The Special by David Stavanger
UQP, 2014
David Stavanger won the 2013 Thomas Shapcott Poetry Prize. The resulting book, The Special, is his first full-length collection of poetry, and is dedicated to ‘the dead/ who are bravely living/ (and to those who wake wild-eyed in the dark)‘, a salute to people who suffer the acute distress of mental illness. Continue reading
Opening the Windows to Catch the Sea Breeze: Selected poems 1983-2011
by Geoff Goodfellow
Wakefield Press, 2014
Geoff Goodfellow has been a ‘people’s poet’ for thirty years. The qualifications he brings to the role seem simple enough, if a little generic: a rugged working class upbringing; a simple style and language that anyone can understand and relate to; time spent working with, and reading to, workers, prisoners, the unemployed. Continue reading
Devadatta’s Poems by Judith Beveridge
Giramondo Publishing, 2014
In her 1996 collection, Accidental Grace, Judith Beveridge published a series of six poems entitled ‘The Buddha Cycle’. The poems in ‘The Buddha Cycle’ are each spoken by individuals, predominantly low in the caste system, who look to the Buddha for some hope or guidance. This marked the beginning of what has become, for Beveridge, an enduring interest in the Buddha and Buddhist history, a subject she has approached from a number of shifting perspectives.
Pinetorch
by Ainslee Meredith
Australia Poetry / Express Media, 2013
Through the Forest
by Joel Ephraims
Australia Poetry / Express Media, 2013
The two latest chapbooks in Australian Poetry’s new voices series are remarkable because they occupy two very different kinds of poetic practice to equally interesting and impressive ends. Both are playful, and push against the boundaries of form, with a crisp lyric impulse at play in Meredith’s work and an almost psychedelic sensibility animating Ephraims’s collection.
Peony by Eileen Chong
Pitt Street Poetry, 2014
In a suite of three poems praising the legendary beauty, Consort Yang Guifei, the Tang poet Li Bai draws on the virtues of the peony, a flower that with its luxuriant petals and luminous colours embodies feminine beauty and allure. Continue reading
Swamp: Walking the Wetlands of the Swan Coastal Plain
by Nandi Chinna
Fremantle Press, 2014
To introduce Nandi Chinna’s Swamp the reader is presented with the idea of poetic creation through walking. Chinna describes how ‘the legs move through time and space, marking the movement over grass, stones, hills, and through wind’ (8). Indeed many of her poems in this collection engage with just this sense of time, space, and movement as walking becomes a way for Chinna to trace the wetlands of the Swan Coastal Plain, those that have been lost, and those that are fragmentary. Continue reading
Kin by Anne Elvey
Five Islands Press, 2014
The kinship Elvey forges between her poems and ecological criticism lends both rigour and reverence to her first full-length collection of poetry. There is a radiant stasis at the core of her poems that encourages the reader to listen to the susurration of multiple, overlapping conversations to which Elvey is contributing.
Andrey Filimonov
Most of my grannies were teachers,
The most ancient being from old Bolshevik throng.
From her I got an atlas of Soviet cities.
I read it, like a hymn book, testing it with the tongue
from West to East:
Leninford, Stalinford, Kiraford.
Builders of the New World,
Soviet leaders: cap, moustache and nickname bearers.
They gave their monikers to fords.
Putting cigarette butts and matches
out on others.
Out of habit, to the past and thoughts,
Tortured and shackled.
Leninford is the city of chillin’. They were all screwed by Oblomov there.
And in Kirov, did you get smirnoffed with a Persian Tsar?
And do you remember the Molotovford cocktail party
after the 20th Congress at the Obkom? What a nuthouse, farce!
A black atlas with wild names
Leninford. Stalinford.
We’re-fed-up-with-you ford …
Андрей Филимонов
Большинство моих бабушек были учителями,
Древнейшая из них также старым большевиком.
От неё мне достался атлас с советскими городами,
я читал его, как песенник, пробуя языком
с запада на восток:
Город лени, город стали, город кира…
Строители нового мира,
советские вожди, носители кепок, усов и кличек.
Давали свои погонялова городам.
Друг о друг тушили бычки и спички
по привычке к былому и думам,
к пыткам и кандалам…
Ленинград город лени. Там всех наебал Обломов.
А в Кирове вы киряли с персидским царём?
А в Молотове коктейль-пати у секретаря обкома
помните после двадцатого съезда? Такой дурдом!
Чёрный атлас с дикими именами
Город лени. Город стали. Город как-вы-нас-всех-достали …
ego mantra
I wish
you good
I wish
you to be
as I wish
Someone up there
wishes
me not to be
as you wish
And no one no one wishes
me to be
as I wish
you good
ego mantra
Я хочу
тебе добра
Я хочу
чтоб ты была
как я хочу
Кто-то там на небе
хочет
чтоб я не был
как ты хочешь
И никто никто не хочет
чтоб я был
как я хочу
тебе добра
Ego mantra II
Last night two mothers
wanted to give birth to me
One wanted to castrate me
The other – to murder me
But visiting their wombs
I’ve chosen not to be born yet
my hand hasn’t worn out
I will love the whore of Babylon
Her ego is nude
about mothers she doesn’t care a fig
Her ego is rude
armed with a brick
but once it encounters the other ego
right away does it come to an end
such strange gold it is:
it likes turning into lead
Ego mantra II
Прошлой ночью две матери
хотели меня родить
Одна – затем чтобы кастрировать
Другая – чтобы убить
Но посетив их лона
я решил не рождаться пока
у меня не отсохла рука
буду любить блудницу из Вавилона
Её эго наго
и матери нипочём
Её эго нагло
вооружено кирпичом
но когда оно встречает другое эго
ему сразу приходит конец
такое оно странное золото:
любит превращаться в свинец
‘We’re born alone, we live alone, we die alone. Only through our love and friendship can we create the illusion for the moment that we’re not alone.’ – Orson Welles
First and foremost, my collaborations are a record of friendships. They are testament to my refusal of being alone in the creative act – as I would not want to be alone in the world – and to my decision to mediate sociality through the artistic impulse of other humans whose brilliance leaves me feeling more at home in that world. If my daily life is primarily defined by individuals who have decided to make their time on this planet one of creativity, ingenuity, intelligence and humour, and who have talents far surpassing my own, my experience of life can only be one that is defined by constant growth and learning and, hopefully, understanding — towards nothing more than more art unto expiry.
These five collaborations are no more or less representative of my overall collaborative output than any other five I could’ve chosen. Rather, I choose them, as I do my collaborators, because of a sense of who these people are and the creative and social energy they have exchanged with me. I write this in fact on a tour of the Scottish islands, writing new collaborations every day, to be read in the evenings, to small audiences on Orkney and Shetland. The collaborative process is ever in flux for me now, and so these five works also seem new to me, as though they were written this morning too.
Yet the work with Tom Jenks, ‘1000 proverbs’, was built over a year period or more – and readied by rapidly batted back and forth email – for publication as a separate book with Knives Forks and Spoons Press. Too, ‘40 feet’, is a poem where David Berridge and I tried to embrace the failure of encapsulation, writing 40 poems that were about themselves, over a 40 day period. ‘Samurai’, with Andrew Spragg, is new … begun this year and currently growing poem by poem as we both research a randomly chosen topic and warp it through our shared poetics. ‘La dominate’ was written and rendered artistically by Ariadne Radi Cor in Venice – both of us part of a collaborative project with a university there – as part of a project called Crossing Voices, one expertly curated by Alessandro Mistrorigo and James Wilkes. And ‘Oil’, with William Letford, was written for reading, for this current tour, and read in Aberdeen, Scotland on 15 July, 2014, after an exchange of stanzas lasting a few weeks. Our processes produce the content, and that’s where the joy is, in making sure a process is the thing of it all.
To date I’ve engaged in over 100 collaborations with writers, poets, artists, photographers, illustrators, designers, sculptors, and filmmakers from around the world. It’s why I founded the Enemies project (www.weareenemies.com), which has curated over 40 events, tours, and exhibitions with over 300 artists. Its goal is to pioneer collaboration and innovative as immensely generative and valuable turns of the poets practise.
The Enemies project is a record of potentiality too, of what the aberrant and ambiguous use of language can be when responding, warping and enveloping another, equally abundant, artistic medium. It is my view that poetry lends itself to collaboration as language does conversation, and it is in poetry we are renovating the living space of communication, and this in itself is a collaborative act. The poet comes up against something other than themselves in the writing of every poem; and in the shaping of every fragment of language there is a response taking place.
The motivation behind my taking on so many collaborations was initially a source of uncertainty for me. I’ve come to realise this reluctance is intensely important. At heart, I believe in the transformative power of poetry less than many of my peers. That isn’t to say that poetry cannot be transformative at all – of course I ascribe it such potential to be immensely transformative – but I refuse it the power to go beyond my own personal subjectivity. I refuse the idea that poetry is improving in and of itself. There is a tension here, maybe even a paradox. Poetry is both nothing and everything. Yet I do believe, somehow and without articulation, in the Brodskyite notion of poetry being the most important artform because of its relationship to the profundity of language, because of its engagement with what fundamentally constitutes all other creativity and discussion. It is impossible for me to escape the feeling that this relationship is wholly individuated, and so, concurrently, poetry is nothing, a game for the initiated, the distraction of a select.
I suppose, then, that my collaborations are about stripping away a glib assumption that poetry is profound, to get to its private meaning, which I do believe is closed and personal though very much present. Here is the second paradox: by maintaining a creative practice often reliant on another person, and an act of exposure toward them, I am able to gain fresh and invaluable access to my own poetry and its process. Brazilian philosopher Paulo Friere’s notion that communication builds community in the creative, organisational act which is the antagonistic opposite of manipulation, and a natural development of unity, ties into the idea that my collaborations might be founded on a central turn – a paradox of dismissiveness and legitimacy about the poetical act and the nature of poetry’s power. For me then, this issue is confusion as well as a testament, a symbol of community and accord, a record I cannot fathom rereading. Exactly how it should be – lost in the margins.
Artists who are powerful alone, and need not collaborate, seem to create easily, uninterested in the protection of their inspiration. If my collaborations are held together by poetry, it is as a tacky kind of glue – Uhu, say, in the yellow tubes – good for adhesion, barely keeping pace with the photography, art, illustration, musical composition, and design of so many gifted others. Consider these humble works ahead of my rather miniaturised bulwark against being solitary, a sandcastle before a tsunami, that might provide you with the smallest apertures of pleasant distraction. If my work sits alongside, or inside, work of a quality such as I hope you will find beyond this page, it can only be elevated. Enemies in art and life, those who make up the community I’m in, and who will not allow me to be complacent, is what collaboration means to me. I hope, for you, it might take on a unique meaning, one I cannot possibly fathom from my privileged vantage.
Wherein it is seen how buried always
inside me is a Jew
To
howl
out
ballads,
to
hear
plainchant up ahead, constantly, right to the end.
To tread ears of corn
on Judgement Day, and
see wholegrain bread
emerge from un-
graspable trays.
On the
elm
tree
foreign
to
all
representation, without being an apparition, to make out,
and this no miracle, a
juicy desert pear, its
wealth. Of water.
Brought to the mouth.
To bite, eyes half-
closed. A holy
silence haloes those
gathered at the
table:
such
that
I
am
mother. And I see father come from the blast furnaces with his
leather apron and the
hot tongs in the
pocket of the hardened
smock
that
still
holds
us
in
awe.
The three of us. And him. Mother serves in roadside
inns, father forges in
a glass crucible at the
exit of villages, wandering
fathers,
sons
of
a
daily diaspora which they are made accustomed to by, I
was going to say God, but
these are matters of
History. Of the angel
of darkness that
sometimes transforms to
exterminator.
At
home
from
childhood
on
we learnt to eat pears from elms, we feed unleavened
bread to the pigs and
sell the pigs to the
neighbours.
We
are
(so
the
song says) bearded merchants who speak half half (mixed
together) six or
seven languages, and
we rest (part of our
knack for feigning) on
Sundays.
Bring
on
the
festivals
where
we are dead to joy, to the robes of the
Prince and the chaste
maid, we are rag and
bone people, we live
in
a
language
hidden
among lowly trades. Let the rest have the
lion and the lamb:
for us the filthy
sack with the
golden coin to
enter
into
the
Beyond.
For my part, till the end, among all the mixtures, I
will sing for the
Beloved couplets
of Sefarad, so
we can leave I
will pack the
suitcase
(cardboard
and
rope):
the accumulated dream of new lands, at the end of the
day the Messiah,
anyway, here at
home, I help I
count I can
stuff
the
cabbages.
Véase Como Siempre Soterrado En
Mí Hay Un Judío
Baladas
gemir,
canto
llano
oír en lo adelante, constante, hasta el final.
Espigas hollar el día
del Juicio Final, y ver
brotar de moldes
inasibles pan candeal.
Del
olmo
ajeno
a
toda
representación, sin ser una aparición, divisarse,
y no es portento, la
pera bergamota,
caudal. De agua.
A la boca. Morder
y entornar los ojos.
Un silencio sagrado
nimbe a los
comensales:
tal
que
soy
madre. Y veo llegar al padre de los altos hornos
con su mandil de cuero
y las tenazas calientes
en el bolsillo del curtido
delantal
que
todavía
nos
sobrecoge.
A los tres. Y a él. La madre sirve en las ventas
del camino, el padre
forja en un crisol de
vidrio a la salida de
los pueblos, padres
ambulantes,
hijos
de
una
diáspora diaria a la que nos acostumbrara, iba
a decir Dios, pero son
cosas de la Historia.
Del ángel de tinieblas
que a veces se
transforma en
exterminador.
En
casa
aprendimos
desde pequeños a comer peras del olmo, el pan
sin levadura se lo damos a los
puercos y los puercos se los
vendemos a los
vecinos.
Somos
(lo
dice
la canción) mercaderes barbados que hablamos
a medias (entremezclados)
seis a siete idiomas, y
descansamos (parte de
nuestra capacidad de
simulación) los
domingos.
Vengan
ferias
que
estamos muertos a la alegría, al atavío del
Príncipe y la doncella
casta, somos traperos,
vivimos
en
la
lengua
oculta
entre oficios bajos. El león y la oveja para
los demás: para
nosotros el
churrioso talego
con la moneda
dorada para
entrar
en
el
Más
Allá.
Por mi parte, hasta el final, en las mezclas,
cantaré para la
Novia coplas del
Sefarad, haré
para irnos la
maleta
(soga
y
cartón):
de acopio la ilusión de nuevas tierras, a fin
de cuentas el Mesías,
en fin, ayudo cuento
puedo a rellenar
en
casa
las
coles.
Marilyne and I got to know each other when Marilyne very stylishly translated some poems of mine in 2009.When I read Marilyne’s poem ‘Nuit de Lilas’, I was intrigued and moved by the poem’s sensuousness and musicality, its shimmering painterly effect and sheer lift – an earthy immediacy heightened by the exotic. How could I carry across this airy and erotic blend of music, perfume and colour? It was clear that I would need to strive for the patterns of sound, format and image, and also that I might need some background and some botanical advice. Continue reading
Gelincikler
Meral’e
Ne yaşlı erkeklerin kırışık yumuşak elleri –
kâğıt gibi kolay yırtılan – ne de park saksılarının buruşuk çiçekleri.
Laleler gibi dimdik, kendinden emindir Kırmızı Türk Gelincikleri
alabildiğine parlak, kırmızı dört yaprak,
bir de gözlerine çekili birer kara sürmedir tüm istekleri.
Çocuklar gibi gülüyoruz koşarken
boyu dizimizi aşan tarlalar dolusu gelincikleri.
Sokaklarını dolduruyorlar adanızın
saçılıyorlar dereler boyu, geçip altından çitlerin
sanki bir zamanlar yollara taşan seller gibi.
Gelincik avcısıyız biz, gelincik toplarız.
Koşup başka kadınları geçer,
yolun sonuna varırız, inşaatların ardına
en güzel tarlayı bulmak için yarışırız.
Ben toplayıp demetlerken, lafa tutarsın onları arkada.
Dört yaprağını yolarız. Polen dolu kökler
şaşkın, çıplak, arılar nasıl gelecek diye bekler.
Bebeğimizin cildini getirir akla
kadife yapraklar parmaklarımızın arasında,
tüy gibi yükle dolana kadar o küçük uçuk yeşil araba
ardı ardına doldurur sepetleri gelincikler.
Eve varınca yıkarız doldurup küvetlere.
küçük böcekler fırlar içlerinden,
otlar, gelincik tohumları, yeter belki de
uyutmaya bir aslanı, uçan bir maymunu eğlendirmeye
gökkuşağının ardındaki merdivenlerde.
Üst üste durularız, yakarken sırtımızı bahar güneşi,
çiçekler kırışır, buruşturur sular serinleyen ellerimizi.
İpek gömlekleri yıkamaya benzer. Mutfaktaki tencereden
tatlı bir buhar yükselir. Hoş bahar kokuları tüttüren
senin o eşsiz tarifin benimle mezara gidecektir.
Reçel hazır olduğunda koyu gölgeler çöker üstüne soğudukça
hazırım artık gelincik lokumu dolu çantamla,
gelincik şurubumla hüzünlü bir ülkeye yolculuğa
gelincikler yalnızca genç ölen adamlar,
kocasız kalmış yalnız kadınlar
anlamına gelir o topraklarda.
Şimdi – diyorsun ki bana – gelincikleri görünce:
bahardaki dostluğu düşün, yabani güzelliği, onun meyvelerini;
“gelincik”, genç bir gelinlik kızdır hanımböceği güzelliğinde,
mutluluktan ışıldar kara gözleri, kadife gibi dokunur günışığı,
ipek gibi, ve bir reçel tadı dilinde.
Poppy picking
for Meral
Not the soft wrinkled skin of old men –
papery, easily torn – or the crumpled blooms in our town plots.
Upright as tulips, Turkish Red Poppies are firm and sure
they need just four petals, bright scarlet,
red as red can get, each with its eye black khol.
We are laughing like children
racing through fields-full, higher than our knees.
They crowd the narrow roads of your island
spilling across runnels, under fences
as if they were once water, spreading in a flood.
We are poppy hunters, poppy-picking.
We run ahead of the other women,
driving to lane’s end, friends’ building sites
competing for the best field to harvest.
You hold them hostage with talk, while I grab and gather.
We pluck the four petals. Pollen-loaded stems are
shocked, naked, worrying how to attract bees.
Velvet along our fingers we recall our babys’ skin,
filling bucket after basket, harvesting ‘til your small pale-green
car is loaded with the lightness of their feather-weight.
At the house we wash them outside in basins.
Small creatures emerge to be purged,
bits of grass, poppy seeds, perhaps enough
to charm a winged monkey, put a lion to sleep
on their trudge behind the rainbow.
Over and over we rinse them, spring heat on our backs,
flowers ruffling and crinkling in our cool hands.
It’s like washing silk shirts. The pot in the kitchen is
boiling its sugary clouds. Your secret ingredient I am to
take with me to the grave is wafting old morocco in.
When the jam is ready it cools into dark-claret shades
ready to sit in my bags with poppy lokum, red-poppy syrup
travelling back to a country where red poppies only ever meant
grief over fields full of bodies of young men,
a generation of women left unmarried, lonely.
Now – you say to me – when you see red poppies you will think of this:
friendship in spring, wild beauty and its fruit;
‘gelincik’, that means lovely young brides in their ladybird beauty,
black eyes shining with happiness, the touch of velvet, sunshine,
wet silk, and sweetness of jam on the tongue.
Photograph from VDU
Tenebrae When you arose from Tenebrae, And first opened your eyes You lay in Eden On the river shores of Hiddekel, Looking at your naked body, That had become word, the word I had to tell you. An athletic young angel sent by The Eternal One to punish us Stood before you. With eyes not yet open To the light of day, Stared at your breasts gushing with milk and honey. But the angel and I, blinded, Unable to find the word, were punished And driven to Tenebrae, Where both of us Search for you in the dark.
Summer The morning opened an enormous folio. Melancholy children play In the dusty painting. Time rebounds in stone, Walls, and leaving no sound Falls on faces. The greying Sunday slumbers On the Tems retrouvé book. Poppies Whisper in the garden As they unfold their umbrellas. The wilted lilac still-life (Gentileschi, with a zyther) Poisons memory. A blue bird flies From your voice, Flusters with blind wings And searches for our tree.
EXILE Unknown flora. Earth‘s birth in nature‘s catastrophe In the wilted nettle rustle. My heart cracked Like the window pane from the bell‘s thrust. Datura fatuosa. Gernanium Valley solitude. The thistle with numb hands Tears at the earth and cries. Eternally I walk In the funeral procession Of nettle and chervil rustle. All that remains is Your testament Written in footsteps on the grave.
Tenebrae Iškilus iš Tenebrae, Pirmąkart atvėrusi akis, Tu gulėjai Edene Ant jaunos Hiddekel upės kranto, Žiūrėdama į savo nuogą kūną, Tapusi žodžiu, kurį Aš tau turėjau pasakyti. Atletiškas ir jaunas Angelas stovėjo prieš tave, Amžinojo atsiųstas nubausti, Neatitraukdamas didžiulių Nepraragėjusių akių nuo tavo Medumi ir pienu Trykštančių krūtų. Bet angelas ir aš, akli, Neradę žodžio, buvom nubausti, Nutrenkti į Tenebrae, Kur mes abu Ieškom tavęs tamsoj.
Vasara Rytas atvėrė didžiuli foliantą. Dulkėto paveikslo gatvėj Žaidžia melancholiški vaikai. Laikas atsimuša į akmenis, Į sienas ir, nepalikęs jokio garso, Krinta ant veidų. Pražilęs sekmadienis snaudžia Temps retrouvé tome. Aguonos Išskleidę baltus lietsargius, Šnabždasi darže. Nuvytusių alyvų Natiurmortas (su citra, Gentileschi) Nuodija atsiminimais. Iš tavo balso Išskridęs mėlynas paukštis Blaškosi aklais sparnais Ir ieško mūsų medžio.
EXIL Nepažįstami augmenys. Gamtos katastrofoje gimusi žemė Mirusios dilgės šiurenime. Nuo varpo smūgių Sutrūkinėjo širdis Kaip lango stiklas. Datura fatuosa. Geranium Valley vienatvė. Usnis sugrubusiom rankom Drasko žemę ir verkia. Aš amžinai einu Dilgės šiurenimo ir bulių Laidotuvių eisenoje. Nes mums teliko Pėdom ant kapo parašytas Tavo testamentas.
Photograph from BR Bayern 2
Aimless he wandered, that wide-eyed boy
beneath the scorching sun the gods controlled.
He said, Make summer mine! (They granted it – and how.)
He didn’t know what hit him –
Who’d so long staggered stiltwise down the uncertain paths
unfurling like carpets on this hill of wine,
whose stilted voice had so long shied from song
the gods smelt blasphemy.
No-one can say for sure when that demon-child struck,
when the ivy whipped him and the bulls stood up,
the tigers roared and the snakes flick-flickered
across the crimson scree.
You don’t believe it, fine. Just step out from the garden,
and walk, and keep on walking, till you forget all things
and all the names of things, till that old sun just once becomes
the god it really is.
Then gasp and heave, and spit the fatty phlegm
from the astonished mouth, and at dusk where the waters
flow,
where the fish rise up to devour the dragonflies, there at last
smash into your true self.
And you’re here, in the palace of the meadow-wood
where even the oaks no longer look the same
and the willows and poplars draw down from the sky
the ancient silverlight.
When you return, they will not understand you,
if you return. From this point forth, there’ll be
so little to say. You can’t find anything older than this.
The light glints in the wine.
The Pedestrian Tunnels of Plovdiv
Berlin, 9 May 2003
To the women in the underpasses
only a bleeping toy made in Taiwan
sings the song of the sun which sails
high above, where they so seldom are.
They sit in the neon light and hope
that just one time the selling will be worth it,
that today somehow there’ll be those throngs of women
buying the panties their men will so desire.
In boxes like aquariums
they sit and knit and nod and read and dream,
waiting for rare dispatches from above.
Maybe the end of days is nearly here
when they will hold a slaughterfest down there,
and bring us roasted on a spit the golden calf.
Umweg für Umweg ging hier der Schüler des Lebens
unter der sengenden Sonne eines Sommers der Götter –
nur einen gönnt! sie gönnten, und wie, nur nehmen
konnte der Schüler nicht,
ging noch auf Stelzen, traute den Wegen nicht,
die ausgerollt waren wie Teppiche hier in dem Weinberg.
Noch sang er nicht, und sein Zögern war Lästerung,
sah aus wie Vorsatz.
Niemand bezeugt den Tag, an dem ihn das Höllenkind schlug,
Efeu ihn peitschte, Stiere aufstanden,
Tiger brüllten über dem Land, und Schlangen züngelten
über dem roten Geröll.
Glauben mußt du es nicht, verlaß nur den Garten,
gehe die Straßen, Wege so lange, bis du vergessen,
wie wir es nennen, laß die vertraute Sonne einmal
wirken als Gott, der sie ist.
Sauge die Luft herein, hechle, keuche, und spucke den fetten
Seim aus brennendem Mund, pralle im Dämmer am alten
Fluß
auf deine wahre Natur, dort, wo die Wasser stehen, Fische
Wasserläufer erbeuten,
endlich und hier, unter vertraut noch erscheinenden Eichen,
die aber schweigen, dunkele Wächter am Hofe der Pappeln,
Weiden, die hoch aus dem Himmel das Silberlicht leiten
in den Palast des Auwalds.
Wenn du zurückkehrst, werden sie dich nicht verstehen,
wenn du zurückkehrst. Von diesem Aufbruch wird
wenig zu sagen sein, denn Älteres kannst du nicht finden.
Da ist ein Licht in dem Wein.
Die Unterführungen von Plovdiv
Berlin, 9. Mai 2003
Den Frauen in den Unterführungen
singt nur ein piepsendes Gerät aus China
das Lied der Sonne, die vorübergeht
dort oben, wo sie selbst nur selten sind.
Sie sitzen in dem Neonlicht und hoffen,
daß der Verkauf sich heute einmal lohnt,
daß heute viele Damen viele Slips
zum Anreiz ihrer starken Männer brauchen.
In ihren Kästen wie Aquarien
sieht man sie stricken, nicken, lesen, träumen.
Und eine sagt der andern was von oben.
Vielleicht ist nicht mehr fern der Tage Abend,
da halten sie dort unten Schlachtfest
und bringen uns das goldne Kalb, gebraten.
Poetic Revolutionaries: Intertextuality and Subversion
Marion May Campbell, Rodopi, 2014
As I read Marion May Campbell’s new book, Poetic Revolutionaries: Intertextuality and Subversion, I was reminded of the still seemingly sacred notion of a democratic historical progress. This notion celebrates cultural alterity (and all that that implies), and makes an urgent appeal to textual revolution as a means to political resistance. Campbell’s work is rooted in the relativist revolution – the book is part of publisher Rodopi’s Postmodern Series – and her intense, erudite study addresses a state of disunion that has loosely bound the dwindling body of progressives ever since.
Sraboner dharar mato poduk jhore like the streams of monsoons let it descend this melody of yours upon my face upon my heart along with the light of the east let it arrive every dawn upon my eyes through the dark of night let it rain deep upon my soul night and day in this life upon joy upon sorrow like the streams of monsoons let it descend the branch that does not flower does not fruit at all let your cloud breezes rekindle that limb whatever is feeble whatever is febrile in this my lost life at every level let it flow upon the streams of music night and day in this life upon thirst upon hunger like the streams of monsoons let it descend
Sraboner dharar monton poduk jhore শ্রাবণের ধারার মতো পড়ুক ঝরে, পড়ুক ঝরে তোমারি সুরটি আমার মুখের 'পরে, বুকের 'পরে ॥ পুরবের আলোর সাথে পড়ুক প্রাতে দুই নয়ানে-- নিশীথের অন্ধকারে গভীর ধারে পড়ুক প্রাণে। নিশিদিন এই জীবনের সুখের 'পরে দুখের 'পরে শ্রাবণের ধারার মতো পড়ুক ঝরে, পড়ুক ঝরে। যে শাখায় ফুল ফোটে না, ফল ধরে না একেবারে, তোমার ওই বাদল-বায়ে দিক জাগায়ে সেই শাখারে। যা-কিছু জীর্ণ আমার, দীর্ণ আমার, জীবনহারা, তাহারি স্তরে স্তরে পড়ুক ঝরে সুরের ধারা। নিশিদিন এই জীবনের তৃষার 'পরে, ভুখের 'পরে শ্রাবণের ধারার মতো পড়ুক ঝরে, পড়ুক ঝরে ॥
An Anthology of Modern Irish Poetry. Wes Davis, ed
Harvard University Press, 2013
The words you gathered then
Will live on in an alien tongue.
(Máirtin Ó Direáin, ‘Homage to John Millington Synge’)
Reviewing a publication like Wes Davis’s An Anthology of Modern Irish Poetry feels like an act of hubris, a rash attempt to sum up an entire culture in a few pages. This problem stems, in part, from the collection’s strength: comprehensiveness. Davis gathers together fifty-three Irish poets of the post-World War II era, apportioning significant space for each in this almost one thousand-page book. Continue reading
Poetry and the Trace
John Hawke and Ann Vickery, eds
Puncher & Wattmann, 2013
Sometimes irritating, often informative, occasionally incisive and sporadically genuinely interrogatory, the thoughtfulness evinced by (many of) the writings collected in Poetry and the Trace triggers further chains of association and dissociation. This is a genuinely critical collection in various senses of that word: at once analytic, hortatory, and urgent.
Sonata Out of a Tin
1
o lord, I call on thee out of a tin:
make it blossom like Aaron’s rod
like gardens in tin rays and maples.
– I myself am made of tin
and everybody around is a tin clown.
generally I feel as if I were in a tank,
that is, in a tin.
in other words-
tough tinny!
I was wondering and thinking a silly nervous thought,
and not from within and not from the outside,
not from the outside and not from within,
and never understood anything.
and the silver fish died and wasn’t resurrected.
I should think up a cursed thought,
so that nobody else dies, but it seems that I won’t make it.
you so-so tin clowns,
why do you stop me from doing my
fiery work, my
true work, my
only work!
but what you, mechanical spirits, are doing
will end with the great invention of a tin-opener thing.
2
de profundis, as they say if you
smell tin flowers in a tin –
it’s like smelling flowers in a gas mask,
as they say in the SWAT team.
but when Mary descends
on tin clowns
and walks among them, pointing a gun –
I will be the first
to be shot.
You roll dice and gamble
with the devil-tinsmith, the sly pig,
who at the last moment, before the pull-off
will fling me with a smirk to the stake.
3
o lord, I call on thee from a tin,
make it bloom like David’s psalm –
like prayer and song.
– and with Your knife,
open it
and remove a sharp tin crown
from me,
and replace the hinges
with tendons.
blessed are they
who see knife wounds in the tin,
and tin wounds
on the knife face.
СОНАТА ИЗ КОНСЕРВНОЙ БАНКИ
1
господи, взываю к тебе из консервной банки:
вели ей жезлом аароновым расцвесть –
садами в жестяных лучах и клёнах.
– я и сам жестяной,
и все вокруг жестяные клоуны,
в общем дела у меня примерно, как в танке,
то есть как в консервной банке,
одним словом –
жесть.
гадал я и думал глупую нервную думу:
инутри иль извне,
извне иль изнутри,
так ничего и не понял.
серебряная рыбка умерла да и не воскресла.
должен я додумать проклятую думу,
чтобы больше никто не умер, а, кажется, не успею.
ах вы такие-сякие жестяные клоуны,
что вы мешаете мне делать мою работу
огненную, мою работу
истинную, мою работу
единственную!
но то, что вы вытворяете, механические барабашки,
кончится с великим открытием открывашки!
2
де профундис, как говорят, если ты
в консервной банке нюхаешь жестяные цветы, –
это как нюхать цветы в противогазе,
как говорят в спецназе.
но когда к жестяным клоунам
нисходит Мария
и проходит меж них, наставляя ружьё, –
я первый, кто
подойдёт под выстрел.
играешь Ты в кости и держишь пари
с чёртом-жестянщиком, ушлой свиньёй,
что в последний момент перед спуском курка
с ухмылкой закинет меня на выскирь.
3
господи, взываю к тебе из консервной банки:
вели псалмом давидовым ей цвесть –
мольбой и песнью.
– и Твоим ножом
открой её,
и жестяную острую корону
сними с меня,
и замени шарниры
на сухожилия.
блажен,
кто видит в банке раны ножевые,
но и от банки –
рану на ноже.
Vegetable Garden Song
— Fruit, vegetable and plant-growers, gardeners, ploughers, agricoles, peasants,
grab your spades and buckets, take us on,
dig for soup and winter preserves and market trading,
and you, granny, will sell us and buy a bottle of vodka,
and mummy will fry us on the frying pan, since
a new autumn is coming, and it’s harvest time:
we are ripe and our fruits are from the earth and soon to be food,
a new autumn is coming and so is a new time, –
may it be good.
The potato spirit was wandering over the potato field at night
and saw: potato wine spread out into four direction of the wind,
and in the ground the potatoes gazed with young eyes of gall,
and in all vegetable gardens they had a farewell ball,
a ball of autumn and last fruits, grown by man,
and in the New World genetically modified soybean
knew: its kingdom has come, and the plastic is melting,
a new autumn is coming and so is a new time,
and this is the last celebration.
The good old veggies: courageous courgettes, cool cucumber,
sturdy turnip, proud swede, and vegetable-growers, farmers,
old men and women of old earth and last gnomes
danced in a circle among garden-beds, from bare
good root-crops: the earth has given everything it had stowed,
all its juices and crops, all its love and power,
and they kissed each other good-bye in a dance of spades and buckets,
the courgette, the cucumber, the turnip and the proud swede,
Matthew, John and Pete.
ОГОРОДНАЯ ПЕСНЬ
— Огородники, дачники, садоводы, пахари, оратаи, крестьяне,
берите лопаты и вёдра, идите на нашего брата,
копайте для супа, и заготовок зимних, и торговли на рынке,
и ты, бабка, продашь нас и купишь бутылку водки,
а мамаша поджарит нас на сковородке, ибо
новая осень приходит, и время страды:
мы созрели и плоды наши от земли и съедобны,
новая осень приходит, и новое время,
да будет же оно добрым.
Дух картофеля ночью гулял на картофельном поле
и видел: раскинулась ботва на четыре стороны ветра,
а в земле картофель глядел молодыми очами,
и на всех огородах устроили бал прощанья,
осени и последних плодов, выращенных человеком,
а в Новом Свете генетически модифицированная соя
знала: пришло её царство, и плавится пластик,
новая осень приходит, и новое время,
и это последний праздник.
Но старые добрые овощи: кабачок кабацкий, огурец-молодец,
крепкая репка и славная брюква, и огородники, фермеры,
старики и старухи старой земли и последние гномы
водили хороводы среди грядок, от корнеплодов добрых
опустевших и голых: земля отдала всё, что было,
все соки свои и хлеба, всю любовь и силы,
и целовались прощально в пляске лопат и вёдр
кабачок, огурец, репка и славная брюква,
Матфей, Иоанн и Пётр.
Photograph by Dolf Verlinden
Menno Wigman combines an almost classical aesthetic with contemporary sensibilities and rock-and-roll subject matter. Dense, metrical poetry about sex and vandalism, death and suburban garden centres. An essentially colloquial vocabulary raised to a higher level by judicious assonance and alliteration. As a translator I’m attracted to his passion and his dedication to craft, and I enjoy the challenge of trying to reproduce both the flow and depth of his work. Wigman is a translator himself and understands and respects the process, that makes collaboration easy. Although happy to explain and identify what he sees as the most crucial features of the original, he is never proscriptive about how I should attempt to attain equivalence in English. I look forward to working on more of his poems later this year.
Room 421 My mother’s falling apart. She lives in a closet, not quite a coffin, where she wets her chair and sits the same day out each day. A view of trees as well and in those trees are birds and none of them know who they’re from. I’ve been her son for more than forty years and visit her and don’t know who I see. She read to me and tucked me in at night. She stammers, falters, stalls. She’s falling apart. Animals never think about their mothers. I spoon some quivering mush into her mouth, and tell myself she still knows who I am. Blackbirds, probably. They keep on singing. The call of the earth. From curse to curse, it’s heard.
Promesse de bonheur
Me in her bed and her stepping out of the shower.
The way she goes through to the kitchen naked
is how my days will go from here on in.
She hums a song and I am quickened in her bed.
Infinitely awake, she is, and warm and soft and proud,
and beautiful, so beautiful I can’t say how.
It is a love that must. A miracle which will.
And everything I’ve ever longed for in a body
is there before my eyes completely naked,
naked and mine. The room’s still panting – lustful and wooden.
The curl of her mouth, her strong and lofty mouth that’s made
for lips and pleasure, the curl of her mouth looks good.
Jeunesse dorée I saw the best minds of my generation bleeding for revolts that didn’t come. I saw them dreaming between the covers of books and waking in a twenty-two-town hell, ill-omened as the excised heart of Rotterdam. I saw them swearing by a newfound drunkenness and dancing on the sea-bed of the night. I saw them weeping for the cattle in the trams and praying under bright and glaring lights. I saw them suffering from unrequited talent and speaking in agitated voices – if it had all been said before, not by them. They came too late. Their promise unredeemed. The cities gleamed as black as caviar.
He had a face that was in love,
it was already time to admit that he
was in love. In his hands was
a long umbrella and from the windows
the priests were observing him. The little girl
was thinking about her doll, and when
mama took her by the hand, she paid him
no attention. Mama said:
“Should we buy some ham,” and
headed for the shop. He was running,
bouncing and spinning on his axis;
for this reason he kept losing his way.
He was in love, although not one
girl he knew came
to mind; he laughed. He knew
that the weather would be splendid, as long as
this was what he wanted. And even if
he didn’t care, for some time
it would still be the same. The long umbrella
he waved overhead and put
in the vestibule. The night was deep blue, the day was
green, but the lips of his beloved were red,
like a strawberry; he whistled and walked,
congratulating himself. Yes, his beloved
must be splendid; he wrote his friend
an entire letter about this and inserted it into a magnificent
envelope. His friend would be delighted and send
greetings: a postcard with a little violinist
on a lamp-lit street.
Nightmares.
Globes.
Of lead.
Their smooth slide to the south.
Where there’s an oasis, a library,
A building with cool darkened rooms,
A person speaking an incomprehensible guttural language,
A woman whose face is formed of twenty overlapping photographs.
With a hollow knock
The globes
Roll across the horizon line,
But that one is rotating
Like a glass door
That’s inscribed:
“Keep moving”.
Most frightening of all
Is the pointlessness
Of everything that’s happening.
What I know of Paris is this
photograph of the insides
of a coffee cup.
We see here several Argentinians.
They are amiably conversing, paying no
attention to the owner of the establishment
dead for the last fifteen minutes.
Eventually there appears
a long-haired woman with a bag
over her shoulder. She takes from it
the proofs of an article on theatre and magic.
I go up and lead her away
through the emergency exit.
On the square are several pigeons
and policemen. I know
this won’t take long.
I strangle her in one of the cluttered corridors.
Her body falls. Her wondrous hair
covers her face.
All historians in previous lives
had dealings with psychiatry.
The bicyclist is riding a bicycle.
With a patter, the plaster is crumbling.
Wild grapes coil round the balconies.
Old Giuseppe is wheeling a barrow full of tomatoes.
Several paupers suddenly have a cigar apiece.
They light up; dark blue smoke envelops their wrinkled stubble.
The policeman asks: What’s the time?
Anna, bronzed as ever, flirtatiously greets Giuseppe.
Paolo drives up in an automobile, gets out with a bundle of newspapers
in hand, slams the door, blows a kiss to Anna,
greets Giuseppe with a wave of the hand, goes up the stairs
to the house, slams the door.
The paupers again have a cigar apiece.
The policeman is studying his reflection in the greengrocer’s window.
Pushing a cart and praising his wares the ice cream man passes by.
The paupers have formed a circle; on the sly they curse and pull faces.
Giovanni is leading a little girl by the hand, ginger-curled Tina in a straw hat trimmed with bright ribbon.
They have just bought the hat in the little shop round the corner.
The sun is shining, the birds chirping, flying from rooftop to rooftop.
A light breeze ruffles the hem of Anna’s cotton dress.
The policeman asks once again: What time is it?
Anna and the paupers laugh, Tina takes a mirror and begins
To make sun bunnies.
Once again the plaster crumbles.
Joe Dassin
Joe Dassin entered every home,
Danced with every housewife,
Revealed to every tired man
That golden times were still to come,
There, on Elysian Fields.
He’d put on white slacks and white shoes,
A white shirt open at the chest,
Leave the house early in the morning and not return
Until deepest night, and sometimes
Disappear for days on end.
He would sing, and sing, and sing, slowly letting
Everything slide back into place, everything that was ready to collapse
And already beginning to totter. He wrapped beating
Things such as women’s hearts in soft scarves
And kerchiefs. And constantly wiped the dust from
All the gramophones on the planet. In intervals
That were short, too short, he would fly to the Côte
d’Azur and run into the sea, in a leopard-print swimsuit.
And then hastily rub himself dry, finish a cigarette
And with a quick step make for his private jet,
Already repeating, lips kneading the first lines
Which would turn into the flesh of all forgiveness.
And people would turn on their gramophones, televisions,
Radio receivers, and everywhere he was needed.
And even his death no one took for real.
“Sing!” they told him, “Sing!” And he – slow,
curly haired, with sideburns – he drew close
even in non-existence, and implored, implored:
“Put your heart back into place.
Don’t break it.”
Image from PEN America
‘Evening covers their shadows, your / eyes cut the evening.’ Forrest Gander was born in Barstow, California in 1956 and raised in Virginia. His books of poems include Core Samples from the World (2011), Eye against Eye (2005), Torn Awake (2001) and Science & Steepleflower (1998). ‘Wind- / blown sands scarf the road.’ Ranging from verse to prose poem, novel and essay, Gander’s work includes travel writing and reflection on geology. Continue reading
Image courtesy of The New Yorker
Wherefore
a grave, deliberate
Glissando of the cup towards the rainbow’s end:
ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ
DJ. What’s all this?
JM. Looks like the alphabet.
Gabr. THE NEW MATERIALS, YOUNG POET, FOR A NEW FAITH:
ITS ARCHITECTURE, THE FLAT WHITE PRINTED PAGE
TO WHICH WILL COME WISER WORSHIPPERS IN TIME
(Merrill, The Changing Light 446)
Like some piece of technicolour cover-art from a 1950s mystery novel, James Merrill’s Stonington apartment loomed in the background as I stepped out of the gutter-snow and onto the street. I was wearing a bright red coat; the apartment matched the slate-blue winter sky. From the outside, the poet’s house felt as gorgeous and twee as everything else in this tiny – dare I say quaint – fishing village. Continue reading
