Goma: Democratic Republic of the Congo.

Shook, David

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This is not the first time I've tried to enter Goma, but it's the first time I've been allowed to cross the land border from Gisenyi, Rwanda, since the back-and-forth shelling between rebel group M23 and the Rwandan army during the late summer of 2013 impeded my last attempt at entering the country. The border crossing is slow, and the Congolese officials are not convinced of my occupation as a poet.

Coffins are a booming business in Goma, where they're displayed and sold on the side of the road, because death is Gomas most reliable commodity. As I tour this city, which, perhaps more than anywhere I've ever been resists being known by an outsider, I ask myself, Where is its poetry?

Eventually, through word of mouth and Facebook, I was introduced to the work of emerging Congolese writer Patrick Bassham Bashonga, whose novel Je voulais devenir pretre! (I wanted to become a priest!) was recently published in Paris by Edilivre. Bassham Bashonga, who serves as president of the Badilika Club, a workshop of young writers whose objective is to change Congo for the better, had recently published a pamphlet to celebrate International Woman's Day, featuring a three-part poem called "Si j'etais une femme" (If I were a woman), which viscerally describes the everyday violence and fear inflicted on the women of Goma: "If I were a woman / I would not know how to bear / The sorrow of knowing I was a target for rapists / Or how to hold back my tears / Beneath the Kalashnikov's crackling" (my translation).

Most contemporary poetry in Goma, which is distributed in locally printed pamphlets or electronically, is what we in the West might label poetry of protest, a luxury we're afforded by our remove from everyday tragedy and suffering. I was surprised to learn that Goma is so active on social media--the most connected city in the DRC--and my friend, the journalist Arsene Tungali, who had also introduced me to Bassham Bashonga's work, sent me a PDF of two poems by his father, respected local poet J. Lebel Baguma. His poem "Je reclame ma paix" (I claim my peace) is a desperate plea for the tumultuous region's peace.

The city's only quality bookstore, Librairie Lave Litteraire, a subsidiary of the excellent Rwandan Ikirezi Bookshop (Boulevard de l'Umuganda, 150 m from the postoff ice roundabout), stocks some poetry and literature, but as in much of the region, the dearth of local publishers means that most contemporary literature is distributed by alternate means, especially over the Internet.

After five days of sweaty investigation, I conclude that the Burundian poet Shinanziri Adams was right in his simple description of the lava-ravaged city beneath Mount Nyiragongo, writing in his succinct couplet titled "Goma": "Goma est chaud. / Goma est un volcan" (Goma is hot / Goma is a volcano).

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READING & WATCHING

Patrick Bassham Bashonga, Je voulais devenir pretre! (Edilivre, 2013)

Kama Sywor Kamanda, OEuvre poetique (L'Age d'Homme, 2008)

Richard Ali Mutu, Le cauchemardesque de Tabu (Mabiki, 2011)

Blood in the Mobile, dir. Frank Piasecki Poulsen (2010)

The Enclave, dir. Richard Mosse (2014)

Jason Mojica, The Vice Guide to Congo (vice.com)

David Shook is a poet and translator in Los Angeles.