A Shout from Copenhagen. Whispering Poets: Be good to each other & have lots of sex.

A SHOUT FROM COPENHAGEN. Whispering Poets: Be good to each other & have lots of sex.

This shout is about a whisper – about a reading I participated in last Friday in the Free State of Christiania to which four other poets and myself had been invited to whisper poems for eight minutes to five small groups of listeners seated at five tables in Christiania's Galloperiet.

If any reading this has never heard of or been to Christiania, then I urge you to come at the earliest moment to Copenhagen to enrich yourself with this experience. In brief, Christiania was an abandoned military fort, formerly guarding the Christianshavn approach to the once fortified city of Copenhagen. The fort was taken over by squatters nearly 40 years ago, and in the free spirit of those times approved by the Danish parliament as a social experiment. The squatters seceded from Danish society as well as from the European Union and established their own social order, building homes in this beautiful canal-ringed preserve – both new homes and extensions of the old military buildings. One of my favorites was the House of Doors – a domicile built exclusively of salvaged doors. Peopled by artists, writers, artisans, dopers, and other freaks, the Free State – which resembles a cross between a wild-west town and an ancient dilapidated city – grew with the addition of jerry-built restaurants, bars, cafés, shops, studios, child care facilities, markets, concert halls and jazz clubs where some great musicians have played, including, to name but one, Bob Dylan.

It even, until recently, included a market known as Pusher Street where anyone so inclined could purchase a variety of more or less soft smoke able drugs, quality guaranteed. Pusher Street was torn down at the behest of a new right-wing government a couple of years ago, resulting in a real drug problem spread about the surrounding city, complete with street shootings and knifings.

But Christiania is still here.

When you enter this tiny city within a city (population approximately 1,000), you become acutely aware of departing from the everyday world. If you enter it at night, as I did last Friday, the first thing you notice is the absence of streetlights, the graphitized brick and wood buildings, the rutted dirt streets, the leash less wandering dogs who sniff about in wonder, doing you no harm.

Into the dystopian-looking, post-apocalyptic building which houses Galloperiet, I climbed two narrow flights to find Lennox Raphael, the American-Trinidadian multi-artist (poet, writer, artist, vegetarian chef, social activist, arts arranger) who organized the night of whispering poets under the auspices of an organization known as Des Arts which he helps run and which sponsors a multitude of events and exhibitions around the ancient capital of Copenhagen.

Some readers might remember Lennox Raphael as the author, director and producer of the first all-nude play ever staged, entitled Ché. It included three characters – Lyndon B. Johnson, Chè Guevara, and a nun, all nude. It opened in 1969, closed the next day, was reopened by popular demand the day after and ran for two consecutive years.

The Whispering Poets was only one of several features of this Des Arts evening in the Free State of Christiania's Galloperiet. The evening began with Monkey Rat (www.myspace.com/monkeyratmusic), consisting of Anna Iachino, a Sicilian-Canadian woman from Montreal, doing original romantic rap vocals accompanied by her partner on electric bass, Arnold Ludvig of the Faro Islands. Quote of the evening is from Anna Iachino, a delightfully voluptuous 47-year-old with a head of curls that would make an Egyptian princess envious, who told the audience, "As my 80-year-old grandmother always said, 'Remember to be good to each other and have a lot of sex.'"

Then came the Whispering Poets, five of us: Lennox Raphael, Jens Magnussen, Nancy Wakabari, Alan Hammerlund, and myself. The way the Whispering Poets went was that the lights went off, candles were lit, the audience was distributed amongst five tables throughout the room, and each of the poets joined a table to whisper poetry for eight minutes, at the end of which Jens Magnussen did a brief interlude on transverse flute and the poets changed tables until each had read at each table.

The experience was eerie, to be in a large dark room lit only by flickering candles, the only sound the whispering voices of five poets. At each table, the four to eight listeners leaned toward you as you whispered, a mask of candlelight about each set of eyes as you made eye contact to emphasize a line: I saw you naked/rape the sphinx – or Listen, I will teach you to kill – or See me. Smell me. Listen…

Of the perhaps 300 readings I have done over the years, I don't know that I ever felt such an intimate connection to my audience.

When the Whispering Poets had whispered their last, the evening had only begun: Kent Helm gave a demonstration of ergo touch – repositioning the body, de-activating the self – with a half naked lovely woman model; Michael Dyst did a demonstration of music, noise and words, and the famous skeleton man, veteran of many Burning Man festivals, Michael Wolf, spoke about the Black Rock City, Nevada Festival, following which Martin Eisler continued with a few enchanting songs, some Cuban boleros, and guitar, followed by open scene until three or four in the morning.

Being an old dude, however, I withdrew at half-past eleven and rode the metro home to my east side pad, delighted with the evening, floating on Christmas beer, regretting only that I had not asked Anna Iachino whether she has an older, unmarried sister.

Greetings from this ancient kingdom!
Thomas E. Kennedy
www.thomasekennedy.com

Juan Goytisolo Wins Spanish Literary Prize

Juan Goytisolo was awarded the Premio Nacional de Letras Españolas, a prize that honors the literary career of a Spanish author and comes with a cash prize of 40,000 euros.

Il y a longtemps que je t'aime

Last weekend we went to the Detroit Film Theatre to see the French film "Il y a longtemps que je t'aime" (I've Loved You So Long). Juliette (Kristin Scott Thomas) is released from prison after fifteen years and goes to live with her younger sister Lea with whom she's had no contact during her imprisonment. Juliette attempts to rebuild her life and get a job while her and Lea set out to heal the emotional wounds in their relationship.

Directed by first time writer-director Philippe Claudel, the film subtly builds to a powerful conclusion and there were few dry eyes in the theatre at film's end.

Well-acted, with a fine script and solid direction, see it if you get the opportunity.

Bulgarian Poetry Reading

I recently attended a reading by Bulgarian poets in room 65 of Sofia’s St Clement of Ohrid University, which was to commemorate a similar reading that took place in the same room in 1989, at the time of the (much lamented) changes. Each poet was given a five-minute slot to read a poem or two, which meant after an hour we had only got through about six or seven poets, each of whom had read poems dating from the 1980s plus some of their more recent work fresh off the pages in front of them. Give a poet a microphone and an audience and most feel the need to introduce themselves, introduce the poem (despite the maxim that a good poem needs no introduction), and the compère was left struggling to move things on at the pace he’d intended. But the image that has stuck in my mind is that of the three poets who attempted to recite their poems off by heart, from memory, without referring to the (visible or invisible) page in front of them. Without exception, they ground to a halt halfway through the poem and started gaping as they struggled to remember the next line. Some of the audience threw up their arms in consternation. One poet even substituted the words “I don’t know what” for the words that had gone missing. Which makes me wonder how far we are in control of the words we bandy about daily and sometimes inscribe in poems. Poets like fish, gaping. Waiting for the words that don’t come.

Adam Zagajewski and Translation Roundtables at the University of Michigan

The Polish poet Adam Zagajewski will be reading at the University of Michigan on December 4th and participating in a roundtable discussion on translation the following day, Friday, December 5th. The full schedule for the translation roundtables is below and more information about the reading can be found here.

THE ETHICS OF TRANSLATION
Two Roundtable Discussions, co-sponsored by the Department of Comparative Literature, the MFA Program in Creative Writing, the Modern Greek Program, and the Center for Russian and Eastern European Studies.

Friday, 5 December 2008
3222 Angell Hall
University of Michigan

10:30-12:30: WHY TRANSLATE?
Moderator:
Yopie Prins (English/Comparative Literature)
Roundtable:
Christi Merrill (Asian Languages/Comparative Literature)
Joshua Miller (English Literature)
Alina Clej (Romance Languages/Comparative Literature)
Kader Konuk (German/Comparative Literature)
Vassilis Lambropoulos (Classical Studies/Comparative Literature)

1:30-3:30: IS TRANSLATION POSSIBLE?
Moderator:
Benjamin Paloff (Society of Fellows, Slavic/Comparative Literature)
Roundtable:
Adam Zagajewski (MFA Visiting Poet)
Tatjana Aleksic (Slavic/Comparative Literature)
David Caron (Romance Languages/Women's Studies)
Khaled Mattawa (English Literature/Creative Writing)
Keith Taylor (English Literature /Creative Writing)

Benoît Duteurtre and Customer Service

Once again, Chad Post at Three Percent reviews one of my recent reads: this time it's Customer Service by French writer Benoît Duteurtre, translated by Bruce Benderson, and published by Melville House as part of their series "The Contemporary Art of the Novella."

The novella opens with the hapless narrator leaving his cell phone in a taxi. In his mind, this is an easy enough problem to solve—all he has to do is get a replacement phone and he’ll be on his way. For anyone who’s ever dealt with a cell phone company (i.e., everyone), it’s never that simple. As the narrator finds our, the new phone will cost four times as much as the original, and without his SIM card, he won’t be able to keep his phone number, and besides, his account doesn’t allow for a replacement phone—he’ll have to open a new account and pay for both until the original contract expires.

Refusing to give in to this insanity, he decides upon another approach—getting in touch with Leslie Delmare, Director of Customer Service, who had sent him a letter granting him “preferred customer” status, which must count for something, right?

Read the rest of the review here.

German Lit at No Man's Land

Issue #3 of no man's land--the online magazine of German literature in English--is now available.

Issue #3 features poetry by Gerhard Falkner, Norbert Hummelt, Hendrik Jackson, Bert Papenfuß, Arne Rautenberg, Monika Rinck, Daniela Seel and Waltraud Seidlhofer.

In addition, they present results from a Scots-Franconian translation workshop, with translations of Franconian dialect poets Helmut Haberkamm and Fitzgerald Kusz.

Czech Novelist Emil Hakl

Recently I read and enjoyed Czech writer Emil Hakl's Of Kids & Parents (published by Twisted Spoon Press) and it just so happens that Chad Post has a review of the novel over at Three Percent:

Written almost entirely in dialogue, the novel takes place over one night as a 42-year-old man and his 71-year-old father go from bar to bar drinking, talking about airplanes, about women, about everything. The book is narrated by the son, although expository sections are few and far between.

Read the entire review here.

Sozopol Fiction Seminar in Bulgaria

From the Elizabeth Kostova Foundation:

Explore your writing on the beautiful Black Sea coast!

SOZOPOL FICTION SEMINARS

ELIZABETH KOSTOVA FOUNDATION-SOZOPOL, BULGARIA

June 4-8, 2009

The Elizabeth Kostova Foundation offers its second annual summer fiction-writing seminar in historic Sozopol in Bulgaria. The seminar consists of intensive daily fiction workshops, roundtable discussions, and readings/lectures by faculty and participants.
Fiction writers from Bulgaria and fiction writers from English-speaking countries, including but not limited to the U.S. and the U.K., are invited to apply. A total number of ten applicants will be selected for participation and funding. All participants will receive equal funding.

Programme and Faculty
Morning workshops will be led in English by Elizabeth Kostova (author of the best-selling novel THE HISTORIAN) and in Bulgarian by Emilia Dvoryanova (lecturer in creative writing and author of the award-winning Bulgarian novel VIRGIN MARY’S EARTHLY GARDENS, which will be published in French, 2009).

Guest lectures will be provided by Georgi Gospodinov (Bulgarian fiction writer and poet whose novel NATURAL NOVEL has appeared in ten languages) and Josip Novakovich (award-wining Croatian-born American fiction writer, essayist, and professor at Pennsylvania State University).

In addition to the core programme, Josip Novakovich will offer a writing workshop based on his book FICTION WRITERS’ WORKSHOP, which is currently under translation into Bulgarian language.

Roundtable discussions will feature editor Reagan Arthur of Little, Brown and Company (tbc); John O’Brien, founder and editor-in-chief of Dalkey Archive Press; and distinguished Bulgarian editors, publishers, and translators.

Scholarships
Five participants writing in English and five writing in Bulgarian language will receive scholarships regardless of country of residence. The scholarship covers tuition, room and board, in-country transportation, and 80% of international travel.

Applications require an online form and an original fiction sample of 10-20 pages. Please read the eligibility criteria carefully before filling in the application form. For details and to apply: http://ekf.bg/sozopol/apply
On-line applications only, please!

Eligibility
All fiction writers working in English or Bulgarian and over 18 years of age are eligible to apply, regardless of publication record and educational status; acceptance will be based on the quality of the writing sample, statement of purpose, and letter of reference. Applicants from English-speaking countries are not required to have knowledge of Bulgarian language, nor are Bulgarian applicants required to have knowledge of English, although either will be helpful.

Deadline:
Applications and all supporting materials must be submitted by February 1, 2009.

Death and Betrayal in Poland

Last Sunday night, Jessica and I attended the final film of the Ann Arbor Polish Film Festival , a screening of the documentary Trzech Kumpli (“Three Buddies”). The film, directed by Ewa Stankiewicz and Anna Ferens, tells the story of three college friends—Stanislaw Pyjas, Leszek Maleszka, and Bronisław Wildstein--during the late 70s in Poland. While his friends were unaware, Maleszka was working as an informant for the secret police (and also informed on the poet Adam Zagajewski, among others). The film explores whether Maleszka's denunciation led to the murder of Pyjas thirty years ago.

What is forgiveness and is it possible to forgive someone who is unrepentant? Can a nation heal when it ignores the past or must all collaborators be exposed? These difficult questions were addressed by the film and were also discussed during a spirited discussion between the filmmakers and members of the audience following the screening.

(The film is particularly relevant in light of the recent allegations suggesting that Czech writer Milan Kundera had informed on the whereabouts of Miroslav Dvoracek--who was captured and imprisoned for over a decade--during Kundera's days as a student.)