Announcing Stagnant Water & Other Poems by Wen Yiduo 聞一多 (1899 – 1946), translated by Robert Hammond Dorsett
This stagnant ditch is hopeless.
Clearly, not a place where beauty thrives.
Better cultivate its ugliness.
Perhaps its ugliness will create a world.這是一溝絕望的死水，
這裏斷不是美的所在，
不如讓給醜惡來開墾，
看他造出個什麼世界。
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Wai-lim Yip 葉維廉 on his background and beginnings:
While the poets in Hong Kong and in Taiwan shared the same frustration, the modernist writings that emerged from this frustration have different permutations. Hong Kong poets faced radicalized crisis of cultural identity and the concomitant culture industry that came with British colonization, whereas their Taiwan counterparts wrestled with the rule of the Kuomintang during a period that became known as the White Terror. Both discovered language strategies from Euro-American modernism and modified them through the lens of classical and contemporary Chinese poetry. I began in Hong Kong and matured in Taiwan.
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Almost Island is a space for literature that threatens, confronts, or bypasses the marketplace. The space began with an online journal, then expanded to an international writers dialogue, held every year. The seventh edition of the Almost Island Dialogues will be held at the India International Centre, New Delhi, from December 19th to 22nd, 2013.
The discussions centre on issues of craft, form, and content as well as the context of writing in different cultures. Unlike a literary festival, Almost Island likes to keep the Dialogues small, rigorous, and intimate. These conversations are concerned with process, with how things are learnt, explored, created, and created again. This year we plan to continue with some singular writers. The mornings and afternoons are kept for intense, extended, freewheeling talks and discussions; the evenings, for readings and performances.
The readings are open to all, but to attend the day discussions pre-registration is needed. For pre-registration and any other queries, please write to Rahul Soni at almostisland.edit@gmail.com.SCHEDULE
Evening Readings / Performances on the IIC Annexe Lawns (All Are Welcome.)Thursday, December 19, 6:30 pm
Baha’ud-din DagarFriday, December 20, 10.30 am to 1 pm and 2.30 pm to 5 pm László Krasznahorkai / Xi Chuan
Saturday, December 21, 10.30 am to 1 pm Ashis Nandy / Baha ud-din Dagar
Sunday, December 22, 10.30 am to 1 pm and 2.30 pm to 5 pm Arvind Krishna Mehrotra / Renee Gladman
Panels and Discussion at Conference Room 1, IIC Main Centre (NB: panels are also open to all who wish to come, but
pre-registration is required. Contact Rahul Soni at
almostisland.edit@gmail.com for more details.)Friday, December 20, 10.30 am to 1 pm and 2.30 pm to 5 pm
László Krasznahorkai / Xi ChuanSaturday, December 21, 10.30 am to 1 pm
Ashis Nandy / Baha ud-din DagarSunday, December 22, 10.30 am to 1 pm and 2.30 pm to 5pm
Arvind Krishna Mehrotra / Renee Gladman
Download the .pdf for more information.
Sun Wenbo 孙文波, translated by Eleanor Goodman:
Translating Sun Wenbo’s poetry can seem deceptively straightforward. Because his language can be casual, and his topics ordinary (even base), a translator can produce a reasonable likeness of the original by skimming the surface, never plumbing the material beneath …
The Butterfly Effect
With twists and turns, I talk butterflies into women,
talk women into nymphs, talk nymphs into tigers,
talk tigers into bureaucrats, talk bureaucrats into wrathful gods.
Going a step further, what else can I say?
I’d have to ask you. It wouldn’t do not to ask.
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The Harvard Gazette has a feature on Chloe Garcia Roberts and her translation of Derangements of My Contemporaries 義山雜纂 by Li Shangyin 李商隱, forthcoming from New Directions.For a poet writing in late Tang-era China, Li Shangyin sure was cheeky.
…
“The list-poems document one person’s reactions to and interactions with the mundane aspects of his life, and there isn’t anyone alive who can’t relate to that,” said Garcia Roberts.She calls the list-poems funny and bitter.
“They read like a notebook that you keep in your pocket to write down things that irritate you. One of the poems I really love I’ve translated as ‘Scenery Killers,’ but the basic idea is chronicling things that spoil your enjoyment of your surroundings.”
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Announcing the Ancient Asia Issue of Cha (December 2013), featuring new translations of Chinese poetry by Xi Chuan, Tao Yuanming 陶淵明, Du Fu 杜甫, He Qifang 何其芳, Xiao Kaiyu 肖开愚, Liu Yong 柳永, the Shijing 詩經, Laozi 老子, Du Mu 杜牧, and Li Shangyin 李商隱, and new work by Eliot Weinberger, Matthew Turner, Eleanor Goodman, Sharmistha Mohanty, and Jonathan Stalling. The full list of contributors:
Translation: Lucas Klein, A.K. Ramanjuan, Reid Mitchell, George Life, Canaan Morse, Michael Gray, Christopher Lupke, Dulal Al Monsur, Nicholas Francis, Michael Farman, Michael O’Hara, Eleanor Goodman, Chloe Garcia Roberts
Poetry: Eliot Weinberger, Matthew Turner, W.F. Lantry, Aditi Rao, Stuart Christie, Luca L., Xiao Pinpin, Kate Rogers, Pey Pey Oh, DeWitt Clinton, Elizabeth Schultz, Stephanie V Sears, Joshua Burns, James Shea, Sean Prentiss, Steven Schroeder, Marjorie Evasco, Arjun Rajendran, Pui Ying Wong, Julia Gordon-Bramer, June Nandy, Janice Ko Luo, Stuart Greenhouse, Barbara Boches, Cathy Bryant, Justin Hill, Eleanor Goodman
Fiction: John Givens, Xie Shi Min, Sharmistha Mohanty, Zhou Tingfeng, Khanh Ha
Articles: Jonathan Stalling, Michael Tsang
Creative non-fiction: Pavle Radonic
Photography & art: Alvin Pang (cover artist), Adam Aitken
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Recently in conversation Phil Hall pointed to a source of continuing interest in lyric poetry: that the personal is political. This poem reminds me the reverse is also true.
There’s no happy discovery at the end of Xi Chuan’s “Power Outage” such as there is in my sentimental framing of the ice storm stories. When the power goes out, the poem-speaker is cast into a disordered state. The darkness reveals small sounds far and near, traces of human presence in “wind chimes and a cat’s footbeats,” an engine that stops and a song that goes on. Loneliness and isolation are almost palpable.
Then “time turns back,” and darkness takes on a deeper tone, as living crows converge around a plate of crow meat, and blackness engulfs the poem’s speaker entirely. Despair acquires an odour and a name: power outage. The poem-speaker is pitched into an impossible, subsuming blackness. All he can do is summon a frustrated mutter as he recognizes his own wordless shadow.
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Opening Ceremony and Poetry Recitation, Sunday 24 November, 3:00 – 4:30 p.m. HKICC
Tim Lilburn (Canada), Ye Mimi 葉覓覓 (Taiwan), Conchitina Cruz (The Philippines)
Performances: Filipino Band with Dodo Valiente
7:00 – 8:30 p.m. HKICC
Menna Elfyn (Wales), Natalia Chan 洛楓 (Hong Kong), Olvido García Valdés (Spain)
Performances: Flamenco by Ingrid Sera-Gillet
Opening Ceremony and Poetry Recitation, Saturday 23 November, 7:00 – 8:30 p.m. HKICC
Dunya Mikhail (Iraq), Lee Seong-bok (South Korea), Un Sio San 袁紹珊 (Macau), Peter Minter (Australia)
Performances: Trumpet Duet by Ken Cheng 鄭永健 and Paul Chiu 趙之恆