Friday, April 27, 2012

Amphetamine Heart–Liz Worth

**********************Amphetamine Heart

“ A chandelier of winter hunger began to reverberate inside us, churning globules of acidity. Logic vacated the space behind our foreheads. We crawled over each other, creating fender benders that made our teeth knock together. We leaned over heaped plates and binged on pearls, smooth white stones with properties to take the appetite away. Their luxury was too heavy, made the abdomen cave in. From then on everything went close cropped, the mind only capable of capturing the illusion of an image, but not its essence. We considered this to be our most brilliant moment”

This is fromDefinitions”  and the images created mirror most of this collection, the poems have that metallic taste of 5am, with the night fading to a tannic grit  on your teeth. This is the detritus of  good times, where hope is a commodity long since exchanged for a series of moments.

 Amphetamine Heart, is  Liz Worth’s first collection of poetry, but not her first book, there are a couple of others, including a history of the Toronto punk scene* - which makes sense here as you can feel the spirit of that movement permeate these poems - the honesty here is visceral, raw, confrontational. Beyond the subject matter of this poetry, what I also like was her use of language phrases such as “The chafe of sleep walked my eyelids raw”  and “Outside, it’s cold enough to snow, the hack of the wind a gut hook knife”, the imagery they burn onto your retina stays, making you recast your perception to allow for this glimpse into the chaos, paranoia and self-harm at the cold centre of this collection.

This poetry is deeply personal, exploring the darkest corners of her psyche with that most powerful of magnifying tools – language, the words shining a path through the fragments of her life, highlighting moments as though they were ostraca tossed aside. Yet it would be unfair to say this is all dark, there’s a humour that pokes out at the strangest moments, lines such as “comes dressed in lipstick shades named for the colours of abuse” and “ chewing on cuticles is not enough for morning protein”.

In Amphetamine Heart, the writer has written about a world / her world, that leaves you feeling uneasy, uncomfortable: the intent here is to disturb your sense of well being and leave you with a sense of voyeuristically peeking through someone else's curtains. In fact she is a great believer in the idea that art should move you, should disturb & unbalance your sense of equilibrium leaving their mark on you.

For Liz Worth Writing poetry is the culmination of many small moments, leading into explosions on a page and this collection definitely is that.

On Cheetah’s Speed

we are taut and directionless,
networks of revolutions suspended
like fingertips to a temple,
poised and blurring into white spider legs,
their ends painted an intrusive shade of red.
At this angle everything looks better from the left,
even the accelerated aging of blondes.
Warts of perspiration radiate,
glossed by black lights and exit signs.
We are marked as wounded, fragile,
the stimulated strength beneath us, between us,
imperceptible.

 

Liz Worth, grew up in south Etobicoke, an old Toronto suburb , but is now based in Toronto. She is the author of Treat Me Like Dirt: An Oral History of Punk in Toronto and Beyond and a piece of surreal punk fiction called Eleven: Eleven. Her influences  are writers such as Edgar Allan Poe and  Gwendolyn MacEwan, particularly for her book Magic Animals. She was also influenced by music, and would study lyrics of the musicians she admired.

Liz Worth

Liz Worth (Guernica Editions)

numero cinq magazine

Toronto Quarterly

*************

* Treat Me Like Dirt: An Oral History of Punk in Toronto and Beyond

 

Tuesday, April 24, 2012

The Parrish Lantern’s Q & A With Andrés Neuman

********************traveller of the century - A.N
I first came across the name Andrés Neuman, via “Granta - The best Of Young Spanish Language Novelists”, and the short story After Helena, I later found out one of my favourite writers Roberto Bolano had said of Neuman that “He has a gift. No good reader will fail to perceive in these pages something that can only be found in great literature, that which is written by true poets. The literature of the twenty-first century will belong to Neuman and to a handful of his blood brothers”. This aroused my curiosity, so when I was offered by Pushkin Press the opportunity to not only read his first work, but to interview this wonderful writer, how could I not say yes.
******************************************************************
First a bit about the author, Andrés Neuman was born in Buenos Aires in 1977 and later moved to Granada (Spain). He has a degree in Spanish Philology from the University of Granada, where he also taught Latin American literature. He was also selected as one of Granta’s Best Young Spanish-Language Novelists and was included in Hay Festival’s Bogotá 39 list. He has published numerous novels, short stories, essays & poetry collections and in 2002 he received the Hiperión Prize for Poetry for El tobogán, and Traveller of the Century won the Alfaguara Prize and the National Critics Prize in 2009.
Now over to the Q & A
***********************************************************************************************
1) In one of the essays in Roberto Bolano's book, 'Between Parentheses', he has stated about you that “No good reader will fail to perceive in these pages something that can only be found in great literature, that which is written by true poets.” As a writer of poetry & fiction what comes first? Do you perceive yourself like Bolano, a poet who turned to fiction, or are you a novelist first?
I’m afraid I can only be under the expectations that such a quotation suggests. Let’s admit that from the beginning. Now, regarding poetry and fiction, they came more or less at the same time in my case, as two parallel ways of the same exploration. I think that the link between poetry and narrative can be tricky. On one hand, certain “poetical” novels can become just a nightmare for the reader, if by so we mean a book without a relatively strong plot nor good characters. But, on the other hand, all narrators that I admire have a certain level of poetry in their style, in their approach to language and images. So perhaps a balanced answer would be: poetry comes always first, as a general attitude of strangeness towards the language and of imagination itself; but, in order to work, a novel also needs some other tools which belong mainly to the narrative experience.

2) “Love as a metaphor of translation, translation as a metaphor of love” this statement brought to mind what Lawrence Durrell said about his tetralogy, The Alexandria Quartet “The four novels are an exploration of relativity and the notions of continuum and subject–object relation, with modern love as the subject.” Have you read this book and what did you mean by “love as a metaphor"?
I remember having loved Durrell’s project, though actually I didn’t read the four books. But yes, I do think that love can be an outstanding literary laboratory, since indoors (and in bed) we can intensively observe any conflict, including social or political ones. Regarding Traveller of the Century, the novel tells a love story between two translators, Sophie and Hans, who can’t stop translating everything: words, gestures, intentions, silences. In the beginning, they don’t know that the other is a translator too, but they connect through their obsessively translating approach to reality. They start to get more intimate, until they settle the routine of locking themselves in a bedroom in order to translate poems and fuck, fuck and translate poems (not a bad plan I think!). And they start to realize how similar can love and translation be. Loving someone implies putting the other person’s words into ours; struggling to completely understand them and (unavoidably) misunderstanding them; founding a common, fragile language. Whereas translating a text implies a deep desire towards it; a need of possessing it and cohabiting with it; and both (translator and translated one) end transformed.

3) Your Blog Microrréplicas, has been described as one of the best literary blogs in the Spanish language, how do you see the role of blogs in promoting works of literature and how do they compare with more traditional methods of promotion?
New (and free, it is democratic) ways of promotion are great, but I’m much more interested on the literary possibilities of blog and digital formats. I mean, blogs and others can be also daily writing experiments. They allow us to rethink the limits of what can or can’t be said (a friend of mine once told me: “the day I opened my blog, I felt that I had bought myself a whole newspaper”) and, even more excitingly, the inner limits of formal genres: very often I’m not sure if what I’ve posted is a column, a story, a mini essay, a prose poem. I consider my blog as a part of my literary work, neither below nor above the books. In fact, I don’t believe in the opposition between digital and traditional. What fascinates me is precisely the dialogue between both media. Internet is also a mine of memory (which includes all our analogical past) and an infinite machine of re-reading the tradition from a fresh point of view.

4) You worked as a teacher of Latin American literature; if you could choose just one book to teach, what would it be, and why?
Mmm, what a cruel choice indeed! Among the hundreds I could mention here, let’s choose a not too well known one. A wonderful and fun book of micro-fictions: Falsificaciones, by the Argentine narrator Marco Denevi. Pretty much in Monterroso’s or Arreola’s style, that’s a perfect example of how Latin American literature usually consists in enjoyably deforming worldwide icons and history. As Borges pointed out, an Argentine writer usually feels free to play with Western literary tradition, maybe because Argentina (and Latin America) belongs only peripherally to it.

5) I read an article on your favourite reads and noticed that, apart from the Spanish language books, there were French and English. If you are fluent in these languages, would you consider translating your own works and what does having others translate bring to the books?
I wish it was fluency, but I’m afraid it’s no more than curiosity. I do love foreign languages and I think they teach you a lot about your mother tongue. What is poetry about? Maybe it’s about looking at your mother tongue as it was a foreign one. That’s also why I enjoy so much translation. When I like an English text, for instance, I can’t help to imagine how it would sound in Spanish. But I would definitely not be able to translate my own work. And it wouldn’t be healthy either. A translation needs a someone else’s mind, an outside point of view which takes the book somewhere else. Translators have to suspect of every single word. So, when your book is being translated, you learn many unforeseen meanings on it. As if the author wasn’t you. That’s a little miracle.

6) Amongst the poetry you've written, I see there is a collection of Haikus, what was the idea behind this? I've searched, and beyond places like Poetry Wales, do you have any collections translated into English?
I’m really interested on how such an ancient tradition as haikus, seen from our nowadays perspective, seems suddenly so close to us: thinking through images, persecution of fugacity, extreme briefness, capacity of spreading. That small collection of haikus you mention (that’s quite unusual, thank you!) is titled Gotas negras, it is Black Drops. It was an attempt to write very contemporary haikus, transferring their context from the typical countryside landscapes (mountains, lakes, leaves, butterflies…) to a strongly urban space (avenues, bars, buses, buildings, cellar phones…). Trying always to keep, nevertheless, the tone, gaze and meter of classical haikus. And no, I’m afraid there aren’t much more English translations of my poems. Maybe some Japanese translator will do it someday!

7) One final short question, my knowledge of Spanish Language Poetry is quite sparse, if you could recommend one established poet & one up & coming one who would they be?
With pleasure. I’ve always admired Óscar Hahn, one of the greatest living Chilean poets along with Nicanor Parra (who is perhaps best known abroad). Regarding new ones, please allow me to mention at least three: the Argentine-Byelorussian Natalia Litvinova, the Spaniard Luis Muñoz and the Mexican Fabio Morábito. If you don’t like them, I will return you the money.

Thanks Andrés, since this interview I’ve finished Traveller of the Century, and will post on it soon. In the mean time, I have been trying to encapsulate this book for people who have expressed an interest – it says on the inside cover “ A novel of philosophy and love, politics and waltzes, history and the here and now”. So who is this book for, as it seems to encompass everything – Do you like Philosophy ✓, History✓, Politics✓, Romance ✓, Translation ✓, Poetry✓, In fact it would be harder to find a reader that would not find this a wonderful, fantastic and a totally absorbing read.
Here is some of the praise garnered by  Traveller of the Century.
foto_curriculum
"A work of true beauty and scintillating intelligence by a writer of prodigious talents … books as stimulating, erudite and humane as this do not come along very often" —Richard Gwyn, Independent
*************
“[With Traveller of the Century] Neuman has achieved the dream of every novelist: the Total Novel, a venture accomplished only by major authors like Tolstoy, Musil, and Faulkner.” —Miguel García-Posada, Abc (Spain)
****************************
“Neuman was singled out for praise by Roberto Bolaño and it’s easy to see why: like that late author, Neuman combines love and intrigue with serious intellectual engagement. A novel of ideas somewhere between Kafka’s The Castle and Thomas Mann’s The Magic Mountain, Neuman’s English-language debut is a rich deconstruction of the competing currents of history, less a postmodernist pastiche than proof that modernism is still alive in the Spanish-speaking world.”Publishers Weekly
*******************************************
“One of the best novels that I have read in a long time.” —Santos Sanz Villanueva,Mercurio (Spain)
****************************
“A masterpiece . . . Neuman is not only brilliant news for Latin American literature, but for European literature as well.” —Maarten Steenmeijer, Volkskrant (Netherlands)
**************************
“The work of a master of narrative art.” —José RiÇo Direitinho, Público (Portugal)
*********************************
“[Neuman’s] Wandernburg is as mobile and conceptual as a Calvino city, as metaphorical as a Borges country, as cheerful as García Márquez’s Macondo . . . Neuman, with Traveller of the Century, has multiplied the literary language and created a classic.” —Daria Galateria, La Repubblica (Italy)
******************************
“There are moments here of exhilarating beauty [in Traveller of the Century] . . . Andrés Neuman writes about history and literature and the relation between them with an intelligence that his American contemporaries cannot match. His first book in English must not be his last.” —Michael Gorra, The New Republic

PullmanQuote-image
Andrés Neuman (Official)
Andrés Neuman(Wiki)
Words Without Borders (A.N)

Granta Audio: Andrés Neuman

Traveller of the Century (The Parrish Lantern)

Monday, April 23, 2012

A Pictorial Report for World Book Night………..Day.

****************************************************************************************
IMAG0007

After opening & filling in the details on all 24 books, I re-boxed them ready for the giving. Last year my daughter & I gave them together, but this being a week day (Monday) she had school and I had work. So we decided to separate, with her taking books to her school & I heading off to work with a bag load.

**********************************************

IMAG0008

This is the NorthGate Ward Community Centre, and was where I was based for the day, so it became the place for me to give away my books. Strangely in this picture it looks  dry and bright, this was a rare moment in the day as it bucketed down for  most of it, but luckily I was working in the office in the morning and in one of the rooms running a music session (Sound & Vision) all afternoon.
*************************************************************************************************************
The-Book-Thief_thumb3
But first an introduction to my give away, The Book Thief by Markus Zusak. Now I had read & posted on this book last year (my daughter has also read it). In my post on this I said…
This was a book I had expected to dislike, it seemed to be not sure if it were a book for adults or proudly YA, like a teenager caught in a netherworld between these two points the book was fluctuating between both axis and yet…. I loved it. I read it because it is one of the books for World Book Night and I needed a book that my daughter and I could both get behind, both support with an understanding of it’s content (if asked by others). Did I say I loved it, that I have a queue of colleagues wanting to borrow this on the strength of my vocal adoration of it. This is a book about the power of language, of words and how they may appear inert, merely tools for our use to be put away when not needed, but in reality they have the power to change all. The rest of this post is here
*******************************************************************************************************************************
IMAG0010


This is a group of my colleagues, who were some of the early, lucky owners of this wonderful book and on the strength of receiving it, they will read it together as a relaxed book club.


IMAG0011

**********************************************************************************************************
This is Nick, and as you can see he was another receiver of the WBN book, proudly displaying it for my pictorial post.


IMAG0009
***********************************************************************And finally this is Maria, who has promised to read and finish this as part of World Book Night. I haven’t yet managed to give away all the books in person, although they all have a home marked for them with some more going with my daughter to her guides meeting and to my wife's Knit & Chat Group, & the final ones to some individuals at another community hub I work at.
Update 
This is Barbara, who is based at Thannington resource Centre, the other hub I run some of my sessions at. when i originally read this book, she was one of my colleagues who expressed  an interest in The Book Thief. Making her now a extremely happy recipient of her own WBN copy.


*************************************************************************
This is the second year that my daughter and I have done this & have thoroughly enjoyed it, and were filled with pride by the act of presenting strangers, colleagues etc., with something they would not have normally reached for. So my thanks go to the World Book Night organisation for providing me with this opportunity and as I said last year My one proviso, is that although this is World Book Night, it’s really only UK & Ireland,( now Germany & USA), whether this will grow and really become a world book night I don’t know, but I qualify my doubt by saying if I convinced a couple of people to read something they wouldn’t normally read, that’s a result.
************************************************
“We come into the world intent on finding narrative in everything, in the landscape, in the skies, in the faces of others, and, of course, in the images and words that our species create”. This most human of creative activities defines us, that at the core we are “Reading Animals” intent on reading our own lives and those of others”. Alberto Manguel  – A Reader on Reading.
 
 WBN2012

Friday, April 20, 2012

The Making of a Poem (A Norton Anthology of Poetic Forms.)

Mark Strand & Eavan Boland
In the introductory statement the writers say this book is intended to answer those basic questions such as how does a sonnet work, what  is a Sestina & what rules govern it,  how many lines make up a Villanelle & what is it’s rhyme scheme? To do this they have traced the history of the various forms, in many cases back to the peasant origins and work songs of the countryside or the Balladeers who sung stories, spun the tales & spread the news through their communities and out to a wider audience. By answering these questions, by providing an overview of the major poetic forms, their history and the rules that they follow, bend or break, they hope to provide the reader with a key that will open the path to what will be a lifelong journey, with this book as a guide and map.
Mark Strand & Eavan Boland
After the introduction, both editors state their case for poetry via their own personal experience, first as readers, discovering the art and on to the status they later achieved as poets in their own right, it’s this experience, insight and passion that stops this book being a dry academic exercise and makes it a suitable aid at what ever level you want to use it for, whether a university student or just someone wishing to understand more.



What’s wonderful about this book is the amount of poetry within the pages, easily outnumbering the pages of text, example after example used to demonstrate form and just there to be read. This isn’t just a text book, it’s an anthology of poetry with writers such as Mathew Arnold, Elizabeth Bishop, Louise Gluck, Dylan Thomas, W.B. Yeats, Charles Simic, Sylvia Plath, W.S. Mervin and Gwendolyn Brooks, plus hundreds of others, it also ends with a fantastic series of  biographies on the featured writers & a suggested reading list, making this a book that any lover of poetry, or even someone getting into poetry for the first time, will find a useful addition to their bookshelf, either as a reference tool or as a collection of poetry to be dived into when the mood takes.
npm2012_poster_540Eavan Boland was born in Dublin, Ireland in 1944. The daughter of a diplomat and a painter, Boland spent her girlhood in London and New York, returning to Ireland to attend secondary school in Killiney and later university at Trinity College in Dublin. Though still a student when she published her first collection, 23 Poems (1962), Boland’s early work is informed by her experiences as a young wife and mother, and her growing awareness of the troubled role of women in Irish history and culture. Over the course of her long career, Eavan Boland has emerged as one of the foremost female voices in Irish literature. Her awards include a Lannan Foundation Award in Poetry, an American Ireland Fund Literary Award, a Jacob's Award for her involvement in The Arts Programme broadcast on RTÉ Radio, and an honorary degree from Trinity. She has taught at Trinity College, University College, Bowdoin College, and she was a member of the International Writing Program at the University of Iowa. She is also a regular reviewer for the Irish Times.
Mark Strand was born on Prince Edward Island, Canada,he grew up in various cities across the United States. Strand originally expressed interest in painting and hoped to become an artist. He received a B.A. from Antioch College and a B.F.A. from Yale University in 1959. His interest in painting waned, and by the age of twenty, he had decided to become a poet instead. He is now recognized as one of the premier contemporary American poets as well as an accomplished editor, translator and prose writer. The hallmarks of his style are precise language, surreal imagery, and the recurring theme of absence and negation; later collections investigate ideas of the self with pointed, often urbane wit. Named the U.S. Poet Laureate in 1990, Strand’s career has spanned nearly four decades, and he has won numerous accolades from critics and a loyal following among readers
Mark Strand(Wiki)
Mark Strand(Poets.org)


Friday, April 13, 2012

Seven Houses in France - Bernardo Atxaga

7housesTranslation – Margaret Jull Costa
The book opens with a rather dour new officer arriving by boat on his first posting abroad. The officer, Chrysostome, doesn’t attempt to fit in with his fellow officers and they, in turn, despise his puritan upbringing, not only is he blatantly religious to a fundamental degree, but he refuses the usual soldierly fun of gambling, getting drunk and raping the native womenfolk . They also fear him. This man could shoot the eyebrows of a mosquito at five hundred paces.


The setting for this novel is the garrison of  Yagambi, on the banks of the River Congo and the year is 1903. The senior officer is Captain Lalande Biran, who would prefer to be back in Paris frequenting the lounges of the Literati with his wife (more of her later), & releasing the odd book of poetry than commanding eighteen white officers of the Force Publique and the Askaris - native soldiers recruited to help quell the other natives who have the audacity to rebel intermittently.


Time goes really slow here, with very little to do beyond overseeing the slaves as they work, producing rubber and mahogany and keeping the natives in order. So time is spent drinking, gambling & consorting/raping the natives, there are dangers even here as STD’s* seems to be everywhere, although most of the officers are not particularly worried. Except the Captain, he is so terrified of catching syphilis, that he has an officer pick & test girls for their virginity & then keep them caged until he’s ready.


Captain Lalande Biran’s wife, Christine, is a stunner and the reason he is out here. It would appear that she is addicted to the TV programme  Location, location, location because although they have six houses purchased by smuggling Ivory and Mahogany, she wants another, in fact  she has her eyes set on a seventh in glamorous St-Jean-Cap-Ferrat.
Into this world of relaxed cruelty and debauchery steps our puritan officer and just by being who he is, slowly upsets the applecart.


This is a book that should offend our sensibilities, there is not a single character here that’s likeable, their attitude stinks, their behaviour would have most of them up on crimes against humanity charges and even the saintly Chrysostome is so po-faced righteous and arrogant that you can understand why no-one likes him. And yet? what Axtaga has managed to do is create a dark, horrible, nasty and yet wonderfully comic world that will offend and delight in almost equal measure. Not everyone will enjoy it, but those that do, will find a fantastic absurd world within the pages of this book.



Bernardo Atxaga was born (1951) in Gipuzkoa, Spain and now lives in the Basque country, writing in both Basque and Spanish. He is a prizewinning  novelist and poet, whose books have won critical acclaim in Spain and abroad. His work has been translated into twenty-two languages.


Atxaga.org

Margaret Jull Costa  has been a literary translator for over twenty-five years and has translated many novels and short stories by Portuguese, Spanish and Latin American writers, including Javier Marías, Fernando Pessoa, José Saramago, Bernardo Atxaga and Ramón del Valle-Inclán. She has won various prizes for her work including, in 2008, the PEN Book-of-the-Month Translation Award and the Oxford Weidenfeld Translation Prize for her version of Eça de Queiroz’s masterpiece The Maias, and, most recently, the 2011 Oxford Weidenfeld Translation Prize for The Elephant’s Journey by José Saramago. She is currently translating Javier Marías’ latest novel Los enamoramientos (The Infatuations).

An Interview with Margaret Jull Costa


* Sexually Transmitted Diseases

Thursday, April 12, 2012

Official Shortlist for the 2012 Independent Foreign Fiction Prize


The Independent Foreign Fiction Prize honours both writer and translator of the best work of fiction, translated & published in the UK. Making this award unique by placing the writer & translator on an equal footing & by doing so recognises the translator's role in bridging the gap between languages and culture. The official jury have been deliberating on the longlist and as  Hephzibah Anderson (freelance critic, broadcaster & IFFP Judge stated “The judging process so far has been an epic and exhilarating road trip - a journey crossing centuries and genres as well as continents”. After their  cogitation,ruminations & deliberations they whittled it down to
Blooms of Darkness by Aharon Appelfeld (Jeffrey M. Green)Independent Foreign Fiction Prize Shortlist Announced
What the judges said: “Jeffrey M Green's incantatory translation from the Hebrew does ample justice to a novel that meditates on the imagination, memory and language itself.”
Us: MarkSimonStu, Tony
The Prague Cemetery by Umberto Eco (Richard Dixon)
  What the judges said: “Eco shows us that the Holocaust was a catastrophe that was a long time in the making. Entertaining and disturbing in equal measure, The Prague Cemetery is Eco's best novel since The Name of the Rose.”
Us: Tony,   MarkStu  Lisa

Alice by Judith Hermann (Margaret Bettauer Dembo)
What the judges said:These five linked stories all unfold in the shadow of death. Yet, with their pin-sharp precision and lyrical tenderness, they make you feel thrillingly alive. Exquisitely written, gracefully translated”
Us: LisaStuMark  Tony

New Finnish Grammar by Diego Marani (Judith Landry)
 What the judges said: “This subtle and moving novel shows how much of what we take to be ourselves depends upon the language that we speak and the identity it gives us. It also shows how suddenly that self can be taken away.”
Us: StuMark, Me

From the Mouth of the Whale by Sjón (Victoria Cribb)
What the judges said: By turns surprising and surreal. Sjón's remarkable tale imagines a delirious 17th century Iceland swithering between mysticism and a new scientific rationalism and it is rendered brilliantly into English in Victoria Cribb's exuberant translation.”
Us: LisaTonyStu,   MarkMe

Dream of Ding Village by Yan Lianke (Cindy Carter)
What the judges said: “A brave, dark and poetic account of modern Chinese malaise. Through his description of the many lives touched by an AIDS epidemic sweeping a village,”
Us: MarkTonyLisaStu
“Themes of loss and persecution pervade global shortlist for the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize 2012. Umberto Eco's latest masterpiece, a novel banned in China charting the devastating human cost of the blood trade, and a Holocaust survivor's haunting tale all in the running to win the £10,000 Prize
Translated fiction by two Italian authors, one German, one Israeli, one Icelandic and one Chinese have made it on to this year's shortlist. The diverse shortlisted books, five of which are published by independent publishing houses, explore the human and cultural impact of loss and persecution in different countries across the ages.”

Whilst the Official Jury were in deep thought, the members of the shadow Jury (Stu, Mark, Lisa, Rob,Simon, Tony & myself) were also straining our collective brain matter and via posts, comments, tweets & emails cobbled together our own results.
Shadow Panel Shortlist for the 2012 Independent Foreign Fiction Prize

IFFP shadow - Copy1
       Seven Houses in France by Bernardo Atxaga ( Margaret Jull Costa)
StuMark, Lisa,  Me

The Prague Cemetery by Umberto Eco (Richard Dixon)
Parallel Stories by Péter Nádas (Imre Goldstein)

Scenes From Village Life by Amos Oz (Nicholas de Lange)
RobMark, Lisa,  TonyStu   Me

Next World Novella by Matthias Politycki (Anthea Bell)
SimonLisaStuTony   

From the Mouth of the Whale by Sjón (Victoria Cribb)
LisaTonyStuMarkMe

The Shadow Jury Blurb (Courtesy of  Rob)
The Independent Foreign Fiction Prize longlist this year has once again shown us just how powerful and emotive translated fiction can be. The overall tone of this year’s Prize has been a dark and sombre one, with many of titles taking us back to reflect on the horrors of the past. As such the reading experience has been wholly affecting, and it has proven to be no easy task in reducing the longlist down to a final selection of six. Encapsulated in our final ‘Shadow’ shortlist selection is what we feel to be the cream of the crop of this year’s Independent Foreign Fiction Prize. These are the six titles which not only fully demonstrate the range and scope of this year’s Prize, but they also stand as a glowing example of what can be achieved when writer and translator form the perfect bond.

Although I am confused on what the official judging criteria was and  why certain books have made the list and others haven’t,  my overall response to what for me was a new experience is one of joy, for the introduction to new writers, for the conversations, remarks and responses from old & new friends. So a big thanks to Stu & the rest of the Shadow crew for the first part of this journey  & to Nikesh Shukla from the Booktrust for their support.

Monday, April 9, 2012

Affirmation (Selected Poems 1986–2006) - Haris Vlavianos


*

The Poem of another Poetics
[Variation]        
After Wallace Stevens

                                    I

Crystal-clear water in a glistening vase.
Yellow and Red roses.
White light in the room, like snow.
Fresh snow (it’s the end of winter)
softly falling on the invented place.
The afternoons are returning without sounds,
without secrets, without impatient faces
Round vase.
Porcelain painted with roses.
Yellow and red.
The water – unruffled emptiness.



                                  II

And still the water,
the snow,
once were enough to compose
a new whiteness --
more necessary than the meaning of flowers
blooming inside the cool memory of happiness.
(Your ecstatic gaze
confirms that imagination
can lay bare the memory again and again).




                                  III

The mind seeks to escape.
This thought
(the possibility of the specific metaphor)
has been exhausted.
The roses, the vase, did not exist.
They do not exist.
The words however
keep falling –
snowflakes of a real life
in the margins of the poem.

*********
affirmation-selected-poems-1986-2006-haris-vlavianos-paperback-cover-art
In the foreword to this collection, Michael Longley discusses a recurring antithesis between presence and absence, that this collection “generates an obsessive imagery of whiteness and silence: the moon, snow, unmarked paper, bed sheets,” lines such as “ a white paradise / of all possibilities”  and “white like snow in the room”. It is in this absence that the poet declares that “loves absence always wears the same face”, whether this refers to a lover, a beautiful women, the muse or poetry itself is not clear. Repeatedly, presence implies absence and vice versa.


Also, within these poems we are constantly aware of the surface of things/objects and, like in Sartre’s Nausea,  there’s an existential angst, as  he probes the difficulty in describing  and explaining them. There is also a repeated reference to reality,  based on the dedication, this  refers to Wallace Stevens (Adagia) that “ The ultimate  value is reality?” or as is stated by Simon Critchley in his book on Wallace Stevens - Things merely are (Philosophy in the poetry of Wallace Stevens) “poetry evokes the "mereness" of things. It is this experience that provokes the mood of calm and releases the imaginative insight we need to press back against the pressure of reality”. Through the lines we find that objects are transubstantiated by the poets inspiration to become possessions of the mind, added to this is an ambience that seems to pervade the poems with an erotic charge, lines such as “ Come let us lower the blinds/ let us lie on the white starched sheets”  with the muse/lover either as a presence in the room or their absence creating the dilemma.
*******

New Realism
The perfume burned his eyes, holding tightly to her thighs
and something flickered for a minute and then it vanished and was gone.

Lou Reed, “Romeo and Juliette”
He tried to remember the poem
that he’d begun to write in silence
on the hotel’s verandah with a view to the Aegean.
In vain.
The words had vanished
and along with them had gone
a specific sense of that summer morning.
That morning was as if it had never existed.
It had not existed.

All the previous days
he had been reading Herodotus’ Clio
copying excerpts and lines
in the leather-bound notebook given to him
the day they were leaving from Piraeus.
Under the dedication,
in tiny letters,
he had noted the phrase:

“Truth is something frightening.
We should not ask for
more than we can handle.
We should not reveal our own truth,
should not force one to accept it,
should not make one want to know things
that transcend human power”.

He wished to tell her that the world always is
at the mercy of the mightiest truth,
whether this might defends wisdom
or insanity,
that in the long run truth does not matter,
that everyone has specific limits of sensitivity,
beyond which exists neither the true nor the false.
that when
Nerval  wrote
Je suis l’ inconsolé
Le prince d’Aquitaine à la tour abolie”
*
wished to
He said nothing.
An imaginative dialogue
is not interesting at all anyway.
He opened the notebook
and on the last page
(where he had just thought of writing a letter)
he painted an olive grove with a cypress in the middle

—the poem of desire
in the poem of the real:

the chora of a new realism.
********

Haris Vlavianos was born in Rome in 1957 and grew up in Athens.  He studied Economics and Philosophy at the University of Bristol (B.SC) and Politics, History and International Relations (M.Phil, D.Phil) at the University of Oxford (Trinity College). His doctoral thesis entitled, Greece 1941-1949: From Resistance to Civil War, was published by Macmillan (1992) and was awarded the “Fafalios Foundation” Prize. He has published nine  collections of poetry, including The Angel of History (1999),which was short-listed for the State Poetry Prize, as was After the End of Beauty (2003) Vacation in Reality(2009),  won the prestigious “Diavazo” Poetry Prize and was short-listed for the National Poetry Prize in 2011. He has also published a collection of thoughts and aphorisms on poetry and poetics entitled The Other Place(1994). He has translated the works of many well-known writers including Walt Whitman, Ezra Pound, Michael Longley, Wallace Stevens, William Blake, e. e. Cummings, John Ashbury, Eugenio Montale, Zbigniew Herbert and Fernando Pessoa. He is the editor of the influential literary journal POETRY and of the Greek domain of the Poetry International website. His collection of poems Adieu (1996) has been translated into English by David Connolly and published in the U.K. by Birmingham University Press (1998), and volumes of his Selected Poems have been published in German, Dutch, Catalan and Italian
Haris Vlavianos (Wiki)
Mediterranean Poetry (Haris. V)


Michael Longley was educated at the Royal Belfast Academical Institution and subsequently read Classics at Trinity College, Dublin, where he edited Icarus. He was Professor of Poetry for Ireland from 2007 to 2010, a cross-border academic post set up in 1998, previously held by John Montague, Nuala Ní Dhomhnaill and Paul Durcan. He was succeeded in 2010 by Harry Clifton. In North America, Michael Longley is published by Wake Forest University Press. His wife Edna Longley is also an influential critic on modern Irish and British poetry.

The translator, Mina Karavanta was born in Athens in 1970, she studied English literature at the University of Athens and at  the State University of New York (SUNI) at Binghampton, from which she obtained her PH.D in comparative Literature. She teaches critical theory and English and American literature at the University Of Athens.
npm2012_poster_540"With this poet emotional and aesthetic answers can be glimpsed only out of the corner of the eye, in the margins. In Minima Poetica Vlavianos writes that 'Even the most complete poem is nothing but a fragment.' The length and intensity of his obsession with language has produced "fragments" which work like tesserae in a mosaic. Somehow they marry and merge, and the picture is realised: 'The leaf of reality. / The exquisite poem of the genuine." Michael Longley
 *I'm inconsolable The Prince of Aquitaine in the tower eliminated

Friday, April 6, 2012

Hate: A Romance–Tristan Garcia.

Translated by Marion Duvert and Lorin Stein

#IFFP longlist

A short introductory disclaimer.

“The characters in this novel have never existed other than in the pages of this book.

If, however, the reader feels that in certain ways they resemble real persons whom he or she knows, or knows of, that is simply because other persons or characters would behave no differently under similar conditions.”

*** ***

The first four chapters of this book introduce us to the main protagonists, who are Willie, Doumé, Leibo and Liz

The story is told by Liz – Elizabeth Levallois -  a thirty three year old cultural journalist, who is a friend of Willie, Doume’s colleague and Leibo’s mistress. It is through her that we learn how these three characters paths cross.

We are first introduced to William Miller (Willie), born in Amiens, at nineteen he moved to Paris  where, at the start of the book, he is living on the streets & in the squats of the Gare Du Nord region with the idea of being an artist, although his idea of artist is mixed up with the idea of being an outlaw.

“He’d call himself an artist, meaning an outlaw. He’d say he was writing some piece, he’d say he had works in progress, shit going on. A kind of installation, like the performance artists he came across in squats. My guess is he wanted to shout words while some rockers did their thing. But there were no rockers anymore. He was living out a mythology he never quite got the hang of. He wanted tattoos, a band, a look like those pictures of James Dean or Tupac..”

This is how Liz first meets Willie, as she is there to profile him. The time is the 1980’s and she’s at the start of her career, working for an underground  arts magazine. Through her Willie meets Doumé (Dominique Rossi), who Liz describes as “handsome in a mature way, responsible and lightly chiselled by time. The trouble was, when he was twenty it didn’t suit him. He had to wait to look his age.” Originally from Corsica he was a journalist and a founding member of a gay activist group called Stand Up, he was also one of the generation of homosexuals to experience sexual relations free of the worry of  HIV/AIDS. Willie and Doumé become lovers and Liz starts an affair with  Jean-Michel Leibowitz (Leibo), her old professor and a friend of Doumé.

Both Willie and Doume contract H.I.V and this destroys any love that existed between them.The story of Hate: A Romance, is an old tale of love turned bad, or in this case vicious, through the guise of politics, with the now ex-lovers taking different corners in the political fighting that arose around the problems with the rise of AIDS. Doumé advocates safe sex, protection, whilst Willie celebrates the virus as though it were a badge of honour stating that “AIDS belonged to us queers, it was our treasure,”  and that those like Doumé were sucking up to the establishment, joining the forces of repression because “AIDS Saves, Condoms Kill.”

I used the word “corners” above because this is a fight, although the idea of Queensbury rules has no application here, this fight is down and dirty, and what was a passionate  love has slowly corroded to become an equally passionate hate, with everything fair game, everything used no matter how personal it  may once  have been - it all gets bought out and displayed in public.

As the divide between these two characters becomes more extreme, so does the stance they take. Willie advocates the sharing of the virus as though a gift between two consenting couples & Doumé censures his ex lover for "crimes against humanity" for deliberately infecting people with HIV virus. Whilst this is going on we also follow Liz’s affair  with Leibo and the path he takes from a leftish Jewish Intellectual to a member of the Government.

This is one of those books where there is so much going on, whether this on a political & cultural level or whether it is dealing with the personal impact of the virus and its destruction on all that was good in the characters lives. To record it all here would become tedious for all concerned and be detrimental to what is after all the politics and cultural nuances, just the old, old tale of love turned bad, this is in spite of it all a tale of humanity, with all it’s associated dirt and dreams. This was a book that I chose because of the title – wasn’t sure if I'd like the book itself – now love the book.                                    Agnès Gayraud

 

Tristan Garcia was born in 1981 in Toulouse and attended the École Normale Supérieure in Paris, where he specialized in philosophy. He is the author of a book of philosophy, The Image, published in 2007. Hate: A Romance is his first novel.

 

 

picture by Agnès Gayraud

Sunday, April 1, 2012

National Poetry Month (USA)


npm2012_poster_540
The Academy of American Poets  was started in 1996 and with their award-winning website Poets.org, visitors can search through thousands of poems, check out hundreds of biographies, essays and interviews, as well as listen to recordings of their favourite poetry — which is being constantly up dated with new material. Also available are resources such as the National Poetry Map, and lesson plans for teachers. Poets.org receives a million visitors each month. Every April, The Academy holds it’s National poetry month, this was inspired by the success of Black History Month (Feb) and Women's History Month (March). In 1995 The Academy convened a group of publishers, booksellers, librarians, literary organizations, poets and teachers to discuss whether the same idea would work for poetry.

The first one was held in 1996 and now every year thousands of businesses and non-profit organizations participate through readings, festivals, book displays, workshops, and other events all with the one aim – to celebrate poetry and it’s vital place in American culture.

Although I’m from Europe, this is my second year celebrating this wonderful excuse to promote Poetry, which I will do as I did last year with a favourite American poet, but after  that please check out the links below or click on the picture in the sidebar and, if you’re looking for more poetic inspiration go to Pomesallsizes, where you’ll find a wealth of resources in the form of  Poems, Anthologies, Links, Blogs etc.

Thanks, Parrish.

Robert Pinsky (born October 20, 1940) is an American poet, essayist, literary critic, and translator. From 1997 to 2000, he served as Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress. Pinsky is the author of nineteen books, most of which are collections of his own poetry. His published work also includes critically acclaimed translations, including a collection of poems by Czesław Miłosz and Dante Alighieri. He teaches at Boston University and is the poetry editor at Slate.

SAMURAI SONG
When I had no roof I made
Audacity my roof. When I had
No supper my eyes dined.


When I had no eyes I listened.
When I had no ears I thought.
When I had no thought I waited.


When I had no father I made
Care my father. When I had
No mother I embraced order.
When I had no friend I made
Quiet my friend. When I had no
Enemy I opposed my body.


When I had no temple I made
My voice my temple. I have
No priest, my tongue is my choir.


When I have no means fortune
Is my means. When I have
Nothing, death will be my fortune.
Need is my tactic, detachment
Is my strategy. When I had
No lover I courted my sleep.
© 2001, Robert Pinsky

Robert Pinsky(Wiki)




 What is National Poetry Month?: Frequently asked questions about NPM
.



 30 Ways to Celebrate: A month's worth of poetry activities that any community can take part in.


Celebration Highlights: Reminisce about Academy events and promotions of Aprils past.




 Poetry & the Creative Mind: Each April, The Academy of American Poets presents a star-studded celebration of American poetry.



 30 Poets, 30 Days: Throughout each day during National Poetry Month, a selected poet will have 24 hours to tweet his or her daily insights before passing the baton.


 Poem-A-Day: Great poems from new books emailed each day of National Poetry Month. Sign up for your daily dose of new poems from new spring poetry titles.


 Spring Book List: Check out the new books of poetry available each spring.



 Poem Flow for iPhones: Available through the iTunes store, this innovative mobile app features daily poems presented as both fixed and animated text.



 Poem In Your Pocket Day: Thousands of individuals across the U.S. will carry a poem in their pockets on April 26, 2012.



 National Poetry Map: Find out what is happening in your state by visiting our redesigned and updated National Poetry Map.



 For Teachers: Creative and inexpensive suggestions for making poetry a more important part of school life during April and throughout the year.


 Poetry Read-a-thon: Instructions for motivating students to enjoy poetry in the classroom.




For Librarians: Low cost suggestions to develop greater visibility for poetry during April and throughout the year.



For Booksellers: Use these ideas during National Poetry Month and year-round to sell more poetry.


 Subscribe to Poets.org: Because poetry should be celebrated all year, Poets.org offers several ways to keep you informed and connected to the poetry world. Learn how you can subscribe to Poets.org Newsletters, RSS



Subscribe to the Parrish Lantern’s Anthology on Twitter


It is the job of poetry to clean up
our word-clogged reality
by creating silences
around things
Stephen Mallarme