Azril Bacal – Tankas and Haiku

Profil Azril Bacal Live Encounters Poetry & Writing May 2017Download PDF Here

Tankas and Haiku by Azril Bacal

Azril Bacal is a Peruvian Agricultural Engineer and Sociologist. A university lecturer since 1967 in Perú (UNALM and Catholic University), México, Spain, USA (Humanities Endowement Schollar at Otterbein College, Ohio 1995), Visiting Senior Lecturer on Ethnicity at UCLA (1996) and Sweden: Retired Senior Lecturer at Karlstad University and Uppsala University (2006). Consultant-Expert at UNESCO-OREALC (Santiago de Chile) and at the Instituto Indigenista Interamericano (México) in the 1980s.

Currently, Azril is Senior Researcher affiliated to the “Instituto de la Pequeña Producción Sostenible” (IPPS) at the National Agricultural University La Molina (UNALM) in Perú.


TANKAS

Stockholm Black Friday

Non-violence was
raped by violence in
Stockholm last Friday
An opera on Gandhi
turned into a requiem.

———–

I watch birds, clouds and
dreams pass while sitting in
front of the kitchen
window someone sighs
and it goes through the window


HAIKU

Spring

You are the rain that
drops pearls and dreams
on my kitchen garden

———–

Spring at last with us!
the cold wind blowing harshly
dancing leaves fly

———–

Winter

As snows continues to fall
a dog joyfully jumps up
someone silently cries

———–

To Sibelius’ Vals Triste

So it happens that
grey days sadly intones
a mournful vals


Azril was a member of the Paulo Freire Institute and International Board Member, Currently, he is Board Member of RC-10 on “Participation, Organizational Democracy and Self-Management” (International Sociological Association). Member of the Network “Universidad y Compromiso Social,” Seville, Spain. He has published extensively on issues of education, cultural diversity, anti-racism, cultures of peace and citizenship. Amongst his publications – ‘Citizenship and National Identity in Latin America: The Persisting Salience of Race and Ethnicity’ in Oommen (ed.), Citizenship and National Identity: From Colonialism to Globalism, 1997; Ethnic Discrimination: Comparative Perspectives, Uppsala Universitet: Research Report from the Department of Sociology ,  1992; 2 ; Ethnic Discrimination in Sweden: Basic Issues and Reflections, Uppsala Universitet: Op. Cit. 1992: 53-69; From Organism to Identity: The Road from Psychology to Social-Psychology. Towards an Epistemology of Self-Determination, University of Karlstad, Department of Social Sciences, Section of Communication, Working Paper 1994; 1. Ethnic Identity Responses of Mexican Americans to Ethnic Discrimination (Gothenburg, 1994), Quality of Working Life and Democratization in Latin America (EID,1991). A poetry book “Refracciones Itinerantes” (Uppsala, 2010) – and currently in press with a second and enlarged edition, Fondo Editorial, UNALM, Perú (2017) In Press.

© Azril Bacal

4 Replies to “Azril Bacal – Tankas and Haiku”

  1. Azril — You and I met in about 1965 when we were students at ISU. A few minutes ago I saw the surname “Bacal”, it was another person, another subject entirely, but it rang a bell — I suddenly recalled you and the strangeness of life. As a result of our conversation so long ago I had learned that your father had been my (now deceased) father’s math teacher in Brichane, Bessarabia, it must have been about 1920. Do you recall that conversation? Your Dad was expelled for being a communist, and wound up in Peru, a businessman as I recall. And you are an agricultural engineer and a poet!

  2. Alan – What an awesome memory!!! I must admit that I don´t recall our meeting at ISU in 1965, please help me to remember the circumstances. What did you study? Yes, indeed, life´s strangeness defies words. Some features mentioned by you correspond to facts, other let me pondering about…Yes, my father was from Brichane (Brichón in Yiddisch), a place I visited in 1973. Because of poverty, he did not study beyond the 4th year in grade school, but was well read as he worked in a bookstore. In his puritanic ways he taught human sexuality to his poor comrades. 1936 he landed in Perú, where he worked as a businessman. Yes, I am an agricultural engineer and a poet, among other studies and activities. My father was two years in a Rumanian military prison because of his political convinctions at the time. What about you? After this weird happening, let me know about you as much as you wish and yes! let us reconnect on that note. Since you read live encounters, does it imply that you are a fellow poet? Azril

  3. Azril … Only now, in September 2022, did I come across your prompt reply to my first message, in 2018. This website never told me you’d responded back in 2018,so perhaps it would be better to communicate otherwise: My email address is alansilverman1@gmail.com, in case it is not replicated from below.

    I see from your CV you are highly accomplished in sociology and in poetry. I can claim neither, but have made it to 80 years, one wife, three sons, four grandchildren.

    I decided to look you up again because I want to spend my 80th birthday at Machu Picchu, and you are the only Peruvian whose name I know. We have been exploring some tours, I decided to see if you are still alive … at our ages, and with Peru’s inglorious ranking in the Covid pandemic, it’s a reasonable question….. are you still here to be writing haiku?

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