round out the year, a year with less travel and exploration than maybe we would have all liked, 5 poems from the 30th parallel north.
