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11 Year Old Refugee

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Caution: This book contains some coarse and vulgar words that will offend some people.

This slim volume is a series of poems that capture the perspective of a young man growing up as a refugee. The poetry begins with the universal, and gradually exposes a viewpoint that has been shaped by being a refugee. If you are like me, you will get a sense of how our experiences separate us . . . and come to a better understanding of our mutual humanity.

Here's an example of the universal from "Younger":

"In school where we fought and cried/I climbed on somebody's back/And smiled."

Soon even the family portraits take on a political tone as in "Grandpa":

"Lost his land to communists./He's got it back now:/Politicians only think of themselves."

The poems express a strong sense of the life force as in "Evening rain":

"As spring carries on past summer/The state the shield is in/Blind action springs up with witticism."

That "might makes right" has made a deep impression as in "Strength":

"I like watching you beat me,/Sadomasochist, Latin leapfrog under my nose./. . . Sincerity, runs down like blood in the family,/I'd love to beat you clever."

A sad kind of pessimism also suffuses the work as in "Deja vu":

"Another war./Another famine,/A rescuer and strict liberation."

"Seen this before./Been here before/To this field, in this dream,/When we're dead keen."

The poem that haunted me the most was "I had no childhood":

"I had no childhood./It passed me by before/I could say hello, so sudden."

Religion is addressed and found wanting in "Human":

"Well, father, I believe God/Responsible for all wars,/Pain of the needy/The imperfection of life."

"It's acceptable to sin, it's human,/The cycle goes on, I think, . . . Alone and afraid, I feel hollow and dying."

Ultimately, he finds solace in the natural world as in "The world":

"Destruction is the mistaken attitude./You turn up burning and drowning/Your own paradise."

Life hands each of us different challenges to handle. Expressing those challenges through poetry and a reaffirmation of goodness and beauty, Bogdan Tiganov has a great deal to say to each of us. Enjoy his message!

Find the goodness from which all else springs!

11 Year Old Refugee is a stab at culture and cultural ignorance. What we end up believing is that outsiders are unwelcome and that everybody should stay to their own place. But freedom is the essential message from this book, whether it exists and how we play on the idea.

I long to see the realist page on other cultures and Bogdan Tiganov looks like being the author to shine a light. There is little sign of a tortured individual, but more of a sign of a real individual. If this is the way poetry is going then I want to be a part of it.

The full horror of one's condition and circumstances begin to be indelibly ingrained upon one's being at the otherwise magical age of childhood emerging into adolescence. So deep are the scars, they can echo through one's later life. However, the young person who is lucky enough to gain a rich literacy in his teens is likely to be able to visualise the full range of his refugee experiences in all their phantasmagorical intensity. Such a person is Bogdan Tiganov. In his teens still, he is still able to see with an innocent eleven-year-old eye, but his eleven-year-old voice is often spiced with the bitterness of sophistication and angst.