How do you make green?
How do you make green?

In school they threw her out of painting class.
She was useless at colours, she says.
Her face is wrinkled now.
Her frame has shrunk to the size of a child and
she is still afraid to make a mistake.
Four times in one hour she asks:
‘How do you make green’, and adds
‘I am useless at painting’.
Her withered hands tremble,
she still believes what she was told,
and yet
despite it all,
she shows up and attempts to make green.

2003

– –

Poems chosen from an anthology of poems called ‘For Crying Out Loud – Voice of an Exile’, published early 2016.

Bettina

Bettina John von Freyend-Peterseil was born at the end of the 2nd World War in Germany. She exiled herself early on, travelling the world, never able to settle anywhere for long. She now lives in the West of Ireland, where she and her husband built their home, raised their children and tended the land. She has been teaching, writing and in the past 15 years creating her collage work.

The poetry compilation ‘For Crying Out Loud- voice of an exile’ comes at a time when globally people are forced to move on a large scale. Bettina offers a personal account of the mindset of a self imposed exile. She reveals her disconnection and her longing to belong mirroring a world also steeped in separation.

Ouevre

Still children seeking their way home

Poetry by Bettina

We are grown people we claim. To prove it our lips form a tight line, our faces show wrinkles which remind us of years of living, striving, surviving, crying after...
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Disconnection

Poetry by Bettina

Disconnected, heavily defended, I avoid you when I pass you in the street, our eyes don’t meet, like empty shuttles they seem to be travelling nowhere. Disconnected, heavily defended, I...
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There is a time

Poetry by Bettina

There is a time to hang on and a time to let go. Now is the letting go time, the ending time, leaving the shore time, handing over my will...
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Anthology

आज हमने फिर से एक कमाल का करिश्मा देखा


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Poetry by आज हमने फिर से एक कमाल का करिश्मा देखा

आज हमने फिर से एक कमाल का करिश्मा देखा ख़ुश्क, प्यासी, तपती धरती के सीने मे, अचानक पता नहीं कहाँ से कुछ बादलों ने ढ़ेर सारा बारिश का पानी उढ़ेल...
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Voice

Poetry by Arwa Qutbuddin

Surreal this magical mess of being a woman riding high on passion and pain Swimming inside my liquid eyes this dream of a world Where softness is the new sacred...
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The End of the Road

Poetry by Knute Skinner

He walks along the possible road, one deliberate step ahead of the next. At the end of the road, it may be, there’ll be sustenance, shelter, a sensation of sympathetic...
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