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Always the coolest of doorway
It wasn’t necessarily the best of times
or the best of me, the best of wines
or the best of you, the warmest of nights,
the brightest of moon, the nicest of streets,
the trendiest of bars in the smart part of town.
We didn’t have the cleverest of talks,
sit at the best of tables, with the cleanest of napkins.
My pockets weren’t the fullest, as the moths attested.
I wasn’t at my wealthiest, or my smartest,
or wearing the shiniest shoes with the strongest of laces,
chewing with the whitest of teeth in the kindest of moods.
We certainly weren’t coy about our agenda that night.
It wasn’t as if I didn’t know you or I didn’t want you,
or I wouldn’t try or hadn’t had; I wanted what I wanted
and slowly the alcohol took hold and awoke the desiring,
and you could’ve imagined a better seduction,
as the night could’ve been the dullest ever
without wanting to or trying the making of love to you.
But wasn’t the moon the fullest, and weren’t we the closest,
didn’t we feel the passion and violence of the kissing, the biting,
struggling in a moment of an explosive erotic experience.
Didn’t we search for privacy in the dirty streets that night?
Weren’t we two bellyfuls of red wine in the emptying city,
swaggering and swollen, swaying in a London doorway,
hidden from the pace of hectic pedestrians.
Hadn’t we become the most romantic of couples
in our boozy, breathy pairing, as we locked tight together
and vanished completely in a haze of shaky memories that night.
Vincent Berquez
Always the coolest of doorway
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Photo: VB – The artist and his son
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Schemerlamp
In een ver verleden onder deze schemerlamp
bedacht hij hoe zijn moeder samenspande
met de avondval. Uit radio beneden geluiden
die hij nauwelijks kon duiden. Van alle eeuwenoude
sprookjes in dat bed rook je de oorsprong.
Onder die lampenkap kwam haast vanzelf
een stil geloven. Door het heden schippert hopeloos
versnipperd vroeger, laverend als een oude schuit.
Hier kijk ik aan tegen een wand die alles weigert.
Bert Bevers
Schemerlamp
Eerder verschenen in Eigen terrein, Uitgeverij WEL, Bergen op Zoom, 2013
Bert Bevers is dichter en schrijver
Hij woont en werkt in Antwerpen (Be)
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A fascinating blend of poetry and science, Ben-Oni’s poems are precisely crafted, like a surgeon sewing a complicated stitch, moving through the multiverses of family, religion and discovery itself.
The book culminates in an ancient Jewish Idea about “Efes,” which is Modern Hebrew for “zero” but also in mystical texts, means “nullification” and “concealment.”
Ultimately, Efes becomes a process of transformation for the speaker, revealing as well that the closer humanity gets to understanding this mysterious force, it inevitably changes the riddle– and us along with it.
Rosebud Ben-Oni
is the winner of the 2019 Alice James Award for If This Is the Age We End Discovery, forthcoming in 2021, and the author of turn around, BRXGHT XYXS (Get Fresh Books, 2019).
She is a recipient of fellowships from the New York Foundation for the Arts (NYFA) and CantoMundo. Her work appears in POETRY, The American Poetry Review, POETS.org, The Poetry Review (UK), Tin House, Guernica, Black Warrior Review, Prairie Schooner, Electric Literature, TriQuarterly, Hayden’s Ferry Review, The Journal ,Hunger Mountain, The Adroit Journal, The Southeast Review, North American Review, Salamander, Poetry Northwest, among others.
Her poem “Poet Wrestling with Angels in the Dark” was commissioned by the National September 11 Memorial & Museum in New York City, and published by The Kenyon Review Online. Rosebud Ben-Oni writes for The Kenyon Review blog. She is currently editing a special chemistry poetry portfolio for Pleiades, and is finishing a series called The Atomic Sonnets, in honor of the Periodic Table’s 150th Birthday. Find her at 7TrainLove.org
If This Is the Age We End Discovery
by Rosebud Ben-Oni
Publisher: Alice James Books (March 9, 2021)
Language: English
Poetry
Paperback: 100 pages
ISBN-10 : 1948579154
ISBN-13 : 978-1948579155
$14.89
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An evening of poetry and art with celebrated local author Vincent Berquez.
Vincent Berquez is an Anglo-French Balham based artist and poet. He has exhibited his artwork worldwide and is published in Britain, Europe, America and New Zealand.
Vincent will be reading from his latest book, ‘The Sound of Blossom Falling’.
Thu, 15 September 2022
19:00 – 21:00 BST
Location
Balham Library
16 Ramsden Road
London
SW12 8QY
United Kingdom
more information on website:
https://allevents.in/london/meet-author-and-artist-vincent-berquez/10000394228948397
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Amour-roi
Amour-roi
Dites-moi
La si belle
Colombelle
Infidèle
Qu’on appelle
Petit Lou
Dites où
Donc est-elle
Et chez qui
— Mais chez Gui
Guillaume Apollinaire
(1880 – 1918)
Amour-roi
Poèmes à Lou
1915
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Onderbuik
In keurige lokalen dagen ze op om te kiezen
met ongeschoolde stemmen. De oude luister
van wijken ontrafelt heimwee naar de ranke
zwier van liedjes over herfstval, over navels
waar weer truitjes over zijn geschoven. Als ze
daarover vertellen wil niemand hen geloven.
Bert Bevers
Onderbuik
uit de bundel in voorbereiding Bedekte termen
Bert Bevers is dichter en schrijver
Hij woont en werkt in Antwerpen (Be)
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Tussen de bomen
Vroeger, toen het bos nog jong was en
vinders van zwaarden er zwegen alsof
ze op een schande waren gestoten, was
het lover al goudkeverkleurig. Stel je voor
hoe hier de rituelen van de stam werden
overgeleverd door de hoofdzanger, in milde
doorschouwing naar klaarheid zwenkend.
Waarheid laat zich maar moeilijk vatten.
Bert Bevers
Tussen de bomen
verschenen in de catalogus Enghuizer Dialogen, Hummelo, 2016
Bert Bevers is dichter en schrijver
Hij woont en werkt in Antwerpen (Be)
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My Land
A new land, like a stainless flower set
In the green foliage of the waving sea;
Or like a maiden whose fair heart is free,
Whose honest eyes with no sad tears are wet,
Whose bosom has no passion to forget,
But thrills and lifts exuberant, as she
Voices some sudden-flooding melody!
A land of strength, life, vigour, youth — and yet
An old land, grey as I, her child, am grey;
Filled with the whispers of old thoughts that stir
And wake, like shadows of the past that play
Deep in the beauty of a child’s grave eyes,
And show beneath life’s gladness glancing there
The pathos of a hundred histories.
Arthur Adams
(1872-1936)
My Land
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Les fleurs rares
Entreprenant un long voyage
Ptit Lou hanté par l’histoire de Jussieu
Au lieu d’un petit cèdre prit… Quoi donc ?… Je gage
Qu’on de devinera pas ce que Dieu
Fit prendre à mon ptit Lou :… une fleur rare…
Dont elle ferait don aux serres de Paris…
La fleur étant sans prix
Et Dame Lou voyant qu’elle en valait la peine
Froissa pour la cueillir sa jupe de futaine.
Mais en passant dans la forêt
Allant prendre son train à la ville prochaine
Ptit Lou vit sous un chêne
Une autre fleur : « plus belle encore elle paraît !»
La première fleur tombe
Et la forêt devient sa tombe
Tandis que mon ptit Lou d’un air rêveur
A cueilli la seconde fleur
Et l’entoure de sa sollicitude
Arrivant à la station
Après une montée un peu rude
Pour s’y reposer de sa lassitude.
Avec satisfaction
Ptiti Lou s’assied dans le jardin du chef de gare.
« Tiens ! dit-elle, une fleur ! Elle est encor plus rare !»
Et sans précaution
Ma bergère
Abandonna la timide fleur bocagère
Et cueillit la troisième fleur…
Cheu ! Cheu ! Pheu ! Pheu ! Cheu ! Cheu ! Pheu ! Pheu ! Le train arrive
Et puis repart pour regagner l’Intérieur
Mais dans le train la fleur se fane et Lou pensive
S’en va chez la fleuriste en arrivant :
« Ces rares fleurs… j’en vais rêvant
Elles sont si rares, Madame
Que je n’en tiens plus, sur mon âme !»
La fleuriste s’exprime ainsi
Et Lou dut se contenter d’un souci
Que lui refuse
Sans lui donner d’excuse
Le directeur (un personnage réussi)
Des serres de la ville
de Paris
malgré tous les pleurs et les cris
De Lou qui dut jeter cette fleur inutile.
Et Lou du
Vilain personnage
Quittant le bureau, dut
Entreprendre à rebours l’horticole voyage.
Je crois qu’il est sage
De nous arrêter
À la morale suivante… sans insister !
Des Lous et des fleurs il ne faut discuter
Et je n’en dis pas davantage
Guillaume Apollinaire
(1880 – 1918)
Les fleurs rares
Poèmes à Lou
1915
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Diana Anphimiadi is a poet, publicist, linguist and teacher. She has published four collections of poetry in Georgian: Shokoladi (Chocolate, 2008), Konspecturi Mitologia (Resumé of Mythology, 2009), Alhlokhedvis Traektoria (Trajectory of the Short-Sighted, 2012) and Chrdilis Amoch’ra (Cutting the Shadow, 2015).
Her poetry has received prestigious awards, including first prize in the 2008 Tsero (Crane Award) and the Saba Prize for the best first collection in 2009. Her chapbook, Beginning to Speak, was published in 2018 by the Poetry Translation Centre, and Why I No Longer Write Poems, the first full-length Georgian-English selection of her poetry, is published by Bloodaxe Books with the Poetry Translation Centre in 2022, both titles translated by Natalia Bukia-Peters and Jean Sprackland.
Diana Anphimiadi lives in Tblisi with her son.
The poems in this selection have been collaboratively translated into English by the leading Georgian translator Natalia Bukia-Peters and award-winning British poet Jean Sprackland. A chapbook selection of their translations of Anphimiadi’s work, Beginning to Speak, was published in 2018 and praised by Adham Smart in Modern Poetry in Translation for capturing the ‘electricity of Anphimiadi’s language’ which ‘crackles from one poem to the next in Bukia-Peters and Sprackland’s fine translation’.
#new poetry
Diana Anphimiadi
Why I No Longer Write Poems
Translated by Jean Sprackland & Natalia Bukia-Peters
Publication Date : 24 Feb 2022
Winner English PEN Award
Paperback
Pages: 160
Size: 216 x 138mm
Bloodaxe Books Ltd
ISBN: 9781780375472
£12.99
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