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Awake! Young Men of England
OH! give me the strength of the Lion,
The wisdom of reynard the Fox
And then I’ll hurl troops at the Germans
And give them the hardest of knocks.
Oh! think of the War Lord’s mailed fist,
That is striking at England today:
And think of the lives that our soldiers
Are fearlessly throwing away.
Awake! Oh you young men of England,
For if, when your Country’s in need,
You do not enlist by the thousand,
You truly are cowards indeed.
George Orwell
(1903 – 1950)
Awake! Young Men of England
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Widely considered to be among the most important Italian poets of the twentieth century, Sandro Penna was born and raised in Perugia but spent most of his life in Rome.
Openly gay, Penna wrote verses celebrating homosexual love with lyrical elegance.
His writing alternates between whimsy and melancholia, but it is always full of light.
Juggling traditional Italian prosody and subject matter with their gritty urban opposites in taut, highly concentrated poems, Penna’s lyrics revel in love and the eruption of Eros together with the extraordinary that can be found within simple everyday life.
There is something ancient in Penna’s poetry, and something Etruscan or Greek about the poems, though the landscape is most often of Rome: sensual yet severe, sinuous yet solid, inscrutable, intangible and languorous, with a Sphinx-like and sun-soaked smile.
Penna’s city is eternal—a mythically decadent Rome that brings to mind Paris or Alexandria. And though the echoes resound—from Rimbaud, Verlaine, Baudelaire to Leopardi, D’Annunzio, Cavafy—the voice is always undeniably and wonderfully Penna’s own.
Sandro Penna (1906–77) was an Italian poet. During his life, he was awarded two of Italy’s most important literary awards, the Premio Viareggio and the Premio Bagutta. His work has been translated into many languages, including English, French, German, Japanese, and Spanish, and has appeared in numerous anthologies of Italian poetry.
Alexander Booth is a writer and translator and the recipient of a 2012 PEN Translation Fund grant for his translations of Lutz Seiler.
Sandro Penna
Within the Sweet Noise of Life
Selected Poems
Translated by Alexander Booth
ISBN: 9780857427878
Format: Hardback
Pages: 96
Rights: UCP
Publication Year: March 2021
Size: 5″ x 8.5″
Publisher: Seagull Books
$19.00
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Ernest Potters tijdens zijn eerste solo-tentoonstelling sinds lang, in Luycks Gallery, 2012. (Foto: Joep Eijkens)
Ernest Potters timmerde niet alleen als fotograaf aan de weg, maar was ook jarenlang drijvende kracht en organisator van tal van activiteiten in de Tilburgse kunstwereld. Op 10 augustus 2022 overleed hij na een kort ziekbed.
door Joep Eijkens
Ernest Potters werd in 1953 te Tilburg geboren als zoon van de bekende pottenbakkers Henk en Lies Potters. Hij volgde zijn opleiding aan St. Joost Breda en was sinds 1974 werkzaam als fotograaf/fotojournalist. Vanaf de jaren zeventig werkte hij als freelance fotograaf onder meer voor muziekbladen als OOR en Hitkrant, voor het maandblad Jazz Nu en diverse landelijke dag- en weekbladen. Maar ook voor uiteenlopende (kunst)instellingen en andere opdrachtgevers in Tilburg en daarbuiten, waaronder diverse muziek-, dans- en theatergezelschappen.
Potters fotografeerde talloze theater- en dansvoorstellingen. Tot zijn favoriete onderwerpen hoorden architectuur en muzikanten. Wat dat laatste betreft was hij apetrots op een portret dat hij schoot van zijn idool Frank Zappa.
Ruimte X
Maar Potters was beslist méér dan fotograaf. Zo stichtte hij in 1980 met zijn toenmalige levenspartner, danseres Nora van den Eeckhout, Het Danshuis, gevestigd in de Telexstraat in Tilburg. Het betreffende pand werd later onder de naam Ruimte-X een bekend ‘multidisciplinair kunstenpodium’ waar tussen 1998 en 2012 talloze exposities, voorstellingen en culturele bijeenkomsten plaatsvonden. Potters hoorde bovendien tot degenen die aan de wieg stonden van de succesvolle Werkplaats L’Avventura Tilburg.
Ook kreeg Ernst Potters naam door de kunstexposities die hij elders in de stad organiseerde tijdens de Tilburgse kermis. En door de in literatuur, beeldende kunst, theater en muziek gespecialiseerde uitgeverij teleXpress die hij runde met zijn partner Ingrid Luycks. De producten waren steeds mooi verzorgde publicaties. Zijn eerste foto-expositie had hij in 1976 in het cultureel centrum Boerderij Denissen in Berkel-Enschot. Daarna volgden exposities in binnen- en buitenland.
Qua Vadis
In 2012 sloot Ruimte X de deuren en concentreerde Ernest Potters zich weer meer op zijn werk als fotograaf. Het was in de galerie van Luycks dat hij in datzelfde jaar voor het eerst sinds lange tijd weer solo eigen fotografisch werk exposeerde onder de titel Quo Vadis. Diverse solo- en duo-exposities volgden daarna, eveneens in Luycks Gallery.
Potters timmerde de afgelopen jaren sowieso steviger aan de weg als fotograaf. Zo begon hij eind 2020 op Instagram met een soort dagboek in foto’s van dingen en plekken die hij onderweg tegenkwam. Al dan niet alledaagse voorwerpen en plekken waaraan vrijwel niemand aandacht schenkt: van een weggegooid bierblikje op een hoop straatstenen tot een abstract detail van een stukje architectuur. Alsof hij wilde zeggen dat schoonheid ook op straat is te vinden, als je er maar oog voor hebt.
Ernest Potters maakte ook, en regelmatig in samenwerking met anderen, diverse fotoboeken zoals Hoog-Gaat-Ie. Fotoboek van de Tilburgse kermis met Paul Spapens en Lauran Wijffels, en vorig jaar nog Het nieuwe ritme van Tilburg. Dat was een coproductie met de eveneens Tilburgse fotograaf Wil van Dusseldorp over de metamorfose die de voormalige textielstad onderging sinds de jaren zestig. Potters nam daarin vooral het afgelopen decennium voor zijn rekening, met kleurenfoto’s die hij speciaal voor dit boek maakte. Het werd uitgegeven door stichting De NWE Stijl, waarin Ingrid Luycks één van de drijvende krachten is. Potters was ook de bedenker van tal van opmerkelijke boekconcepten en uitgaven, waaronder De Kanonbal. Requiem voor een wielrenner en dichtbundels van diverse Tilburgse stadsdichters.
Om ideeën zat Ernest Potters nooit verlegen en hij was ook altijd bereid ideeën van anderen de ruimte geven, vaak letterlijk in Ruimte X. Zijn betrokkenheid bij Tilburg was groot en hij zal in die stad worden gemist, maar zijn wereld was eindeloos veel groter dan stad of provincie.
Eerder gepubliceerd in: Brabant Cultureel. Digitaal podium voor kunst en cultuur
© Joep Eijkens, 11 augustus 2022
https://www.brabantcultureel.nl/
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A Little Poem
A happy vicar I might have been
Two hundred years ago
To preach upon eternal doom
And watch my walnuts grow;
But born, alas, in an evil time,
I missed that pleasant haven,
For the hair has grown on my upper lip
And the clergy are all clean-shaven.
And later still the times were good,
We were so easy to please,
We rocked our troubled thoughts to sleep
On the bosoms of the trees.
All ignorant we dared to own
The joys we now dissemble;
The greenfinch on the apple bough
Could make my enemies tremble.
But girl’s bellies and apricots,
Roach in a shaded stream,
Horses, ducks in flight at dawn,
All these are a dream.
It is forbidden to dream again;
We maim our joys or hide them:
Horses are made of chromium steel
And little fat men shall ride them.
I am the worm who never turned,
The eunuch without a harem;
Between the priest and the commissar
I walk like Eugene Aram;
And the commissar is telling my fortune
While the radio plays,
But the priest has promised an Austin Seven,
For Duggie always pays.
I dreamt I dwelt in marble halls,
And woke to find it true;
I wasn’t born for an age like this;
Was Smith? Was Jones? Were you?
George Orwell
(1903 – 1950)
A Little Poem
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Poem from Burma
Brush your teeth up and down, brother,
Oh, brush them up and down!
All the folks in London Town
Brush their teeth right up and down,
Oh! How they shine!
Aren’t they bloody fine?
Night and morning, my brother,
Oh brush them up and down!”
George Orwell
(1903 – 1950)
Poem from Burma
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Summer-Like
Summer-like for an instant the autumn sun bursts out,
And the light through the turning elms is green and clear;
It slants down the path and ragged marigolds glow
Fiery again, last flames of the dying year.
A blue-tit darts with a flash of wings, to feed
Where the coconut hangs on the pear tree over the well;
He digs at the meat like a tiny pickaxe tapping
With his needle-sharp beak as he clings to the swinging shell.
Then he runs up the trunk, sure-footed and sleek like a mouse,
And perches to sun himself; all his body and brain
Exult in the sudden sunlight, gladly believing
That the cold is over and summer is here again.
But I see the umber clouds that drive for the sun,
And a sorrow no argument ever can make away
Goes through my heart as I think of the nearing winter,
And the transient light that gleams like the ghost of May;
And the bird unaware, blessing the summer eternal,
Joyfully labouring, proud in his strength, gay-plumed,
Unaware of the hawk and the snow and the frost-bound nights,
And of his death foredoomed.
George Orwell
(1903 – 1950)
Summer-Like
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A Dressed Man
A dressed man and a naked man
Stood by the kip-house fire,
Watching the sooty cooking-pots
That bubble on the wire;
And bidding tanners up and down,
Bargaining for a deal,
Naked skin for empty skin,
Clothes against a meal.
‘Ten bob it is,’ the dressed man said,
‘These boots cost near a pound,
This coat’s a blanket of itself.
When you kip on the frosty ground.’
‘One dollar,’ said the nakd man,
‘And that’s a hog too dear;
I’ve seen a man strip off his shirt
For a fag and a pot of beer.’
‘Eight and a tanner,’ the dressed man said,
George Orwell
(1903 – 1950)
A Dressed Man
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Our Minds Are Married,
But We are Too Young
Our minds are married, but we are too young
For wedlock by the customs of this age
When parent homes pen each in separate cage
And only supper-earning songs are sung.
Times past, when medieval woods were green,
Babes were betrothed, and that betrothal brief.
Remember Romeo in love and grief—
Those star-crossed lovers—Juliet was fourteen.
Times past, the caveman by his new-found fire
Rested beside his mate in woodsmoke’s scent.
By our own fireside we shall rest content
Fifty years hence keep troth with hearts desire.
We shall remember, when our hair is white,
These clouded days revealed in radiant light.
George Orwell
(1903 – 1950)
Our Minds Are Married, But We are Too Young
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Geluksvogels bevat een keuze uit Luigi Pirandello’s Novellen voor een jaar, in een blinkend nieuwe vertaling van Yond Boeke en Patty Krone.
Pirandello schreef deze opmerkelijk hoogwaardige verzameling verhalen tussen 1894 en 1936. Zijn dood belette hem het project – één novelle voor elke dag van het jaar – te voltooien.
De diversiteit van zijn verhalen, die getuigen van groot psychologisch inzicht, een buitengewoon scherp gevoel voor humor en immens mededogen, is exemplarisch voor Pirandello’s enorme veelzijdigheid als schrijver.
Hij voert een breed scala aan markante personages ten tonele: van arme Siciliaanse boeren die tevergeefs strijden tegen de clerus tot wufte stedelingen die verstrikt raken in hun eigen overspel, van een wanhopige patiënt die in een New Yorks ziekenhuis uit het raam springt tot een geëxalteerde actrice die het moet opnemen tegen een vleermuis.
Pirandello laveert virtuoos tussen vlotte dialogen, van weemoed doortrokken landschapsbeschrijvingen en filosofische bespiegelingen over het aardse bestaan. Sommige verhalen blijken ook nu nog verrassend actueel.
Luigi Pirandello (1867-1936), geboren in een gegoede familie op Sicilië, kreeg in 1934 de Nobelprijs voor de Literatuur. De verfilming van zijn verhalen door Paolo en Vittorio Taviani, Kaos, werd wereldberoemd.
# new translations
Geluksvogels Verzamelde verhalen
Auteur: Luigi Pirandello
Taal: Nederlands
Vertaald door Yond Boeke & Patty Krone
Hardcover
Druk: 1 februari 2022
832 pagina’s
ISBN 9789028213142
€ 45,00
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The Anti-Sufragists
Fashionable women in luxurious homes,
With men to feed them, clothe them, pay their bills,
Bow, doff the hat, and fetch the handkerchief;
Hostess or guest; and always so supplied
With graceful deference and courtesy;
Surrounded by their horses, servants, dogs–
These tell us they have all the rights they want.
Successful women who have won their way
Alone, with strength of their unaided arm,
Or helped by friends, or softly climbing up
By the sweet aid of “woman’s influence”;
Successful any way, and caring naught
For any other woman’s unsuccess–
These tell us they have all the rights they want.
Religious women of the feebler sort–
Not the religion of a righteous world,
A free, enlightened, upward-reaching world,
But the religion that considers life
As something to back out of !– whose ideal
Is to renounce, submit, and sacrifice.
Counting on being patted on the head
And given a high chair when they get to heaven–
These tell us they have all the rights they want.
Ignorant women–college bred sometimes,
But ignorant of life’s realities
And principles of righteous government,
And how the privileges they enjoy
Were won with blood and tears by those before–
Those they condemn, whose ways they now oppose;
Saying, “Why not let well enough alone?”
Our world is very pleasant as it is”–
These tell us they have all the rights they want.
And selfish women–pigs in petticoats–
Rich, poor, wise, unwise, top or bottom round,
But all sublimely innocent of thought,
And guiltless of ambition, save the one
Deep, voiceless aspiration–to be fed!
These have no use for rights or duties more.
Duties today are more than they can meet,
And law insures their right to clothes and food–
These tell us they have all the rights they want.
And, more’s the pity, some good women too;
Good, conscientious women with ideas;
Who think–or think they think–that woman’s cause
Is best advanced by letting it alone;
That she somehow is not a human thing,
And not to be helped on by human means,
Just added to humanity–an “L”–
A wing, a branch, an extra, not mankind–
These tell us they have all the rights they want.
And out of these has come a monstrous thing,
A strange, down-sucking whirlpool of disgrace,
Women uniting against womanhood,
And using that great name to hide their sin!
Vain are their words as that old king’s command
Who set his will against the rising tide.
But who shall measure the historic shame
Of these poor traitors–traitors are they all–
To great Democracy and Womanhood!
Charlotte Perkins Gilman
(1860-1935)
The Anti-Sufragists
Suffrage Songs and Verses
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In this powerful collection of interviews, Noam Chomsky exposes the problems of our world today, as we stand in this period of monumental change, preparing for a more hopeful tomorrow.
‘For the left, elections are a brief interlude in a life of real politics, a moment to ask whether it’s worth taking time off to vote . . . Then back to work. The work will be to move forward to construct the better world that is within reach.’
He sheds light into the phenomenon of right-wing populism, and exposes the catastrophic nature and impact of authoritarian policies on people, the environment and the planet as a whole. He captures the dynamics of the brutal class warfare launched by the masters of capital to maintain and even enhance the features of a dog-eat-dog society. And he celebrates the recent unprecedented mobilizations of millions of people internationally against neoliberal capitalism, racism and police violence.
We stand at a precipice and we must fight to pull the world back from it.
Noam Chomsky is Institute Professor in the Department of Linguistics and Philosophy at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Boston. A member of the American Academy of Science, he has published widely in both linguistics and current affairs. His books include At War with Asia, Towards a New Cold War, Fateful Triangle: The U. S., Israel and the Palestinians, Necessary Illusions, Hegemony or Survival, Deterring Democracy, Failed States: The Abuse of Power and the Assault on Democracy and Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media.
C. J. Polychroniou is a regular contributor to Truthout as well as a member of Truthout’s Public Intellectual Project. He has published several books and his articles have appeared in a variety of journals, magazines, newspapers, and popular news websites.
# new books
The Precipice: Neoliberalism, the Pandemic
and the Urgent Need for Radical Change
by Noam Chomsky
and C. J. Polychroniou
Publisher : Penguin Books Ltd
June 24, 2021
Language : English
ISBN-10: 0241993938
ISBN-13: 978-0241993934
Paperback
368 pages
€ 7,99
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The Foundling
Beautiful Mother, I have toiled all day;
And I am wearied. And the day is done.
Now, while the wild brooks run
Soft by the furrows–fading, gold to gray,
Their laughters turned to musing–ah, let me
Hide here my face at thine unheeding knee,
Beautiful Mother; if I be thy son.
The birds fly low. Gulls, starlings, hoverers,
Along the meadows and the paling foam,
All wings of thine that roam
Fly down, fly down. One reedy murmur blurs
The silence of the earth; and from the warm
Face of the field the upward savors swarm
Into the darkness. And the herds are home.
All they are stalled and folded for their rest,
The creatures: cloud-fleece young that leap and veer;
Mad-mane and gentle ear;
And breath of loving-kindness. And that best,–
O shaggy house-mate, watching me from far,
With human-aching heart, as I a star–
Tempest of plum’d joys, just to be near!
So close, so like, so dear; and whom I love
More than thou lovest them, or lovest me.
So beautiful to see,
Ah, and to touch! When those far lights above
Scorch me with farness–lights that call and call
To the far heart, and answer not at all;
Save that they will not let the darkness be.
And what am I? That I alone of these
Make me most glad at noon? That I should mark
The after-glow go dark?
This hour to sing–but never have–heart’s-ease!
That when the sorrowing winds fly low, and croon
Outside our happy windows their old rune,
Beautiful Mother, I must wake, and hark?
Who am I? Why for me this iron Must?
Burden the moon-white ox would never bear;
Load that he cannot share,
He, thine imperial hostage of the dust.
Else should I look to see the god’s surprise
Flow from his great unscornful, lovely eyes–
The ox thou gavest to partake my care.
Yea, all they bear their yoke of sun-filled hours.
I, lord at noon, at nightfall no more free,
Take on more heavily
The yoke of hid, intolerable Powers.
–Then pushes here, in my forgetful hand,
This near one’s breathless plea to understand.
Starward I look; he, even so, at me!
And she who shines within my house, my sight
Of the heart’s eyes, my hearth-glow, and my rain,
My singing’s one refrain–
Are there for her no tidings from the height?
For her, my solace, likewise lost and far,
Islanded with me here, on this lone star
Washed by the ceaseless tides of dark and light.
What shall it profit, that I built for her
A little wayside shelter from the stark
Sky that we hear, and mark?
Lo, in her eyes all dreams that ever were!
And cheek-to-cheek with me she shares the quest,
Her heart, as mine for her, sole tented rest
From light to light of day; from dark–till Dark.
Yea, but for her, how should I greatly care
Whither and whence? But that the dark should blast
Our bright! To hold her fast,–
Yet feel this dread creep gray along the air.
To know I cannot hold her so my own,
But under surge of joy, the surges moan
That threaten us with parting at the last!
Beautiful Mother, I am not thy son.
I know from echoes far behind the sky.
I know; I know not why.
Even from thy golden, wide oblivion:
Thy careless leave to help thy harvesting,
Thy leave to work a little, live, and sing;
Thy leave to suffer–yea, to sing and die,
Beautiful Mother! …
Ah, Whose child am I?
Love sang to me. And I went down the stair,
And out into the darkness and the dew;
And bowed myself unto the little grass,
And the blind herbs, and the unshapen dust
Of earth without a face. So let me be.
For as I hear, the singing makes of me
My own desire, and momently I grow.
Yea, all the while with hands of melody,
The singing makes me, out of what I was,
Even as a potter shaping Eden clay.
Ever Love sings, and saith in words that sing,
‘Beloved, thus art thou; and even so
Lovely art thou, Beloved!’–Even so,
As the Sea weaves her path before the light,
I hear, I hear, and I am glorified.
Love sang to me, and I am glorified
Because of some commandment in the stars.
And I shall grow in favour and in shining,
Till at the last I am all-beautiful;
Beautiful, for the day Love sings no more.
Josephine Preston Peabody
(1874 – 1922)
The Foundling
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