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
For Khlebnikov, the theoretical foundation does not exactly sum up his aesthetics and ideas, but is more of a code to slovotvorchestvo (Futurist ‘word creation’), where ‘languages will remain for art and will be freed from a humiliating burden, [that] we are tired from hearing.’ Introducing the idea of language as a benign and malleable force sans frontiers, Khlebnikov does not seem confined to the landscape of the urban, industrial aesthetics usually associated with Futurism. Literary parallelism, for him, is not only between the gentrified, combustive energy of cities, but can also be exchanged and melded through national folk motifs, elements, allusions and linguistic borrowings.
In trying to determine this accentuation of defamiliarisation (ostraneniye) in Khlebnikov’s world, it is important to explore the idea of ‘the word as such’, where the word itself is an object, evoking the possibility to refer to everything that hasn’t yet been proposed, as signage to a copious relation between one thing and another. The linguistic sign represents what is unsaid: an univocal identity of meaning; the illicit and repressed are the attempt of the unconscious of language to voice itself – in itself an impossibility. Khlebnikov’s word-experiments – for example the misleading use of suffixes and prefixes forming from the same root words, the invention of neologisms, or his attempts to create new Russian terms in exchange for long-borrowed foreign terms – all bring about a sense of defamiliarisation with poetic language. His experiments were a serious attempt to recreate a psychotropic world of folklore with the means of high art: a mediation between fairy tales (skazki), folk culture, the cosmopolitan, a blur of intertextual allusions from the world’s literary canon, as well as the languages that comprise world culture.
Khlebnikov was also devoted to the rational, ‘scientific’ relations of the word, confounding any element of emotion. He created mathematical systems to determine the secreted meaning of individual letters within the alphabet and, in one essay, he makes a distinction between ‘the language of general understanding’ (yazik ponimanie) and ‘the language of trans-reason’ (zaumnyi yazik) to prove that his quasi-equations are actual eternal structures to language. (He also surveyed the different consonant sounds in other languages to prove that these structures existed other than in Russian.) Like Balmont, Khlebnikov was fascinated by ‘the primitive stage of language’1, bringing this pre-verbal manner to the Russian language and to Russian poetics, creating a poetic revolution. Poetics would not only become strange by returning to Slavic folk motifs and elements but also by returning to the root of language. Khlebnikov’s word formations raised the level of objectification that could be utilised in Russian grammar and vocabulary in order to create an unexpected aspect of sound to the ear, to haul out the eternal mystery within language itself, stripping it back to its barest bones of groundless, arbitrary meaning.
Khlebnikov’s notion of the ‘word as such’ is an attempt to discover this ‘something’ intrinsic to language itself – perhaps language itself being zaum. ‘Zaum’ was a poetic attempt by Khelbnikov and Alexander Kruchenikh to create a universal language, where a bodily function, an expression of emotion, or any other phenomenon could be expressed by the hyperbolic usage of a word. Zaum was a revolutionary practice to rupture language by going back to the materiality of the word, taking it beyond itself to a pre-foetal and timeless state. It was created at a time that the culture itself was on the verge of war and revolution at the beginning of the 20th century. By emphasising an unusual register of words and their relations to one another, Khlebnikov has evoked insight into the world of words: this infinite poetics and the internal networks within language to unite people all over the world is a concept echoed in many of Khlebnikov’s essays. It is not only his theoretical assertions, but also his baffling semantic structures, which elucidate a mural of soundshapes (‘zvukopis’), which widen and decentre the scope of play abundant with personifications, accents, and obsolete Russian words.
In Lacan’s theory of subjectivity, the self is necessarily divided, intertwining with that which (or whomever) is believed to be other to itself: the Self cannot see itself except through the agency of the other. In his essays from the collection Four Fundamental Concepts of Psychoanalysis, Lacan introduces the concept of vision and how internal it is to the structure of our desire and our perception of the desired other. ‘The Gaze’ is an opening; it is not a singular act of observing in a quasi-Kantian model: in Lacanian terms, the concept of the gaze is a point of loss and a series of relations. This relation to things is where ‘something slips, passes, is transmitted, from stage to stage, and is always to some degree eluded in it – that is what we call the gaze’.2
This consolidation and loss of self via the gaze is a construct that benefits readings of poems such as ‘Ra’, whom we find ‘seeing his own eye in the red swamp/ contemplating his dream and himself.’ The poem puts forward the question: who is Ra really looking at? The fixation on others, the hallucinogenic relations that sprout from each and every gaze in the poem – ‘a thousand eyes of the Volga,’ which somehow subsume one eye, although it is not clear whose, by this stage. These malleable notions of the self and how they co-exist between elements, gods, and folkloric motifs require a psychoanalytic tool of interpretation in order to lead to an interrogation of the notion of the self, unfolding as it does in the poems.
Lacan’s essay ‘Subversion of the Subject and the Dialect of Desire’ in Ecrits also provides a theoretical conception of the desiring subject, one in which I frame readings of the speaking ‘I’ in the Persian poems. The representation of subjectivity as shaped by a projection of otherness in the poem can thus be related to the idea of Lacanian desire.
Khlebnikov’s notion of culture is itself not entirely Euro-centric or Russo-centric: culture is something transitional, a declamation of primordial world revolting against the destruction of ‘bourgeois society’ Although Khlebnikov was nurtured by the Futurists’ leap to reveal, defy and invade the unknown and the unexpected, his extraordinary articles, passages and poetic references were devoted to the expressive possibilities that other cultures and languages could bring to the poetic revolution of the Russian language, thus transcending other Futurists in this regard. In order to analyse and understand Khlebnikov’s work, there has to be some understanding of his ideas of language and culture, and his attempts to apply these concepts in his poems.
The fundamental concept of the materiality of the word central to Khlebnikov’s poetics requires clarification. In determining this materiality of the word becoming the space of the word (‘the word as such’ as theorised by Khlebnikov), which is not fully formed, we are led to a poetics of ‘displacement’: where language, words, units, morphemes and syllables are not autonomous, but a space. (For an example of which, Khlebnikov coined the term ‘soundshape’ (zvukopis), which is always in a flux of multiplicity and displaced from its familiar, clichéd usage.)
In order to define ‘displacement’ and why it is utilised in the analysis of the works of Khlebnikov, Deleuze and Guittari’s notion of the ‘rhizome’ has been drawn upon, as it is a theoretical construct that assumes the diverse forms of language as a chain of actions, an event ceaselessly ‘othered’, a channel open to change. Their method of the rhizome is conceived of as a weed of multiplicity, infinite in dimension, encompassing subject and object, image and world, and holding the potential possibilities of signification projected within language. The rhizome is depicted as a series of connections, lines and flights, envisioned by the authors as a valid variation to the standard, binary logic that has dominated Western thought.
By advocating the rhizome as a metaphor for ‘displacement’ within Khlebnikov’s poetics, I will elaborate on the scheme of the rhizome in terms of Khlebnikov’s notion of ‘the word as such’ (slovo kak takovo) as a poetic of displacement and the specific mythopoeia of Khlebnikov that is also one of displacement. In each of these areas, displacement has occurred as a diversity of forms of representation within the word; its related concepts are structured as a configuration of the language of possibility and of otherness central to his poetic experiments as depicted by the concept of the rhizome.
In the poetics of Khlebnikov, language is the very otherness that is a metaphor for displacement. The idea of displaced meaning – a displacement of a unified, autonomous meaning – is outlined in the following extract, where a dialogue between a student and teacher is created to convey the materiality of language in order to substantiate his own poetic excavations. (The dialogue itself is complete with meta-narrative; as it comments on the nature of this literary form itself, it is reminiscent of Plato’s dialogues and attempts to reconfigure the form of dialogues as we have understood them since Socrates, thus reintroducing the form to the avant-garde.)
The dialogue explores the role of words’ internal materiality, as the student is indignant that his philological findings demonstrate that the perimeters of meaning are within a word and are dependent on certain conditions. These conditions, as demonstrated by the internal variation of vowels, are diverse and not independent: they rely on what is both absent and present (as the student asserted with the example of a bald spot and a tree trunk). Conditions of language are exposed to conditions beyond what is present: in Khlebnikov’s poetic world, words have a displaced relationship to what they represent. There is an attempt to cleanse language of its unnatural, static and tired references, and reject the ‘common’ associations of words, which are an artificial and arbitrary construct.
Although this is somewhat speculative, the point can be made that Khlebnikov’s poetics of displacement may have been influenced by his probing into foreign languages. The idea of an ‘internal declension’ is nothing new in terms of Semitic languages. For example, this can be illustrated by the Arabic root verb ka-ta-ba (to read). If it is declined internally, it could mean kitaab (book), kaatib (writer), kutubu (books), etc. As short vowels are generally not written in Arabic, meaning is gathered by context. This visualisation of an internal declining system may have appealed to Khlebnikov, as the idea of visualisation was rather impertinent to Futurism and the absence of the vowel may have had an impact on him. Similarly, the presence of radicals and homophonous logographic characters in Chinese (symbols for words that sound alike but have different semantic meanings) may have also had an influence on the poet, given the ‘visualness’ of these languages.
From the play, Zangezi, Khlebnikov’s improvisations are realised by formulating words with the Russian root ‘um’ (‘mind’) in order to overturn both conventional and unconventional prefixes, affixing to the root word meanings that do not exist, but within the rules of language could be possible, thus displacing the meaning of ‘um’ as it is usually perceived. Khlebnikov’s linguistic developments also represent the possibility of becoming a poetic in itself – an otherness that exists within language. This displacement calls into question the notion of poetic language as a form, rather than as a substance – a protest against semantic conditioning. Like the rhizome, it is a system of relations, as any prefix in Russian can be applied to the root word.
In his notes on the play, Khlebnikov explains this elaborate system and what could essentially be seen as the destruction of a standard language as we know it. As if on exhibition, the root word begins to lack definition: with the prefix ‘v’, it is explained as ‘an invention’. Un-love of what is old leads to ‘vyum’. Or the letters ‘Go’ can be explained, as noted in the play, ‘high as those trinkets of the sky, the stars, which aren’t visible during the day.’ From fallen lords (gosudari in Russian) ‘Go’ takes the dropped staff. ‘Noum’ and ‘Daum’, with their common meanings of ‘No’ and ‘Da’ (‘but’ and ‘yes’ in Russian), signify the argumentative and the affirmative assigned to the mind. The mind is a key to refer to in terms of Khlebnikov’s poetics: the principle of Zaum, trans-sense, or literally ‘beyond-mind’ (za in Russian meaning ‘beyond’), is central to how the Futurists were informed and inspired by language construction and how word-creations existed as form and not only as technique, revealing unexplored norms of poetic language. Like the rhizome, the word ‘um’ is a world – and a word – unto itself.
Already, the life of the word – and the forms it could take – is the essence of poetry: an idea that could arguably be said to have formulated the poetics of Futurism. Significantly, this essence, the life of the word, is the key to the history of a people, which here could also be in opposition to the past, on in confluence with it – a life ‘detachable, connectable, reversible, modifiable, and [that] has multiple entryways and exits and its own line of flights’.3 The power of poetry is to unlock that life, which exists in opposition to the past as it is, and should be expanded and opened to the present.
When in transit and upon receipt, to whom does a postcard and its contents belong? This is one of the questions at the forefront of Speaking Geographies, a collaborative poetry collection by Siobhan Hodge and Rosalind McFarlane. This collection, composed entirely on postcards, in letters and via email, is focused not only on the act of sending and receiving poetry, but also how these poems can be reinvented and rewritten according the perceptions of the reader. The collection comprises not only of poems that have physically been sent across great distances; it also thematically engages with and challenges notions of symbolic distance, such as the socio-economic and environmental politics of travel and place.
Processes of transmission and interpretation, resulting in the creation of multiple layers of voices and experience, are unpacked in a series of variously structured poems. Played out in a range of international settings, with a particular focus on linguistic and travel-based imagery, the collection appears to be predominantly free verse poetry, but each piece is located within a particular theoretical scope and technical approach, often based on different schemas for layering the poets’ voices.
In Speaking Geographies, both poets examine and problematise ideas of writing in a range of different geographic locations, then rewriting or refiguring each other’s works. Rather than being straightforward ‘travel’ poems, these collaborative poems are focused on the means and repercussions of exchanging poems written in a variety of settings and from a range of points of view. This pervading focus on interpretation offers room for multiple ownerships of voice and experience, as well as building a subtle form of écriture féminine, via the two female poets’ creation of a separate space for critique and discussion of personal experiences as well as broader themes, situations, and ideas.
Central to this project is a fluid concept of poetic identity and authority. Although some pieces can be immediately aligned with one poet in particular, others are much harder to pinpoint, and occasionally pieces have been constructed with intentionally misleading ‘signature’ techniques. Ownership is not affixed, yet the voices of both poets encompass the entire collection, expanding into multiple points of view. This mirrors the process by which the collection has been constructed; sending poems via letters and postcards leaves the work subject to loss and damage, as well as contentious claims of ownership.
In our discussion here, core theoretical issues confronted in this collaboration are highlighted, with particular reference to heterotextuality, issues of territoriality and gender. In addition, illustrative close readings of several main poems will be provided.
Close Readings: Bodies and Space
Speaking Geographies also contains many poems that examine the processes and implications of transferring bodies from one place to another, often depersonalising individual composite body parts, yet consistently articulating clear narrative voices. A pair of linked poems, ‘Crossing in Real Time’ and ‘Crossing the Real’, as well as the collection’s titular poem, ‘Speaking Geographies’, demonstrate some of these central ideas in two very different forms.
‘Crossing in Real Time’ and ‘Crossing the Real’ are described as ‘response poems’; one collaborator sent the first poem by letter to the second, who echoed its style. The poems are structurally and thematically similar, with slight focal deviations.
The poems are posed as a question and answer, and though ostensibly these mailed-off poems have made the desired connection, both remain structurally disjointed. There is also no consensus on how best to proceed; one speaker asserts a pessimistic outcome, and the questioner has no chance to reply. The central ‘we’ in the first poem poses questions around grammatical stretches and structural manipulations, while the answering ‘we’ is much more restricted. ‘Crossing in Real Time’ is concerned with how the speaker and listener may converse across languages, specifically via grammar, while also making coy references to the Tsing Ma Bridge in Hong Kong. The respondent, replying in ‘Crossing the Real’, maintains the questioner’s preoccupation with being able to communicate, but makes no attempt to reply in the same form, which combines with the stronger sense of pessimism to foreshadow a loss of voice and ability to share these concerns.
Human bodies are less pressured in ‘Crossing in Real Time’ than in ‘Crossing the Real’. The speaker in the form recognises some potential need for adaptation, reflected in the line ‘perhaps we must breathe — this —spine’, breaking up words and preparing to shift ‘arch—well into each in— / bet—wee—n’. The willingness of these contortions is transformed into compulsion in ‘Crossing the Real’, in which the proposed act of breathing is now a ‘lung squeeze’. Willingness and possibilities are swapped for terms of revision and restriction. The optimism of the former poem is countered by heaver, metallic imagery that intrudes upon living bodies, as both speaker and listener are unequivocally ‘steel shanked and pinioned’. Inanimate objects take on human traits, and the speaker anticipates suppression, but observes that this is self-created.
These two poems foreshadow several of the issues that recur throughout the collection: the ability to speak and to listen, and how these transmissions can be interrupted. ‘Speaking Geographies’ represents the next stage of this otherwise pessimistic outlook, generating a space in which narratives can be naturally overlapped so that there is no need for ‘bridging’. Structurally, ‘Speaking Geographies’ is a multi-layered postcard poem, starting out as a postcard poem sent by one collaborator to the other, and then gratuitously reworded by both collaborators back-and-forth. The initial solo status of the piece is signalled in the first eight lines, but is then collapsed into ‘we’ as the shared memory is divided up and transformed into new narratives:
Speaking Geographies To write you postcard leaves and a record, I looked to sea - you reflected. This place is you in mountain song, now crouched in bricks, then fretworks palmed like playing cards. Each breath seals stamps, sends me south. We are space uninvested. Take this instead, knitting narratives over migratory seas that we may bind our stories. Bone-deep hankering within storyline maps: to write our realist fictions we must placate these pages, ink our dripping fingers, circumnavigate sealed teeth and we all go together - evolving in ever more salvaged directions.
The opening speaker then transfers ownership of the poem and its referenced memories to a communal holding, as the rest of the piece is phrased as a plural experience. ‘Speaking Geographies’ leads to ‘uninvesting’ both as a form of literary currency and permitting a broader narrative to take place, shifting from the wholly personal experience of the opening lines to a broader process of transmission and interpretation. In addition, the poem sets up the collection as inherently connected with the highly contested term ‘world literature’, focusing on the processes and implications of dissemination rather than the notion of a ‘centre’ or ‘periphery’, circulating within or for a particular readership, nationality, or cultural identity. The anti-materialist nature of the poem is tied into the notion of salvage and recycling. These moves articulate the rest of the collection’s focus on creating such spaces, built on shared memories and reworked narratives, to extend criticisms and also to generate a sense of mutually beneficial communal ownership, though not without its problems.
Terrance Houle | Urban Indian #7, 2007
Italo Calvino argued that writing was a combinatorial exercise and that, for him, reading represented ‘a way of exercising the potentialities contained in the system of signs’. I would like to keep this declarative at the forefront of our investigation into the work of Terrance Houle, neither with a confirmative bias not leaning towards negating the statement of Calvino, but thinking through his statement in our analysis of a few of Houle’s images. Continue reading
Introduction
‘E is for Errand’ is an extract from the draft of a libretto named The Bones of the Epic. As it stands, it is a work from regress – not in progress. Regress because the current text is a portion half-way. The Bones of the Epic is half-way to what it will be: a script for a puppet master (Delfim Miranda), translator/convener (Miguel Martins) and Lisbon noise band (A Favola da Madusa) – to make of it what they will.
