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A WORLD’S WORTH OF READING IN POETRY
Poetry 360º: April 2016
29 maart 2016
2. Carl Phillips writes on the ‘Politics of Mere Being’ for the Poetry Foundation, our USA partner: ‘If the political must be found in differences of identity, who gets to determine which parts of identity are the correct ones on which to focus? I write from a self for whom race, gender, and sexual orientation are never outside of consciousness – that would be impossible – but they aren’t always at the forefront of consciousness. Others write otherwise, as they must, as they should –as we all should, if collectively we are to be an accurate reflection of what it will have been like to have lived in this particular time as our many and particular selves’.
3. Marcelo Hernandez Castillo entered the U.S. from Mexico at age 5 and eventually became the first undocumented student to earn an M.F.A. at the University of Michigan. Castillo tells PBS NewsHour that ‘fluency in English – and, later, poetry – were the tools with which he could protect against deportation. Writing was “a way to kind of offset any questions or any suspicions about my documentation status,” he said. “By way of fear, along came poetry.”’
4. Meet the ‘text-art Banksy’, Scottish poet Robert Montgomery.
5. ‘For the first time in 40 years a new English translation of the legendary, 12th-century Georgian poem The Knight in the Panther’s Skin by famous poet Shota Rustaveli has been released’; translator Lyn Coffin has created the ‘first poetic translation within the 16-syllable shire, the poetic form used by Rustaveli himself’.
6. Last month, Islamic State militants executed Syrian poet Mohammed Bashir al-Aani and his son Elyas on charges of ‘apostasy’. Aani’s last published poem, ‘The Banishment of the Loser’, ends with the line: ‘I am the one who will trade tranquility for defeat’.
7. At The Philippine Star, Virgilio Almario, the National Artist for Literature, advocates injecting poetry into politics. Almario proposes that the balagtasan, a century-old Filipino form of debate conducted in verse, ‘can be a fresh, catchy alternative to boring campaign speeches’. He also recommends that politicians hire local poets to give a patula, or poetic-style of introduction, for them at their rallies: ‘I think this will click, especially in the provinces’.
8. ‘Of course, it is weird for a poet to be famous, and no one feels this weirdness more deeply than poets themselves’, writes Arielle Greenberg on recent media sensation Eileen Myles. Nonetheless: ‘Myles herself knows (I assume) that she was and is cool because she knows what it means to be cool: coolness is often the subject of the work and a word she uses often in her writing’.
9. In Jennifer William’s write-up on StAnza (Scotland’s annual international poetry festival, which took place 2-6 March), she praises ‘Director Eleanor Livingstone and Programme Co-ordinator Annie for such a balanced and female-friendly programme . . . I strongly believe that we need a more balanced representation across gender and race in the decision-making positions as to who is getting published and programmed if we are ever going to open up notions of what poetry is in the UK’. Read more about StAnza 2016’s highlights via Williams’ post at the Scottish Poetry Library.
10. A powerful statement against abusive behavior in the literary world penned by the CCRestoreCollective and published by The Offing: ‘We are a group of Black writers and artists, largely women, who have been subjected to sexual harassment, abuse and assault inside our literary arts community. We write in public defense of all those in this and other literary and artistic communities who have been subjected to such treatment, and those who’ve been silenced by the fear of backlash’. This article also prompted a must-read statement of solidarity co-signed by several American poets we have featured on our pages – including Jamaal May and Rickey Laurentiis: ‘A disturbing feature of literary institutions is how they generate and sustain gendered hierarchies. These organizations often place male individuals in positions of extreme power over the well-being and safety of women . . . As [men], our silence is a mark of complicity’.
At the beginning of each month, Poetry International – guided by its various national editors – brings its readers the most noteworthy, informative and conversation-sparking content we’ve encountered on the web, all related to poetry around the world. Consider this your passport to what’s happening in international poetry today.
1. At the New York Review of Books, Tim Parks examines ‘the state of translation today’ through a series of three essays. Parks focuses his analysis on the varying English translations of Primo Levi’s work, including his own, and offers this surprising revelation about how a literary translator learns their craft: ‘If I myself learned how to translate more or less well it was because of the fifteen years spent translating just about every kind of document a society produces, from shoe fashion magazines to instructions for manufacturing diesel filters’.2. Carl Phillips writes on the ‘Politics of Mere Being’ for the Poetry Foundation, our USA partner: ‘If the political must be found in differences of identity, who gets to determine which parts of identity are the correct ones on which to focus? I write from a self for whom race, gender, and sexual orientation are never outside of consciousness – that would be impossible – but they aren’t always at the forefront of consciousness. Others write otherwise, as they must, as they should –as we all should, if collectively we are to be an accurate reflection of what it will have been like to have lived in this particular time as our many and particular selves’.
3. Marcelo Hernandez Castillo entered the U.S. from Mexico at age 5 and eventually became the first undocumented student to earn an M.F.A. at the University of Michigan. Castillo tells PBS NewsHour that ‘fluency in English – and, later, poetry – were the tools with which he could protect against deportation. Writing was “a way to kind of offset any questions or any suspicions about my documentation status,” he said. “By way of fear, along came poetry.”’
4. Meet the ‘text-art Banksy’, Scottish poet Robert Montgomery.
5. ‘For the first time in 40 years a new English translation of the legendary, 12th-century Georgian poem The Knight in the Panther’s Skin by famous poet Shota Rustaveli has been released’; translator Lyn Coffin has created the ‘first poetic translation within the 16-syllable shire, the poetic form used by Rustaveli himself’.
6. Last month, Islamic State militants executed Syrian poet Mohammed Bashir al-Aani and his son Elyas on charges of ‘apostasy’. Aani’s last published poem, ‘The Banishment of the Loser’, ends with the line: ‘I am the one who will trade tranquility for defeat’.
7. At The Philippine Star, Virgilio Almario, the National Artist for Literature, advocates injecting poetry into politics. Almario proposes that the balagtasan, a century-old Filipino form of debate conducted in verse, ‘can be a fresh, catchy alternative to boring campaign speeches’. He also recommends that politicians hire local poets to give a patula, or poetic-style of introduction, for them at their rallies: ‘I think this will click, especially in the provinces’.
8. ‘Of course, it is weird for a poet to be famous, and no one feels this weirdness more deeply than poets themselves’, writes Arielle Greenberg on recent media sensation Eileen Myles. Nonetheless: ‘Myles herself knows (I assume) that she was and is cool because she knows what it means to be cool: coolness is often the subject of the work and a word she uses often in her writing’.
9. In Jennifer William’s write-up on StAnza (Scotland’s annual international poetry festival, which took place 2-6 March), she praises ‘Director Eleanor Livingstone and Programme Co-ordinator Annie for such a balanced and female-friendly programme . . . I strongly believe that we need a more balanced representation across gender and race in the decision-making positions as to who is getting published and programmed if we are ever going to open up notions of what poetry is in the UK’. Read more about StAnza 2016’s highlights via Williams’ post at the Scottish Poetry Library.
10. A powerful statement against abusive behavior in the literary world penned by the CCRestoreCollective and published by The Offing: ‘We are a group of Black writers and artists, largely women, who have been subjected to sexual harassment, abuse and assault inside our literary arts community. We write in public defense of all those in this and other literary and artistic communities who have been subjected to such treatment, and those who’ve been silenced by the fear of backlash’. This article also prompted a must-read statement of solidarity co-signed by several American poets we have featured on our pages – including Jamaal May and Rickey Laurentiis: ‘A disturbing feature of literary institutions is how they generate and sustain gendered hierarchies. These organizations often place male individuals in positions of extreme power over the well-being and safety of women . . . As [men], our silence is a mark of complicity’.
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