Reviews & comments on the Passport poem

Poets showing their 'passports' at the 2012 San Francisco International Poetry Festival. © Friends of the SF Public Library

ENGLISH

Passport marks an important intervention in political poetics, a small book that packs a real punch. It is both captivating and liberating - powerful, angry, moving and beautifully crafted - and goes to the heart of injustices that seem to be increasing in the name of security. I love the movement from personal, direct address to the public voice of condemnation and back to the final intimacy of the personal - a trajectory and expansion that effectively captures the global sweep of the subject while keeping the reader hooked. --- Minoli Salgado

The 'pasaporte universal' - nobody actually needs it, that's what's so great about it, or you can do with it whatever you want; nobody is 'extra', everybody 'has' the 'pasaporte universal', you don't have to have it 'physically', it is 'just there', in the air and sky and world, all around... It's a universal right, not a piece of paper, nor official document, in fact it's not even a poem or any 'thing' at all... A superb poem, also in translation. The composition, the dynamics, the rhythm, and especially the sounds, all kinds of rhyme, the music, the images - and of course the meaning, the message.... A great, round (in the sense of complete, full) poem, solid and powerful. --- Willem Thies

Some like to say that poetry is mystery, revelation, that it is sacred, then they touch us with their poems, but disappoint us with their lives. A skin that moves the skin of sorrow to speak, that smiles before all the words of the world, is a skin offered without frontiers, a skin that is poetry for another skin. Antoine Cassar is a simple man who, in a Machadian way, has travelled faraway lands, with a light rucksack, like the men of the sea, amid the dust of the open road. --- Chema Rubio

We met around 4 years ago in Auroville, very briefly. You gave me a passport. I'm still carrying it with me. From Asia to Africa to Europe. Every time I want to travel to meet friends, see my daughters who live in Europe, or simply explore a part of this planet, I have to get visas, financial support letters and bank statements... I wish I could simply show them your passport and they would let me in... I wish I could travel the world without barriers, to be welcomed and loved. Too many questions, too many stamps and documents. It's humiliating. Your poetry is a refuge for me, facing such folly... I wonder how this species became so stupid... Do sub-atomic particles need passports? Or shrimps ID cards? --- Khaled Mohamed Khaled


Yes!!! Just arrived in the mail today! I devoured Passport on the way to work. When I got to "no one to brand you stranger, alien, criminal, illegal immigrant, or extra-communautaire, nobody is extra" my eyes started to water... Antoine Cassar touches the essence of humanity. —- Shoshana Sarah, Jerusalem

FRANÇAIS

Livre pour éloigner les frontières. --- Michaël Glück

Passeport, c’est un poème coup de poing dans lequel Antoine Cassar dénonce les politiques migratoires imposées par la mondialisation, la condition des migrants, l’humiliation du passage aux frontières, la survie, les contrôles, les expulsions.
Dérangeant, âpre, la force de ce texte réside autant dans son actualité que dans la vie de son auteur, circulant dès le plus jeune âge entre l’Angleterre, l’Espagne, l’Italie, la France et Malte. La migration fait partie de son patrimoine génétique et donne toute sa profondeur à son écriture.
S’emparant de ce texte le comédien Jean-Marc Bourg et le musicien-compositeur Franck Vigroux en font une performance poétique et musicale brûlante, un appel à la fraternité, capable peut-être d’éveiller les consciences. La musique électro, jouée en live à partir d’échantillonneurs et de magnétophone à bande, se mêle avec évidence aux vers du poète.
--- Théâtre de Sète

Dans son Passeport traduit en plusieurs langues, Cassar s’adresse au migrant en lui proposant autre chose que ce qu’il connaît ou va connaître en chemin, et par là-même il décrit (et dénonce) les conditions de vie, de voyage et d’accueil de ces populations dans nombre de pays. Dans une langue tantôt imagée tantôt très réaliste -parfois crue- il abolit les frontières et nous fait entrer dans la peau de ce migrant. Aux formalités, réglements, violences, entraves, il oppose la chaleur humaine et la main tendue. Le Passeport poétique célèbre la fraternité et s’adresse à la part d’humanité que chacun porte en lui, quelle que soit son origine ou sa destination. Il interpelle sur des thèmes universels : la méfiance, la peur, le rejet… Et sur leurs corollaires, la souffrance et le déracinement. --- Alexandra Oury 

Photograph sent in by Mario Janssens, Santa Ana de Cotacachi, Ecuador.

ESPAÑOL

Hay quien dice que la poesía es misterio, revelación, que es sagrada, luego nos conmueven con sus poemas, pero nos decepcionan con sus vidas. La piel que hace hablar a la piel de la tristeza, y sonríe frente a todas las palabras del mundo, es una piel que se da sin fronteras, una piel que es poesía para otra piel. Antoine Cassar es un hombre sencillo, que al modo machadiano, ha recorrido los mundos lejanos, ligero de equipaje, como los hombres del mar, y entre el polvo de los caminos. --- Chema Rubio

A cada nueva lectura nuevos datos, nuevos matices, nuevos sentimientos, nuevas empatías... Un cántico de fraternidad dolida ante los sufrimientos de l@s desposeid@s en tránsito por el planeta, buscando un lugar en el que cobijarse, en paz. El pasaporte de visa planetaria para seres human@s, que aún, por el momento, no es de curso legal, si que ya sirve, por cierto, para nuestros viajes al interior de nosotr@s mism@s, y visitando actitudes, inhibiciones, juicios y prejuicios, culturas e ignorancias... Ir, al paso, derribando fronteras con nuestro corazón de futuro. --- Guillermo Obanza

ITALIANO

Ogni poeta ha un nome e una storia. Ogni signora con le rughe incrostate ha un nome e una storia. Ogni vicolo, ogni ponte costruito, e tutte le genti. Antoine Cassar lo sa. Con il suo bellissimo Passaporto. Bisogna andare con le gambe nei luoghi, è vero, ma che sia un boccone alla volta, un luogo alla volta, un tempo alla volta. Bisogna anche stare con il culo sulla sedia, qualche volta, oppure in luoghi nascosti a tutti e anche a noi stessi, fare qualcosa una volta, senza dirlo a nessuno. --- Gioia Perrone

Passports hanging on the "migrants' tightrope"  in Carosino, Italy, September 2013. Photo by Dino Maglie. (Click to enlarge)

Reviews and discussion of Passport on Goodreads 



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The original Maltese Passaport was the subject of a B.A. Literature thesis by Kit Azzopardi, entitled Il-Kontrapassaport ta' Antoine Cassar (University of Malta, 2012). It is available to read here (in Maltese).

The Passport also features in a PhD thesis by Nadia Niaz entitled Evolving multilingualisms in poetry: third culture as a window on multilingual poetic praxis (University of Melbourne, 2011).