СЛУТИМ

February 24, 2014April 5, 2022 ~ oxfordbrookesuni

Шта то промиче
изнад мог сна?
То, између ноћи и дана,
низ степенице
силазе гласови,
једно сумерско лице,
киша и појаве у поноћ,
њихова сам расправа.
Све то на Сатурну одзвања.
Мој се лик у прстен претвара.
Преостали свемир несклон је нади.
Али ходник тече даље:
стубови, углови, тама
и Чувар
мог дна.
У зору
заборављам име.
Полако и сан нестаје.
Ипак, неко остаје.
Како се зове тај шум?

I have forebodings

What is that gliding by
above my dream?
Those, between night and day,
are voices descending,
down the stairs
a Sumerian face,
rain and apparitions at midnight,
I am their quarrel.
All of this reverberates on Saturn.
My face turns into a ring.
The rest of the universe is disinclined to hope.
But the corridor flows on:
columns, corners, darkness
and the Guardian
of my depths.
At dawn
I forget its name.
Slowly the dream fades, too.
Yet someone remains.
What is that sound called?

by Ivana Milankov, translated by James Sutherland-Smith andZorica Petrović

The Oxford HumanRights Festival has begun, and this week’s schedule includes a reading byJamie McKendrick and a discussion between him and the Director of the PoetryCentre, Dr Eóin Flannery, about his 2007 collection Crocodiles and Obelisks.The event takes place on Friday 28 February in Blackwell’s Bookshop in Oxford.To book tickets and to view the other Poetry Centre events during OHRF, visitthe festival page.

There is another fine reading taking place on Sunday 2 March at The AlbionBeatnik Bookshop. Jo Bell (former Director of National Poetry Day),Helen Mort (author of Division Street, shortlisted for the T.S. Eliot Prize),and Alan Buckley (winner of the Wigtown Poetry Prize) will be reading. Entry is£5, and you are advised to book your tickets in advance, since space islimited! Visit the bookshop’s Facebook pagefor details.

‘I have forebodings’ by Ivana Milankov is copyright © Ivana Milankov, 2013, and translated by James Sutherland-Smith and Zorica Petrović. It is reprinted by permission of ArcPublications from Dinner withFish and Mirrors (Arc Publications, 2013).

Notes from Arc Publications:

Ivana Milankov was born in 1952, in Belgrade, Serbia. She is the author of seven books of poetry and one book of poetical prose – a dream diary. She is a translator of English and American poetry, including the work of Emily Dickinson, Sylvia Plath, W. B. Yeats, William Blake and Allen Ginsberg.

Serbia’s rich historical and religious history is evident in the poems inDinner with Fish and Mirrors and there is an untiring effort to reach beyond the sensations of the world around her towards mystical revelation, to communicate the incommunicable.

To read further selections from the book, visit the Arc website , where you can also read an essay by Ivana Milankov, and an interview with the translator James Sutherland-Smith.

Visit Arc’s website to join the publisher’s mailing list, and to find full details of all publicationsand writers . Arc offers a 10% discount on all books purchased from the website (except Collectors’ Corner titles). Postage and packing is free within the UK.

Copyright information: please note that the copyrights of all the poems displayed on the website and sent out on the mailing list are held by the respective authors, translators or estates, and no work should be reproduced without first gaining permission from the individual publishers.

Blacksmith

December 9, 2013April 5, 2022 ~ oxfordbrookesuni

I made a pillow out of iron, a pair of shoes,
I made a tutu, my mother’s hat,
iron lashes for my eyes, iron fingernails,
I made myself a bridle and a belt.

I made a baby out of iron, I hammered out
a tree in bud, a nest of yellow beaks.
I smelted, riveted, cast my hands
into bellows. I blew a cumulus of sparks –

they found the corners of a room,
a hidden silhouette, they settled
on a dusty charcoal bed
and from the shadows made a forge.

by Jackie Wills

Notes from Arc Publications:

Jackie Wills has published three collections of poetry with Arc Publications, and one with Leviathan. Powder Tower was a Poetry Book Society Recommendation and Wills was shortlisted for the 1995 T.S. Eliot prize. In 2004, Mslexia magazine named her one of the 10 new woman poets of the decade. Born in Wiltshire, Wills now lives in Brighton. She was Royal Literary Fund Fellow at the universities of Surrey and Sussex between 2009 and 2012.

Woman’s Head as Jug is about women’s experiences of work, the city, menopause and ancestry. The poems have a touch as deft as the seamstresses and other craftspeople who populate the book. They are funny, political and lyrical. Read more about the collection at Arc’s site or from Jackie Wills’ own blog.

Since it was founded in 1969, Arc Publications has adhered to its fundamental principles – to introduce the best of new talent to a UK readership, including voices from overseas that would otherwise remain unheard in this country, and to remain at the cutting edge of contemporary poetry. Arc also has a music imprint, Arc Music, for the publication of books about music and musicians. As well as its page on Facebook, you can find Arc on Twitter. Visit Arc’s website to join the publisher’s mailing list, and to find full details of all publications and writers. Arc offers a 10% discount on all books purchased from the website (except Collectors’ Corner titles). Postage and packing is free within the UK.

Copyright information: please note that the copyrights of all the poems displayed on the website and sent out on the mailing list are held by the respective authors, translators or estates, and no work should be reproduced without first gaining permission from the individual publishers.

The Sum of Mum

September 23, 2013April 11, 2022 ~ oxfordbrookesuni

she begins to calculate:

that’s 3 times 9 months
that’s 3 times (approximately 30 days times 9)
which is really 3 sons times 270 days
equals 810 days of combined incubation
that’s 24 hours a day
equals 19,440 hours of combined incubation
but one came early
one month early
so minus one set of 30 days
equals 810 minus 30 equals
780 days times 24 hours a day equals
18,720 hours of combined incubation

when the sons floated in her universe
yolk eyes staring into membrane galaxy
flicking pulse and finger
nail into red-darkness
she breathed for all of them
always will because
everything adds up to four

by Selina Tusitala Marsh

The Oxford Brookes Poetry Centre warmly invites you to attend the opening of the exhibition Where We Begin to Look: Landscape and Poetry on Friday 11 October at 6.30pm in the Glass Tank, Abercrombie Building, Oxford Brookes University. Where We Begin to Look is a collaborative exhibition by the artist Zoe Benbow and the poet, Deryn Rees-Jones,and is presented by the Poetry Society and Small World Theatre, Ceredigion. The opening event will feature a discussion about the exhibition by Benbow and Rees-Jones,and readings by Rees-Jones and Sarah Corbett, whose work appears in the show. You can find out more on the Brookes web site. If you would like to attend the opening, please reply to this message with your details. The exhibition runs until 5 November and is open to all.

Notes from Arc Publications:

Selina Tusitala Marsh is of Samoan, Tuvaluan, English, Scottish and French descent, and was the first Pacific Islander to graduate from The University of Auckland with a PhD in English, where she is now a lecturer. Fast Talking PI (pronounced pee-eye) reflects the poet’s focus on issues affecting Pacific communities in New Zealand, and indigenous peoples around the world including the challenges and triumphs of being afakasi (mixed race). You can read more about the collection from Arc’s pages (where you can read further selections from the book), and hear Selina read from it on Soundcloud.

Since it was founded in 1969, Arc Publications has adhered to its fundamental principles – to introduce the best of new talent to a UK readership, including voices from overseas that would otherwise remain unheard in this country, and to remain at the cutting edge of contemporary poetry. Arc also has a music imprint, Arc Music, for the publication of books about music and musicians. As well as its page on Facebook, you can find Arc on Twitter. Visit Arc’s website to join the publisher’s mailing list, and to find full details of all publications and writers. Arc offers a 10% discount on all books purchased from the website (except Collectors’ Corner titles). Postage and packing is free within the UK.

Days full of caves and tigers

July 29, 2013April 11, 2022 ~ oxfordbrookesuni

If the branch caught among the boulders reached us
after a rough and stormy passage,
and you retrieve it
like a hunting trophy, to paint
in red and yellow,
colours of the tiger and the dragon;
if the stone’s flat surface
tells a story of grey
wolf skin
or of shipwreck on the shores
of the Lugano Sea, which they wrongly claim
to be a lake;
if really my intention was to write something else
about you that seemed so crystal clear,
but even in my mind
you manage to confuse it, and you are never
sensible and good as gold; it must mean
the world is more jazzy and exciting,
the nights long with shouting
and the days full of caves and tigers,
where great courage is needed to enter
in quest of golden bough or sparkling
gemstone, amethyst or tourmaline.

by Fabio Pusterla

‘Days full of caves and tigers’ by Fabio Pusterla, translated by Simon Knight, is copyright © Fabio Pusterla, 2012. It is reprinted by permission of Arc Publications from Days Full of Caves and Tigers (Arc Publications, 2012).

Notes from Arc Publications:

Fabio Pusterla (b. 1957) is of mixed Swiss / Italian parentage, teaches Italian literature at the cantonal high school in Lugano, and lives just across the border on the Italian shore of Lake Lugano (Lago di Ceresio) in one of the villages of the Valsolda. A poet, translator, essayist and scholar, he contributes to many Italian, Swiss and French literary periodicals. The collection Days Full of Caves and Tigers is drawn from six books which span Pusterla’s poetic career from 1985 to 2011. You can read ‘Deposition’, another poem from the book, on Arc’s site, and get an insight into the translation process by reading an interview with Simon Knight on the Arc blog.

The Same Events

April 22, 2013April 11, 2022 ~ oxfordbrookesuni

My headscarf has flowered in corners of the sky
I divine the future through clouds
I decipher folds in the moon’s face
time and again
she has lent her heart to a meteor shower

I rust behind the window
I paint
the last leaves of the plane tree
on a winter garden

My ice melts
down the drainpipe, filled with the sound of snow
I shriek from the rooftop

Between my eyebrows, a birthmark,
from which divination of full moons
predict the same events
that I decipher
I have not been enamoured of winter after winter
reading the newspaper behind the window
not
afternoons
it warms in my teacup or otherwise
with ice
I divine the future through clouds.

by Farzaneh Ghavami

The poet Patience Agbabi, a Poetry Centre Creative Writing Fellow, will be giving a free reading at Pembroke College in Oxford on Friday 3 May at 7.30pm. This will be a preview of her forthcoming versions of The Canterbury Tales which are being published by Canongate in April 2014. All are welcome. More details can be obtained from the Poetry Centre’s Facebook page.

‘The Same Events’ by Farzaneh Ghavami, translated by John Kinsella and Ali Alizadeh, is copyright © Farzaneh Ghavami, 2012. It is reprinted by permission of Arc Publications from Six Vowels and Twenty-three Consonants: An Anthology of Persian Poetry from Rudaki to Langroodi , selected and edited by John Kinsella and Ali Alizadeh (Arc Publications 2012).

Notes from Arc Publications:

Farzaneh Ghavami was born in Tehran in 1968. She has several poetry collections published.

Six Vowels and Twenty-three Consonants is a groundbreaking new collection of poems presenting the wealth of poetic voices from one of the world’s most important literary cultures. The book covers poetry from the early Middle Ages to the Modernists and Postmodernists of the 20th and 21st centuries. You can read more poems from the book at Arc’s site here.

Since it was founded in 1969, Arc Publications has adhered to its fundamental principles – to introduce the best of new talent to a UK readership, including voices from overseas that would otherwise remain unheard in this country, and to remain at the cutting edge of contemporary poetry. Arc also has a music imprint, Arc Music, for the publication of books about music and musicians. As well as its page on Facebook, you can find Arc on Twitter; search for @Arc_Poetry. Visit Arc’s website to join the publisher’s mailing list, and to find full details of all publications and writers. Arc offers a 10% discount on all books purchased from the website (except Collectors’ Corner titles). Postage and packing is free within the UK.

France

March 14, 2013April 11, 2022 ~ oxfordbrookesuni

Whatever they had been told was lies: there was no kind of
deal awaiting them, no siren call. The armistice was signed
but the war had been lost years before and nobody had told
them. Indigo night interrupted by orange explosions on the
horizon, great sweeping clouds of dust making everything
invisible for hours on end, the spotlights bearing down on
them the length of the assault line. We will never know defeat,
they repeated; the words of their leader an idiot’s mantra in
their throats. They spent the whole day waiting for news:
when should they expect the enemy? In the evening, a small
group sat by the linden tree and passed a bottle around. The
dusk obliterated memory. One of the men dreamed of France,
a country he had never been to. People’s lives there are
almost perfect. Something small and forgotten in his soul told
him France was a better place in which to die; that there,
eternity has brushed its sleeve against the land.

by Richard Gwyn

‘France’ is taken from Sad Giraffe Café by Richard Gwyn, and published by Arc Publications.

Notes courtesy of Arc:

Richard Gwyn grew up in Crickhowell, South Wales. He studied social anthropology at the LSE and worked in factories and as a milkman, before leaving London to spend ten years in aimless travel, settling for periods in Greece and Spain. He returned to the UK in the 1990s and took a PhD in Linguistics at Cardiff University, where he now directs the MA in Creative Writing. He is the author of five collections of poetry and two novels, The Colour of a Dog Running Away and Deep Hanging Out. In addition, he has written many articles and essays and reviews new fiction for The Independent. He has translated poetry from Spanish and Catalan, and his own poetry and fiction have appeared in several languages. You can find out more about Richard Gwyn at his website here.

Sad Giraffe Café, from which ‘France’ is taken, is a collection of prose poems which together form a shifting, progressive narrative. There are three recurring themes: an imaginary and sinister kingdom, a young wanderer named Alice, and a shape-shifting, time-travelling, first-person narrator. The poems seem to be devoid of past or future, existing in an unstable, and at times apocalyptic present. They are peopled by strangers and lodged in an ‘elsewhere’ which is also somehow familiar. They have the feel of dreams masquerading as real events, or else of real events masquerading as dreams. You can find out more about Sad Giraffe Café and read other poems from the book here.

Since it was founded in 1969, Arc has adhered to its fundamental principles – to introduce the best of new talent to a UK readership, including voices from overseas that would otherwise remain unheard in this country, and to remain at the cutting edge of contemporary poetry. Arc also has a music imprint, Arc Music, for the publication of books about music and musicians. Find out more about Arc by visiting the publisher’s website, where there are discounts available on Arc books.

The Burning Room

February 11, 2013April 11, 2022 ~ oxfordbrookesuni

(aubade on a picture of spontaneous combustion)

When my lover returns
to his wife, his suburban apartment, the comfort
of a seasoned bed bearing
his beautiful weight

I say nothing.
I do not nod nor sigh nor breathe the light
starting to bleed into the room
the colour of saints

being martyred in portraits.
I walk the gallery of his absence, a tourist only
to this surfeit of space,
the erasure of lines

that is his gift to me.
It is enough, I think, to watch over the wide
territory of his need, to guard
the frontiers of desire

with my body and silence.
It is enough. And so I do not stir,
even when the flames bloom
fresh petals

from my unbrushed hair,
pursed eyelids. I disappear
into photographic retreat,
chemical shadow. So

when my lover returns
I am already the ash he wonders at
and brushes gently away
from the hood of his car.

by Alvin Pang

‘The Burning Room (aubade on a picture of spontaneous combustion)‘ is copyright © Alvin Pang, 2012. It is reprinted by permission of Arc Publications from When the Barbarians Arrive (Arc Publications 2012).

Notes from Arc Publications:

Alvin Pang (b. 1972, Singapore) is a poet, writer, editor, anthologist, and translator. His poetry has been translated into over fifteen languages, and he has appeared in major festivals and anthologies worldwide. When the Barbarians Arrive is a collection of new and selected works, with some poems taken from Alvin Pang’s previous three collections. You can hear Alvin Pang reading from another one of his poems here and watch him on the Arc website here, where you can also read more of his work.

Since it was founded in 1969, Arc Publications has adhered to its fundamental principles – to introduce the best of new talent to a UK readership, including voices from overseas that would otherwise remain unheard in this country, and to remain at the cutting edge of contemporary poetry. Arc also has a music imprint, Arc Music, for the publication of books about music and musicians. As well as its page on Facebook, you can find Arc on Twitter; search for @Arc_Poetry. Visit Arc’s website to join the publisher’s mailing list, and to find full details of all publications and writers. Arc offers a 10% discount on all books purchased from the website (except Collectors’ Corner titles). Postage and packing is free within the UK.

INSIDE THE BOOKS…

September 10, 2012April 11, 2022 ~ oxfordbrookesuni

Inside the books
is quietude –

No echo
of the poet’s landlady’s
nagging
the rumble of guns outside Jena –

Inside the very
loudest of words
is quietude –

As though they’d arrived
at a place which we
may never reach –

Even if you
plug your ears:
as though from far away
the siren song
of the blood

IM INNEREN DER BÜCHER…

Im Inneren der Bücher
ist es still –

Kein Nachhall
vom Gezänk der Hauswirtin
des Dichters
vom Kanonendonner vor Jena –

Im Inneren auch der
schreiendsten Worte
ist es still –

Als wären sie angekommen
wohin wir vielleicht nie
gelangen können –

Auch wenn du dir
die Ohren verstopfst:
wie von fern her
der Sirenengesang
des Blutes

by Ludwig Steinherr

The Weekly Poem will be taking a week’s break now to ready itself for the new term. We hope that you have enjoyed this year’s extended selection, and look forward to sending out an exciting new set of poems to you beginning in the week of 24 September. Many thanks indeed to all our generous publishers for providing us with such rich material. You can find out more about them from our Links page here. And if you have enjoyed the work, do consider supporting them by investing in some of the volumes we have featured. Thanks for reading!

‘INSIDE THE BOOKS…’ is copyright © Ludwig Steinherr, 2010. It is reprinted by permission of Arc Publications from Before the Invention of Paradise by Ludwig Steinherr (Arc Visible Poets Series, Arc Publications 2010).

Ludwig Steinherr was born in Munich in 1962, where he still lives, and studied philosophy at the University of Munich. He is now a freelance writer and lecturer in philosophy at the University of Eichstätt. Steinherr has worked as an essayist, a reviewer, a juror, a translator, and as an editor, co-founding the influential journal Das Gedicht (The Poem) with Anton G. Leitner in 1993. But it is as a poet that he has written his way into the front rank of contemporary German writers, one milestone here being the selection of his poem Legend (Sage) as ‘Gedicht des Jahres’ (‘Poem of the Year’) by the Autoreninitiative Köln in 1987. The present selection is based on the nine collections published in the twenty years after his early debut, Fluganweisung, in 1985. Steinherr’s poems have received a number of awards – including the Leonce-und-Lena-Förderpreis (1993), the Buchpreis des Verbandes Evangelischer Büchereien (1999), and the Hermann-Hesse-Förderpreis (1999) – and have been translated into various languages, including French and Czech. Steinherr was elected a fellow of the Bayerische Akademie der Schönen Künste (Bavarian Academy of Fine Arts) in 2003. You can learn more about Steinherr and read other poems from Before the Invention of Paradise at Arc’s page here. Ludwig Steinherr is reading at the King’s Lynn Poetry Festival on 21 September – find more details about the event here.

The translator of this poem, Richard Dove, was born in Bath in 1954, read Modern Languages at Oxford and taught German and English language and literature at the Universities of Exeter, Regensburg and Wales before moving to Munich in 1987, where he has since worked as a writer and lecturer. His early poems were recently collected in the bilingual volume Aus einem früheren Leben (Lyrikedition 2000, 2003), translated inter alia by Hans Magnus Enzensberger and Reiner Kunze. Since moving to the Federal Republic, he has written his poems very largely in German (Farbfleck auf einem Mondrian-Bild. Gedichte, Edition Thaleia, 2002; Am Fluß der Wohlgerüche. Gedichte, Rimbaud Verlag, 2008; Syrische Skyline. Gedichte, Rimbaud Verlag, 2009) while translating into English.

Since it was founded in 1969, Arc Publications has adhered to its fundamental principles – to introduce the best of new talent to a UK readership, including voices from overseas that would otherwise remain unheard in this country, and to remain at the cutting edge of contemporary poetry. Arc also has a music imprint, Arc Music, for the publication of books about music and musicians. As well as its page on Facebook, you can find Arc on Twitter; search for @Arc_Poetry. Visit Arc’s website to join the publisher’s mailing list, and to find full details of all publications and writers. Arc offers a 10% discount on all books purchased from the website (except Collectors’ Corner titles). Postage and packing is free within the UK.

A week of running beside the canal

August 27, 2012April 12, 2022 ~ oxfordbrookesuni

On Monday, three yellow goslings
and the gander’s tongue thrust out.
On Wednesday, three goslings,
each with a dark Mohican streak,
the gander’s tongue thrust out.

A face comes back from
Earlier times; freckled, round,
brown eyes, and red, fair hair,
nothing beyond ordinary,
that always seems relaxed.

The gait below it; slightly
splayed and rolling.
On Thursday, suddenly
the may was open everywhere,
its small white clusters

like the rowan or cow parsley;
the florets twisted, flicking
on the breeze. On Sunday,
one upon the water, its head
tucked beneath its wing;

the other adult bird was resting
by the bank, the water
rippling its drowned head.
Of the goslings, nothing.
On the canal, warm dots

of summer rain. Among
the grasses, Friesians walk
from grass to grass. That face
opens out upon itself; the bee’s
feet touch the flower.

by Ian Pople

Ian Pople was born in Ipswich. He was educated at the British Council, Athens and the Universities of Aston and Manchester. His first book of poetry, The Glass Enclosure , was a Poetry Book Society Recommendation and shortlisted for the Forward Prize for Best First Collection. His second collection, An Occasional Lean-to , was published by Arc in 2005. He teaches at the University of Manchester. Read further selections from Saving Spaces, Ian Pople’s latest collection, on Arc’s website here.

Since it was founded in 1969, Arc Publications has adhered to its fundamental principles – to introduce the best of new talent to a UK readership, including voices from overseas that would otherwise remain unheard in this country, and to remain at the cutting edge of contemporary poetry. Arc also has a music imprint, Arc Music, for the publication of books about music and musicians. As well as its page on Facebook, you can find Arc on Twitter; search for @Arc_Poetry. Visit Arc’s website to join the publisher’s mailing list, and to find full details of all publications and writers. Arc offers a 10% discount on all books purchased from the website (except Collectors’ Corner titles). Postage and packing is free within the UK.

The Skagit Valley Beekeeper

August 6, 2012April 12, 2022 ~ oxfordbrookesuni

for Jerry & Kathy Willins

At home my door looks out on a wild sea where boats come and go.
Here, doors looks out across miles and miles of blueberry bushes.
They make me think of Frost’s “Blueberries as big as your thumb”.
But it is only May, so early in season the bushes are all empty-handed.

Yesterday, sitting in a diner in Burlington, eating ham on rye,
a farmer slid onto the seat beside me. Wendell, the waitress called him.
“Goddamn cell phones,” he snarled, “they’re messin’ with my bees.
The signals have them so dizzy they couldn’t find a sunflower.”

He said it in a way that wasn’t funny, for here was a man
whose livelihood depended on a pollinating bee. “Now, Wendell,”
the waitress muttered, “don’t be bothering the preacher.”
“Sorry, sir, but Christ, I have to fly in bees from Alabama.”

And as we sat there in the silence of that Burlington afternoon.
the waitress counting bottles, Wendell eating fries,
I just prayed my cell phone, my bee immobilizer, would not ring,
not even with a buzz, buzz, buzz from you, to help pollinate our love.

by Tony Curtis

Tony Curtis was born in Dublin in 1955. He studied literature at Essex University and Trinity College Dublin. An award winning poet, Curtis has published six warmly-received collections, the most recent of which was The Well in the Rain: New & Selected Poems (Arc, 2006). In 2003 he was awarded the Varuna House Exchange Fellowship to Australia. Curtis has been awarded the Irish National Poetry Prize. In 2008, Days Like These (with Paula Meehan and Theo Dorgan) was published by Brooding Heron Press. He is a member of Aosdána. You can read further selections from folk, the volume from which ‘The Skagit Valley Beekeeper’ is taken, on this page from Arc’s site.

Since it was founded in 1969, Arc Publications has adhered to its fundamental principles – to introduce the best of new talent to a UK readership, including voices from overseas that would otherwise remain unheard in this country, and to remain at the cutting edge of contemporary poetry. Arc also has a music imprint, Arc Music, for the publication of books about music and musicians. As well as its page on Facebook, you can find Arc on Twitter; search for @Arc_Poetry. Visit Arc’s website to join the publisher’s mailing list, and to find full details of all publications and writers. Arc offers a 10% discount on all books purchased from the website (except Collectors’ Corner titles). Postage and packing is free within the UK.