Poetry in the park in Hoboken

 It was a wonderful afternoon: Easy talk among like minded friends, good poetry read. The choice of musicians grand. Left, poets listening to poets reading. Right Roger Nupie and Vera Alexander Beerten. Roger read naughty homo erotic poetry, lighthearted and fun. Vera read a cycle of poems about 34 children drowning on a Friday night during the war. Chilling to the bone. The words smuggled in all had to do with caring for one or other issue or being moved by something. The audience was wonderful participating in the exchange with poets: looking up at the leaves in the dappled light, repeating words when a poet asked them to...

 

It was all great stuff. The extra appearance of Iron Maiden lead singer Blaze Bayley was a pleasant surprise. Many reasons to be grateful.

Books

I read a lot, I love books. Yet some of my friends are shocked at how I treat my books. Usually in pencil, yet also in pen and ink or anything that will write, I make notes in my books. Underlining, adding exclamation marks, putting in the initials of whom I should send a specific quote to. Sometimes an elaboration, a yes! Or No! No! Sometimes when rereading a book years later, I don't even recognize my younger self. There was a time that books that weren't in almost unread, virginal state wouldn't be bought nor sold in a second hand shop. yet that has changed in the last years. Books belonging to authors, writing in a book they have read, have now become more valuable and are considdered a tool in literary studies. In 'De Brakke Hond' in the section called 'Glimpen' by Paul Claes I read a note about a very industrious librarian who had erased all the penciled in notes and remarks from Dutch poet Jan Leopold in a book of poetry by Mallarmé. It is a shame we lost the insights and comments in the margins. It is I guess like looking in through an illuminated window, or reading over another's shoulder...sharing a thought with an unknown person.

Around the kiosk

Frank De Vos organizes next Sunday, September 9, a beautiful gathering of eight poets who will smuggle in their words around the kiosk in Hoboken. It starts at three, be there!

Smuggle ware from Croatia:

Birds whisper softly

don’t drown out

what was thought

Bells clang

-       it is six o’clock-

invite

to the day

the good life

in submission

to a normal life

of singing women in black

Thereafter

the heart  full of fire

the soul in the wind

and the distance that calls

Birds whisper softly

don’t drown out

what you think at all

Louise Erdrich: The Plague of Doves

Having read several of Louise Erdrich’s books I was thrilled at the airport in Washington to find her latest book: The Plague of Doves. The circumstances not being quite right I had a hard time getting into it. Yet at a certain point I got involved in the different narrators pushing on the novel which has a marvelous layered complexity. Events are described with their own momentum and at the end there is a kind of closure by the search for and discovery of the truth. In the interwoven settings of the reservation and the small town of Pluto, the weight of historical injustice comes to light through the conjunction of many different elements, as well in an historical setting as a contemporary. Themes are: religion, the unsolved murder of a family, a stamp collection, a violin, burning love, racism, family, the reservation and an untold past.

Read it, take your time over this intricate tapestry and achievement of Louise Erdrich.

Quotes:

Unable to sleep, he lighted a candle stub and paged through the Meditations until he found the one he needed, the one that told him no longer to wander at hazard or wait to read the books he was reserving for old age, but to throw away idle hopes (Louisa!) and come to his own aid, if he cared for himself and while it was in his power.

As I look at the town now, dwindling without grace (....) (Yet there is something to the love and knowledge of the land and its relationship to dreams – that’s what the old people had. That’s why as a tribe we exist to the present.)

The Indian women I knew were shy and very studious, although a couple of them swaggered around furious in ribbon shirts with AIM-looking boyfriends. I didn’t really fit in with anybody.

Like Anaïs, I reviewed every thought, all visual trivia became momentous, my faintest desire a raving hunger.

My consciousness is fragile ground, shaky as forming ice. Every morning, when I open my eyes and experience my first thought, I am flooded with relief. The I is still here.

Proofreading Sequenza

The stages for me in a translation process of poetry are manifold: reading the text through, talking to the poet, do a first translation, noting alternatives, problems unsolved at that moment and sending the text to the poet if s/he knows the target language. Then think to through the remarks of the poet and making a clean copy with just very few options still open. It is always about the right word, rhythm and meaning. Then we read through the text together, discuss the merits of each choice and reach a conclusion together. It is obvious that the end result should be a poem, mirroring the original in its new cloak, in the other language.

After the work is  done there are cookies and coffee and chatting and walking through the marvelous garden of the poet...

The first  poems I read written by Marleen De Crée was  the book 'Brieven aan Plinius' from which an example follows:

ik zeg je, Plinius, het is september.
de dichters keren in ’t getij.
vruchten rijpen aan de warme muren,
vergeet dat niet: het zijn de laatste uren

van de zomer. warmte, niets kan nog gebeuren.
het zijn de stille dagen van het jaar,
want alles wordt geduldiger gedragen
in veelvoud van de laatste dracht.

september weet wat dierbaarheid betekent
en liefde tekent schaduwen van was.
ik zeg: voorzichtigheid werd ooit berekend

aan de contouren van een waterglas.
de druiven, Plinius, de laatste schragen
van wat een dichterzomer was.

***
I tell you, Plinius, it is September

poets turn in the tide.

fruit ripens on warm walls,

don’t forget: these are the last hours

of summer. warmth, nothing can happen still.

it are the quiet days of the year,

because more patiently all is carried

in multiples of the last gestation.

September knows what fondness means

and love draws shadows of wax.

I say: once prudence was calculated  

by the outline of a water glass.

the grapes, Plinius, the last trestles

of what a poet’s summer was.

This is the first poem in the upcoming bilingual book 'sequenza', published by world internet books

Today: Desert Poetry Night...

Arizona is celebrating its 100th birthday this year.
Welcome to world poetry days 2012!
April is America's Poetry Month  -  on April the 30th 2012 ( Monday ),
desert poetry night will be held at Annmarie's Old Gas Station right here in Chloride Arizona.
   There will be poetry about people who settled the West: the landscape, the wildlife and the hardships they endured.
   The premiere of the Global Night Car project will be held right here under the Arizona stars... All friends of good music and poetry are welcome.
   There will be an open mike for all poets, right here under the Arizona stars.
   Also there will be a tribute to American legend Johnny Cash celebrating
his 80th birthday. More info: www.world-internet-books.com
*
 *OLD GAS STATION CREW*
CHLORIDE AZ
Tennessee Ave
near famous DIGGER DAVES

American Sign Language and Poetry

 

© sms:foto duisburg/rhein 2012

Dori Vaughn works in a school as an interpreter/assistant for children who cannot hear. She even, in her lunch break, thought hearing children to sign, so that the deaf children would be less isolated. When I asked her whether she could sign some of my poems, she hesitated a moment and said yes. Signing is interpreting. American Sign Language (ASL) is not “English”. So she practiced while I spoke the text and she looked for the best rendering of the image or the concept. She also practice ‘off the page’. Working from a written text is a job not many interpreters like to do, and poetic language of course is an extra challenge. She also discussed the content of the poem, what I had meant, how it came about. I however wanted to know how she read the poems, because a poem once written, is read and interpreted by the reader and might carry a different weight or connotation. Dori does a great job and adds to the beauty of the event of April 30, 2012: desert poetry night.

Animal Dreams - Barbara Kingsolver

What to do on a blustery day with showers except photographing the light and shadows of life.

Just find a warm place inside and read.

Being a fan of Barbara Kingsolver’s writing I was pleasantly surprised to find her book in a small town for $2. I have read five of her books, this being the sixth one. She writes rich stories, with a tapestry of characters which ring true. In Animal Dreams Codi, the main character is at a juncture in her life, and goes back to Grace, Arizona where she grew up with her sister Hallie, who is in Nicaragua, helping the people with  their crops, and a distant father. Codi is in the habit of running to another place when life doesn’t turn out the way she wanted. One could say it is all about the luxury of forgiveness and living a sweet life so one has sweet dreams... Her memories seems unreal until the day she fully participates in life with loss, love and belonging. Some quotes which touched my heart:

* I couldn’t ask Emelina for directions to my own childhood home; I didn’t want her to know how badly dislocated I was. I’d always had trouble recalling certain specifics of childhood, but didn’t realize until now that I couldn’t even recognize them at point-blank range.

* Children robbed of love will dwell on magic.

* ”Insomnia’s different,” I said.  “You know the light that comes on when you open the refrigerator door? Just imagine it stays on all the time, even after you close the door. That’s what it’s like in my head. The light stays on.”

* The winter rains would soon dry up. Then there would not be another drop till July. During those brittle months the taste and smell of rain would be lost to us, beyond the recollection of children and the deepest root tips of trees. That is the way of the seasons in a desert place.

My Grace is Chloride, AZ.

Presentation of Light traces in De zwarte panter: Three books of Poetry

 Three poets who have known each other for a long time decided to present the heir new books together in The black Panter Gallery. It is a magical 15th century chapel where art in all its forms is celebrated. The host is Adriaan Raemdonck, ambassador of cultural life in Antwerp.

Fred reading the German translation of Annie Yet the road to a presentation is a long one. First of all the producer of the books Fred Schywek, poet and responsible for the translation from Dutch into German and Annmarie Sauer, poet and responsible for the translations into English have to feel comfortable in working hand in hand with the poets.The translations are proofread together with the authors and deep discussions arise. 


In Annie Reniers' Buchstabenlicht - Letters van licht - Letters of light it might have been about the philosophical connotation of a word or nod to one or other art theory. With Roger Nupie's Lighthouse - Lichthaus it was about choices in the level of 'naughtiness' and comma's. Traces - Sporen is a bilingual book translated by the author herself.
 One will note that in the translation of the works of others she is loyal, yet in the translations of her own work she makes choices that can lead to quiet a difference between the two languages. Then the lay out, the page numbers... The producers job.

Then a concept is worked out for the presentation and yes, it worked. The audience was warm and listened intently, we had help from friends Unciya and Hakate to man the book stand. friends worked the bar, brought the drinks and Bram Goots and Maya filmed the event. Thanks to all on the international poetry day!!

© sms:foto duisburg/rhein 2012 - picture with Fred by Ken Post

Job Degenaar-Lucienne Stassaert-Fred Schywek in salon 12b

 Lucienne Stassaert started the evening with an introduction to the poetess Andrée Chedid whose work she has been translating from French into Dutch. The love of nature and landscapes, the positive outlook on life, Caïro and Paris as the two cities with a stream which where her home, all that was a medicine, an antidote in a difficult for Lucienne. The translation is vibrant and alive.

Fred Schywek read from Weisse Mühle to be published in 2 or 3 languages in autumn. His poetry has strong imaginary and plays on language. Love and loving and love lost and longing are the theme in this book.

During the break Goulash soup was served and Rice pudding with apples ( thanks Rose!) Then followed Job Degenaar with a well chosen reading from his latest book Ich bin- I am, read in its three languages: Dutch, German and English. He is a traveler with an eye for detail, finding the beauty in melancholy, seeing the deep and fascinating humanity in others. Job performed several traditional ballads delighting us all. I thank the poetry loving friends who came and shared a warm and intimate evening of beauty in four languages.

 

Traces Sporen

 

Traces as poetry, encounters, landscapes, sudden insights, as loss and loving again, as longing. In this book language explores fragmented places of belonging. 

*

Annmarie Sauer is a poetess of few words, limiting herself to the essence; what she writes is intense and felt deeply. Without frills and sure she paints with words. For her no parlando, and certainly no baroque. Nowhere does she make concessions to language. She is engaged and empathic and catches, seemingly effortless all movements and fluctuations of moods and confides them to paper in English and Dutch.

Rose Vandewalle

 The presentation is March 23rd, 8PM: De Zwarte Panter, Hoogstraat 76, Antwerp, together with Roger Nupie and Annie Reniers 

All is given

by water & wind

ice & fire

now till in the greyest hour

always all is in its place

perfect unruliness

battered

predestined in

the movement of time

coincidence

just as I

*

Alles is gegeven

door water & wind

ijs & vuur

nu tot in het grijste uur

altijd alles op zijn plaats

volmaakte ongeregeldheid

verweerd

voorbeschikt in

de beweging van de tijd           

toeval

net als ik

Traces/Sporen, world internet books, publisher Fred Schywek

Bookpresentations I

During the week around Unesco's World Poetry Day, March 21 world internet books will be presenting several books and turn a day into more than a week. The first author to be presented is Job Degenaar, Dutch poet with a trilingual book Ich bin-I am on March 17, at salon12b. Producer of the book is Fred Schywek, also responsible or the German translation and Annmarie Sauer translated the Dutch original in English and kept Translation notes by Ich bin - I am

The first Korrekturlesen/proofreading  of some poems by Job Degenaar in their German version and some in English was on February 25, 2011. The concept was to publish a trilingual book by Job Degenaar: Ich bin. It is interesting to reflect upon the different 'poetry cultures' in the three language areas involved. The reading of the Dutch poetry is usually sober, straightforward- unless the poet considers himself a performance artist. In that case all is possible. In Germany, a poetry lover expects to understand what is read. Readers and listeners differentiate between silent (stille Gedichte) and loud poetry, (laute Gedichte). The silent poetry gains by being read, the loud poetry by being heard. This is an element to consider in the translation of poetry into German. A repetition, an extra word might be needed to turn the translation into a good poem in the target language. In my feeling about the English version, it might be actually the other way around. The English translation might well be a touch shorter, compacter... I enjoyed this first tri-lingual reading. 

Achtung Hochspannung is the title of a poem in Dutch with German quotes in the text. This constitutes no problem in Dutch since both languages are rather close relatives. Translating such a poem into English is however not as straightforward as it may seem. American and British readers would probably not understand the German quote Abfall ist unser Fall or even the title of the poem. The Dutch poet however choose to introduce this foreign element in his poetry, albeit in a gentle way. In English I would not want to loose the exotic element, yet it would be far harsher if I just kept the German without mediating this for the reader. In  another poem Ich bin I have opted to place the English translation as kind of an echo of the German quotes, just next to each other. This kind of option disturbs slightly the visual of a poem when printed side by side and the choice to try to be loyalty to the verse. I am looking for an interesting, playful ways in problem solving, ways readers can enjoy. 


for further information: fourthandplum@gmail.com

poetry day in den Hopsack

 Eight poets were invited to read in den Hopsack by Frank De Vos, master of ceremony for the evening. Some people I knew well and their work, like Roger Nupie with serious poetry, poetry inspired by spirituals- rather chilling what he did with those in word and performance and lighthearted verse.

Here Frank listening attentively after having read a poem by the Burmese poet Zargana, recently released from a 39 year prison sentence for helping  the people after the flood when the government  did nothing to alleviate their suffering. Luckily he didn't have to do the full time. Also other poets were released, so maybe there is hope at the horizon...

 Poets are not overly romantic souls who don't ware about the fate of the world. So at the end the words were spoken: Overigens ben ik van mening  dat de NAVO afgeschaft moet worden, in English: Furthermore I am of the opinion that NATO has to be abolished.

Here the next picture is German poet Fred Schywek, an excellent performer with great poetry, the translations in Dutch were read by Annmarie Sauer who also performed.

Maris Bayar in frivolous reds, read about  the sea, her fascination and love for it shone through

José Meyvis was the most playful poet even doing a Mahler concerto on her own on stage and perverting a recipe to a poem...

Also Richard Foqué, who writes in Dutch and English, and Erik Vandenwijngaerden did well Richard with some poems from Late Landscape and Erik with U-gedichten: You-poems.

Thank you all people from den Hopsack, always a nice crowd and good audience.

© sms:foto duisburg/rhein 2012

devorah major

devorah major is one of the featured poets who will perform and read at the 2nd festival of European poetry. She will travel from San Francisco to Antwerp. She has been invited to read and perform poems from the upcoming anthology Harbors of the West and some powerful anti war poems. You can read a poignant poem about her ancestry.

I am a California born granddaughter of West Indian documented and undocumented immigrants, and Eastern-European immigrants (all documented I believe but I am not as aware of this side of my family line.) As a second generation writer I have found the universe of words, where one can create other worlds, other times, or freeze time or place as it is, to be a place of power, comfort, terror. Poetry found me first, later it was fiction and still later creative nonfiction found a way to carve a place in my writing soul. Words stuck, cut through my tongue, healed, confronted, questioned, demanded, flowed. I wrote while single, while in and out of love, as a new mother, and then as a poet in residence at a cultural center while my second child grew in my womb. I wrote through the painful dissolution of a difficult marriage and through biting poverty as a singe parent. And I still write- as woman black and proud, born in a family which has for generations struggled to make a better way , a more just world. And my writing has borne fruit. Thus far four books of poetry, two poetry chapbooks, two novels, and myriad single poems, short stories and non-fiction essays have been published.

   I have written of family, of the streets, of struggle in both poetry and prose, fiction and non-fiction. I have performed my poems on war and peace, love and survival in England and Wales, in Bosnia, in Northern and Southern Italy, and at innumerable cultural and political gatherings in the US. I have served as Poet Laureate of San Francisco 2002-2006. Poet, novelist, internationally touring performer my books include street smarts, where river meets ocean, and with more than tongue, An Open Weave and Brown Glass Windows. For over twenty years I performed and recorder with Opal Palmer Adisa as a part of the poetry jazz performance group “Daughters of Yam.” I am featured on two Daughters of yam CDs as well as four other music and poetry compilations. Completed forthcoming collections are teardrops in the mouth of the moon and treasure hunting. I write as witness and as questioner. I write as one who loves. I cobble together my living as a writer, performance poet, poet in residence in community and/or institutional settings, and part time lecturer at an art college.

DEVORAH MAJOR

Music and Jack Kerouac alley

After a congenial meal of Fish and Chips - no not wrapped in newspapers, just served on a plate - at the O'Reilley's a down town evening stroll brought street musicians with wonderful rhythms and Jazz sung by Lisa and the band. That is one of the many gifts of San Francisco one finds in one of the bars and watering holes.

 Of course, since poetry was on the agenda in San Francisco we walked as a last tribute Jack Karouac Alley, reading the moral or literary thoughts one finds there. No it is not poetry but interesting none the less. 

It never rains in San Francisco?

The spirits of San Francisco come greeting cloaked in rain... Nighthawks have a good time with food and wine and the waiter at Tosca ready to close up after we left.

With talk at the Specs about poetry, poets  and books

meeting new people, warm embrace

the meaning and urgency of words

And then again the night and touched by light.

Full moon in the Mojave Desert

 The moon moves fast
crawls out of the mountain
is on her way
this wandering sister

I see her trek
her rise
her arching back

and wonder whether the sea
of silence
is really still
or does the moon-wind
sing to sand
does the sand screech or howl
in the chase

or does all fall
still
on deaf ears
and does she so feel
filled

her predictable
migration
and the north star
as linchpin
to the turning
of the unheard movement
of the solace
of the sun

From one gas pump to a third in the time to write the poem...

Open Heart

Offenes Herz- Open Hart- Open Heart is the title of the trilingual book of poetry by Bart Stouten to be  published in May 2011, world internet books.
Translation with music and tea is name of this picture.

© sms:foto duisburg/rhein 2011

 

The process of translation.
We first speak to the auhors, propose a choice of their work or let them choose what they would like to see in a trilingual book. Then I start working. If I know the poet/ess, or the work of the poet/ess it is easier. I get what they are trying to do, understand the images and feel where they are going in the poems. it is harder to translate for an anthology, because then one works with only a few poems per author. The real joy is in sending a translation, waiting for the remarks, mulling them over and finally sit together and reading the poems and their translation out loud in all the languages . The reading out loud is essential in poetry, one hears the inflection of the voice of the author, the pause, the parts stressed and so sometimes one discovers an extra nuance one hadn't spotted before. So in close cooperation the best possible text emerges.

Read: Poetry is...

!SING

Today in the Ruhr-area Cultural Capital of Europe 2010 there is a gigantic sing along in the Stadium of Schalke. This poem can be read with comments about the event. It was an uplifting,fee good evening.

Sing
Die Seele geht
der Leib der bleibt
Entrückung kommt
sing sing, du King
von Blut von
äth’risch’ Glut
du King du sing
der Wind der weht
der Schnee der geht
du sing du King
auf Horizonten
mit neuem Winter
Mantel bau dein
Schiff die Jungs
vom Leib der bleibt
die Seele baut
ein Schiff für
dich und deine Frau
und dein Fahr Rad
frag mal die Jungs
ob du den Sattel
brauchst zum tauchen
gerade jetzt wo
die Post Karte
singt du King
*
Fred Schywek

Sing

The soul goes
the body that stays
detachment comes
sing sing, you King
of blood of
ethereal glow
you King you sing
the wind blows
away the snows
you sing you King
on horizons
with new winter
coat build your
boat the guys
of the body that stays
the soul builds
a boat for
you and your wife
and your bicycle
do ask the boys
whether you need the
saddle to dive
just now when
the post card
sings you King

translated into English for the pleasure of your eyes.

Farewel party

To do things right I need a ritual. So the friendship among colleagues had to celebrated now that I stopped working. There were the sweet and personal words by the chef, and my reply. My friends liked it, yet I can't remember what I said. People laughed, talked, had a good time, with none of the awkwardness of official do's.
I always considered myself an outsider, or at least looking in from the sideline, yet that evening I was carried by the warmth of those I shared my work life with and travels in the service of making communication easier. These friends shared some of my life-load. I now shared some of my joys with them. The house is full of flowers, books sought out after careful consideration, things they wanted me to know, thought I might like. Pleasant silly surprises and empty books to write in. I may have been looking in, but I was watched by those I worked with and they got my number. I was touched be the sincerity of their warmth.
By the way, someone counted: 17 languages were present, several of them spoken: German, English, French, Italian, Dutch, Danish, Greek, Spanish, Portuguese, Swedish, Russian, Finnish, Polish, Turkish, Estonian, Hungarian, Maltese and Scottish.
Thank you all for closure and the good start into other realms into which I might just lure you to follow...