Saturday, September 08, 2007

NEW on SHELVES and SITES

Branching out, to find a space where my critical mind meets the poetic, & where translation speaks to the poetry I write, I have been very excited to be part of a series of projects and publications this spring & summer, many of which are available through the internet. If you are interested, here is where some of my critical writing in French, a video interview in English, translations from French to English & new poems can be read or seen/listened to.:

▪ Video Interview: of Cole Swensen on The Continental Review, Summer 2007, a site created & edited by Nicholas Manning. Video is 39 min 47 secs. You can also watch interviews with or readings by poets Joshua Marie Wilkinson, Joshua Clover, Linh Dinh, Jordan Stempleman, & many others. As Manning writes, “The Continental Review … aims to become the primary stop for video content related to contemporary poetics on the web.” Give it a watch at: http://www.thecontinentalreview.com/


NEW POEMS in PRINT:
▪ I was thrilled to have my poem “Fast” (pp34-42) appear in this summer’s Denver Quarterly, v. 41, n° 4, edited by Bin Ramke & Danielle Dutton at the University of Denver, CO. The poem cites a few fabulous lines by Norma Cole & finds itself in an issue of the journal which includes one of her new essay’s (on why she does not think of herself as a "translator") as well! (How fortuitous!) This issue of the Denver Quarterly also includes some wonderful poetry discoveries for me, such as the poems by Emily Anderson that open the issue, & two poems by Graham Foust that I adored--in particular for his language's odd rhythms. If you are interested in picking up the issue, you can get a single copy for $10, or subscribe for the year for $20 to DENVER QUARTERLY, UNIVERSITY OF DENVER, DEPARTMENT OF ENGLISH, 2000 E ASBURY, DENVER, CO 80208 Further questions and inquiries, contact them at 303.871.2892. For more info, to submit for future issues or to see info on this issue at: http://www.denverquarterly.com/--& also read a beautiful excerpt by Martha Ronk there!

▪ Holly Melgard & Nick Urban came to Paris in the summer of 2006 and wooed the entire poetry community here with their hipness & energy. On Holly’s return to Evergreen State College, Olympia, WA, for her senior year, she put together a truly magnificent volume of the Slightly/West Literary Journal, with inspiring works by everyone in the entire issue, including well-known authors such as Rodrigo Toscano, Lytle Shaw, Laura Elrick, Nathalie Knight, Cole Swensen, Parisian locals such as Michelle Noteboom, Barbara Beck, photographer Antonio Meza and myself (with the poems “Early Obsessions…”, “Resonance and Reality 1”, “A Hostile Replication” & “A Dark Continent” pp109-120) & finally really exciting works by her fellow students such as Corwin Peck (who we all got to meet this summer in Paris when he was visiting), Andrew Olmsted, Grant Miller & Meghan McNealy. The issue is available for free through Evergreen (see http://academic.evergreen.edu/groups/slightlywest/) or you can contact Holly or the current editors for more info or to acquire a copy of the current issue at: slightlywest@yahoo.com

▪ One of the first magazines to take poems from my first book, Fluorescence, had been Phantasmagoria, edited by Abigail Allen in Minnesota. Therefore, re-reading the old issue, I decided to submit new work and was thrilled to have it appear in their beautiful issue this summer alongside an array exciting & varied works. If you are interested, “The Brain’s Volume Controls” appears in Phantasmagoria, v.7, n°1, summer, and can be ordered at: Phantasmagoria English Dept. Century Community and Technical College White Bear Lake, MN 55110. Abigail Allen, Editor. The magazine is bi-annual and will be looking for new works, too, so keep it in mind for your own writings!

TRANSLATIONS:
A new art for me, I have started to submit more translation work & am thrilled to be included in the following reviews:

“Un Système Latéral” from fin, n°13, 2002 (pp 13-31) as “Interview” between Jean Daive and Claude Royet- Journoud (pp202-227), in the triple issue of Verse edited by Andrew Zawacki & Abigail Lang (who was of great help to me when she did a rereading of this interview I translated). The issue is on “French Poetry & Poetics”, v 24, n° 1-3, August 2007, & focuses entirely on France & French contemporary poetry & poetics, including works by Suzanne Doppelt, Emmanuel Hocquard, Pierre Alfieri, Benedicte Vilgrain, Frederic Forte, Ian Monk & tons of others. This is really an anthology of what is happening in poetry in France today, and this 365 pages long-volume is available at the Verse site, http://versemag.blogspot.com/ where there is a complete list of authors followed by a list of translators & reviews in the issue. They offer also a special blog price: $12 postage-paid through November 15. Pretty amazing for such a tomb! Send check to: Verse, English Department, University of Richmond, Richmond VA 23173.

▪ Poem “Tristan Commentaries” (p135) by László Bárdos, from Hungarian, in La Traductière, n°25, June 2007. This poem was translated as part of a group project in June of 2006 at the maison de la poésie for the festival franco-anglaise de la poésie, Paris, run by Jacques Rancourt. More info on that festival, their projects since, & many other poems in translation can be found on: http://www.festrad.com/.

Poems “Night II” and “Night III” (p84) by Christophe Lamiot Enos which appeared in Tears in the Fence, N°44, Devon, UK, November 2006, will also be forthcoming in Spring 2008 from Greywolf Press in the NEW EUROPEAN POETS ANTHOLOGY edited by Kevin Prufer & Wayne Miller, the French selections were chosen by poet & translator Marilyn Hacker.

▪ 3 poems by Albane Gellé from her collection "Un bruit de verre en elle" (Inventaire-invention) are forthcoming in Conduit! I adore Gellés language use, and in these one-sentence prose poems, I really enjoyed trying to recapture the meanderings and weavings of the French in English. More details about where to see these translations as they appear!

CRITICAL WORK:
▪ Yep, I am a PhD student, trying to sprint down that last stretch of paper-covered land to the dissertation, written in French of course. So it was immensely exciting for me to have a chapter appear in a collection of essays & talks edited by Judit Maar and Jean Bessière entitled: L’Écriture Emprisonnée, L’Harmattan, Paris (Cahiers de la nouvelle europe n°7) 2007. ISBN : 978-2-296-03132-6. Prix : 31 euros. My chapter, “Myung Mi Kim et l’emprisonnement du poète dans une langue étrangère” (pp15-26), follows the introduction to open the first section in this vast array of essays reflecting on various real & metaphorical notions of the imprisoned writer—from those who chose their bonds, such as Oulipo’s authors, to those who stumble into them, such as Myung Mi Kim, to those who were actually victims of imprisonment under forceful regimes throughout history all over the world, in Greece, Hungary, Russia, African countries... For a full list of authors & essays titles, or to order your own ebook copy (print versions seem already out of print!) (or one for a library), see: http://www.harmattan.fr/index.asp?navig=catalogue&obj=result

▪ Read ONLINE: Book Review: “Poetry/Fiction…the debate (debacle) continues to Murmur.” On Laura Mullen’s Murmur (Futurepoem 2007), for How2journal, v3, issue 1, in “alerts” section, June 2007. I love How2, so to appear among MANY of my favourite authors & thinkers was a real pleasure! See their works in this issue, too. http://www.asu.edu/pipercwcenter/how2journal/vol_3_no_1/index.html

▪ Read my l’il Article: “Paris: Towards a New Anglophone European Writing?” (pp 178-182) in this last summer’s issue of Bordercrossing Berlin: The English Language Literary Magazine, issue 2, Berlin, Germany, June 2007. They are also calling for works of poetry & prose for their December 2007 issue, number 3. To order issue 2 or see more on them, go to: http://www.bordercrossing-berlin.com/

▪ Not everything is about getting into print, and I really enjoyed this past June being part of La journée doctorale de la SFLGC at The University of Denis Diderôt, Paris VII: held on June 2, 2007, & where I presented a contextualization of my PhD dissertation in the form of a fifteen minute talk aimed at raising issues & questions I have encountered during my work; followed by discussion. My presentation title was: « VISUEL et POETIQUE aujourd'hui : une méthodologie “formelle”? » I talked about Mallarmé & Apollinaire’s visual works, where they emerged from in the past, & where we have come today given the merging of visual work which is more iconographic with works using a visual scoring, the eye of music. Both methods intertwine in the works of many of my favorite contemporary poets.