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Contemporary Polish Writing in Translation
A cold April. Chicks coming to
in a cage under a giant light bulb.
I served them finely chopped feed:
boiled eggs, milfoil, water in a jar lid.
I admired these beings, fragranced with sand
and mucus, hatched in an alien darkness,
which was just like the all-night cuts in electricity.
I remember the rustling in the dark when the bulb went out,
spots of colour stiffening, flickers.
2011
Monday 16 May, 7pm
Kings Place
90 York Way
London N1 9AG
Tickets: £9.50
Borderlands: Poetry from the Edges of Europe
A unique evening of poetry from the edges of Europe, exploring the idea of geographical and cultural borders, what they mean to the human psyche and how they manifest in the creative work of poets from the ‘borderlands’. This event brings the edges to centre stage, challenging the idea of central and peripheral culture.
A legendary Lithuanian poet Marcelijus Martinaitis (b. 1936) will be over from Lithuania, joined by one of the most outstanding names in contemporary Polish poetry, Marzanna Kielar, wonderful Daniel Jonas from Portugal and Robert Bebekfrom Croatia.
The event will be hosted by Amanda Hopkinson, Reader in the School of Literature at the University of East Anglia, UK and Director of the British Centre for Literary Translation.
Supported by the Lithuanian Embassy, Polish Cultural Institute, Instituto Camoes, British Centre of Literary Translation, Kings Place
Book tickets online or call 02075201490
SJ Fowler book launch at the Blue Bus
{Red Museum}
April Tuesday 19th 7.30pm
at The Lamb, 94 Lamb’s Conduit Street, London WC1N 3LZ
with Knives, Forks & Spoons press
www.sjfowlerpoetry.com / www.knivesforksandspoonspress.co.uk
‘A tremendous and persuasive surge of the red and the black: conflicted doctrines, scorched paper. Gothic scripts and plague-year screenplays for an apocalyptic cinema. Death chess. Heretical crusades. Hurt flesh. Fire angels. Madness. A grimoire for a haunted river-city. The poetry lies in the interpretation of malfated woodcuts. It is sinewy, knotted, persistent. And true.’
Iain Sinclair
also to be released, the chapbooks:
Fights XIX: Johnny Tapia with Oystercatcher press www.oystercatcherpress.com
Fights XX: the Songs of Salvador Sánchez with the Red Ceilings press www.theredceilingspress.co.uk
…
C a t h e r i n e B l a k e ( born 1 7 6 2 died 1 8 3 1 )
he condemned me to life of penury grind and paranoia
rising early
sketching something at his desk and whispering:
Sir Blake has birthed a lion cub
or: by my hand this clump of thistles is now a sage
and only I have been made to see
we must etch this at once!
At night I conversed with Elijah
your illness is but gout
soon you will be well
yet he died himself the next summer
and I limped to his funeral
in the fields of Bunhill
ASIA OBSTARCZYK – poems in the latest edition of Plectrum Magazine
Claudia Brücken, reflects on her life in pop, from 1984 to the present day, from the cinematic electronica of Propaganda, whose signing to the legendary ZTT records saw the release of the enduringly influential singles, Duel, Dr Mabuse, and p:Machinery, and album, A Secret Wish, to her fantastic new work in collaboration with legendary producer, Stephen Hague… Barry Miles recalls the legendary 14 Hour Technicolor Dream, the multi-artist event which took place at Alexandra Palace, north London, in April 1967, was headlined by Pink Floyd, and is now seen as the defining moment of the counterculture in 1960s London… Play backgammon on the gorgeous fold out poster created by artist and designer, Alexandra Llewellyn, read new short fiction and poetry from the hottest new writers, Max D.Stites and Asia Obstarczyk, delight in the fabulous shoes of Chrissie Morris, Jeffery~West, and Daita Kimura (The Old Curiosity Shop), catch up with the cultural pick of books, film, including the Kinoteka Film Festival, music, performance, follow regular Plectrum columnists, Delisia Howard, writer and former in-house model and head of cosmetics for Barbara Hulanicki’s Biba, and her husband, the writer and illustrator, Chris Price, back to the strange days of the early 1970s and the extraordinary tale of ‘The Last Cult of England’…
Plus more, much more!
(NB: articles, reviews, and interviews from issue 8 print edition will not be available online or archived online; the webzine edition of Plectrum – The Cultural Pick has an entirely different content to the print edition)
|
Asia Obstarczyk - born in 1976, has lived in Belgium for the past seven years where she also became friends with poetry: nostalgia has got her writing. By day, she is a musician and the occasional translator of Dutch writings. |
|
| Asia Obstarczyk - Urodzona w 1976, od siedmiu lat mieszka w Belgii i tutaj też zaprzyjaźniła się z poezją: z nostalgii zaczęła pisać wiersze. Na co dzień zajmuje ją muzyka a okazjonalnie tłumaczenia niderlandzkie. |
It’s winter 1988. The first time I’m home alone
and scared of answering the phone. The model Spitfire
is still drying, its badly set undercarriage
doing the sideways splits. Outside the window, a snowy monument
- night, the lady of both tides. The silence
between rings is unbearable.
Twenty years on, I’m still scared of answering
the phone. Before me – an iron road, jaws
snapping, the whisper of grit, the squeal of sprockets,
waves of nausea. And love like overweight baggage,
like a vial of glue or green grease. Write it down:
inclined plane. Ten years earlier: unfortunate
drive up a ramp, a tiny skateboard wheel loose and the fall.
What an arena, dreams of fresh leaves on snow,
perfect surfaces of abandoned kites.
And also faith in the immortality of flesh and sudden silence
between rings. Diagnosis: cracked ankle
joint. Diagnosis: the hourglass smashed.
Jest zastępcą redaktora naczelnego kwartalnika literackiego „Korespondencja z ojcem”, organizował slamy poetyckie. Założył ze znajomymi Spółdzielnię Literacką, sopocki klub, gdzie organizowane są darmowe warsztaty dla licealistów i konkursy literackie. Jakobe współorganizuje akcję Zjednoczenie Czytelnicze. To manifestacje przeciwko najniższemu od lat czytelnictwu w naszym kraju. Co miesiąc grupa młodych ludzi zbiera się na plaży, w galerii handlowej, przed Ministerstwem Kultury i Dziedzictwa Narodowego. Wspólnie czytają książki.
Nominowany nie tylko za mocny literacki debiut, ale i za to, że chce i potrafi miłością do literatury zarażać innych.
five hundred years of Japanese genius compressed down to fifty minutes with the help of Mr Stanley and Mr Makita… but if books take years to write, should they not then have the same kind of love lavished upong their making?
off_marek
It has been a while since the 72-year-old Jerzy Skolimowski, director of Deep End and The Shout, and screenwriter of Polanski’s Knife in the Water, has commanded so much attention. His last film, Four Nights With Anna, with which he broke a 17-year movie-making silence, I found underpowered and redundant. But in case we made the mistake of thinking Skolimowski was an extinct volcano, there has been a sudden explosion of lava. Essential Killing is intriguing and disturbing, made with tremendous confidence and conviction.
read more by clicking on image below…
The night was heavy, but the air was alive
Mike Oldfield
At night, the Chernobyl cloud fell
on our pastures. Thyroids swelled.
The pond aglow with murmuring iodine.
Swallows kissing crooked mirrors.
Moonlight Shadow was playing on the radio.
A city girl scout took over a barn and opened
a virgins’ club. We smoked menthols,
took free lessons from Playboy in
“Preparing for life in a family set-up”.
No other end of the world was there to be,
and yet it kept repeating, like belly aches
and acne, until the time I found
spots of dark blood in my underwear.
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