Month: January 2013

Nomadic Travels and Travails Conference

International Poetry Seminar Moving Back and Forth between Poetry as/and Translation: Nomadic Travels and Travails with Alice Notley and Pierre Joris (7-8 November 2013, Université Libre de Bruxelles) Convener: Franca Bellarsi Co-convener : Peter Cockelbergh Over the last forty years, the concepts of nomadism and rhizomatic writing have become ever more prominent in North-American verse. The different yet highly complementary trajectories of Alice Notley and Pierre Joris are two cases … Read more Nomadic Travels and Travails Conference

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In Front of The Boulder Dushanbe Tea House…

… a few years ago, Anselm & Jane, Jerry & Diane, Nicole & me. Also: a lovely obit by Steven Fowler in 3ammagazine, one para of which goes: This is a man who wrote through his life – who skewered life with his work, who affirmed his being alive in poetry, and made things new there too. Anselm Hollo was a viking – he looked like one, he wrote … Read more In Front of The Boulder Dushanbe Tea House…

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Anselm Hollo (1934-2013)

Rest in Peace Written 22 minutes ago by Jane Dalrymple-Hollo: Paavo Anselm Alexis Hollo passed away peacefully at 10:30 this morning in the loving arms Kaarina, Tamsin, and Jane. It couldn’t have been more beautiful, more perfect. We are grateful. We are in awe. SONG 3 missing one heavily makes one feel heavily (Anselm Hollo, Sojourner Microcosms)

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Giving Everything: On Diane Di Prima

from the Los Angeles Review of Books Dale Smith Giving Everything: On Diane Di Prima THE POET DIANE DI PRIMA faces serious health problems, including Parkinson’s disease, the loss of her teeth, and a degenerative failure of vision brought on by glaucoma. The 78-year-old Beat legend continues treatments for these and other health-related problems while her partner, Sheppard Powell, recovers from a liver transplant performed earlier this year. Di … Read more Giving Everything: On Diane Di Prima

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Winter along the Narrows

A man-shaped tree-trunk drifted up the Narrows some ten days ago to come to rest against the rocks and in front of our eyes. Now at low tide, in the Great Cold, iced over, it finally reveals itself to Nicole’s perspicacious camera not as my supposed anthropoid but as an another E.T.-oid.

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Peter Paul Zahl (1944-2011)

Today two years ago, the German poet Peter Paul Zahl died in  Port Antonio, Jamaica. Zahl was a German anarchist who turned author while spending ten years in prison in the 70s after shooting at a police during a manhunt for terrorists. In 1985, he emigrated to Jamaica where he was granted Jamaican citizenship and worked as a stage director and writer. In the seventies I translated some of … Read more Peter Paul Zahl (1944-2011)

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Percolating News from Nicole Peyrafitte

Nicole Peyrafitte has been busy 1) preparing for a performance and 2) preparing amazing food. Check it out:  Coming up on her Calendar: Saturday February 9 2PM  Artaud in the Black Lodge (A work in progress) An opera by David T. Little, libretto Anne Waldman Performeuse in libretto reading Culturemart 2013 HERE Arts Center 145 Avenue of the Americas New York, NY 10013 * * * and here, an … Read more Percolating News from Nicole Peyrafitte

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Stolen Books, Stolen Identity:

This via the excellent Arab Literature (in English) blog: What Did Israel Do with Palestinians’ Literary Heritage? Nora Lester Murad recently went to see Benny Brunner’s film, The Great Book Robbery: By Nora Lester Murad The camera follows two Palestinians with Israeli citizenship from the counter at Israel’s National Library to a table. They carry a small stack books from a collection labeled “AP” for “Absentee Property.”  They sit in front … Read more Stolen Books, Stolen Identity:

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Winter Rose

At the end of our morning walk along the Narrows, we stopped in the NBG (Narrows Botanical Garden) in front of our place, and Nicole took some photos of the single rose left. I immediately thought of  the opening poem in Hermetic Definitions, a title the initials of which name its author: HD.   Why did you come to trouble my decline? I am old ( I was old till … Read more Winter Rose

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Translating Shakespeare’s Sonnets

My copy of The Sonnets just arrived. Lovely, lovely production & a really great enterprise!  The Sonnets, edited by the founding editors of the translation journal Telephone, Shamila Cohen and Paul Legault, pairs 154 poet-translators with each of Shakespeare’s 154 sonnets — literally rewriting history, or at least the great Bard’s poetic oeuvre. This collection of English-to-English “translations” includes work by Rae Armantrout, Mary Jo Bang, Jen Bervin, Paul … Read more Translating Shakespeare’s Sonnets

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