Fleurs du Mal Magazine
Gentilesse
The firste stok, fader of gentilesse —
What man that desireth gentil for to be
Must folowe his trace, and alle his wittes dresse
Vertu to love and vyces for to flee.
For unto vertu longeth dignitee
And noght the revers, saufly dar I deme,
Al were he mytre, croune, or diademe.
This firste stok was ful of rightwisnesse,
Trewe of his word, sobre, pitous, and free,
Clene of his gost, and loved besinesse,
Ayeinst the vyce of slouthe, in honestee;
And, but his heir love vertu as dide he,
He is noght gentil, thogh he riche seme,
Al were he mytre, croune, or diademe.
Vyce may wel be heir to old richesse,
But ther may no man, as men may wel see,
Bequethe his heir his vertuous noblesse
(That is appropred unto no degree
But to the firste fader in magestee,
That maketh hem his heyres that him queme),
Geoffrey Chaucer
(1343 – 1400)
Gentilesse
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Pit Lullabies is Jessica Traynor’s third collection, following Liffey Swim (2014) and The Quick (2019).
These intimate, visceral and often wickedly funny poems journey through the darker days of new parenthood, teasing out the anxieties which plague us when night falls. Violence against women, the destruction of our environment, the poisons and pitfalls of 21st-century living are explored here in poems by turns lyrical and earthy, yearning and angry. They mine gold from the darkness and seek luminescence in the deepest oceans.
Jessica Traynor was born in Dublin in 1984 and is a poet, essayist and librettist. Her debut collection, Liffey Swim (Dedalus Press, 2014), was shortlisted for the Strong/Shine Award and in 2016 was named one of the best poetry debuts of the past five years on Bustle.com. Her second collection, The Quick, was a 2019 Irish Times poetry choice. A Place of Pointed Stones, a pamphlet commissioned by Offaly County Council,was published by The Salvage Press in 2021. Her third collection, Pit Lullabies, was published by Bloodaxe Books in March 2022. It was a Poetry Book Society Recommendation and was an Irish Times poetry books of the year choice for 2022. Pit Lullabies was shortlisted for the inaugural Yeats Society Sligo’s Poetry Prize in 2023.
She has received commissions for poems from BBC Radio 4, The Arts Council of Ireland, The Model Gallery Sligo, The Salvage Press, VISUAL Carlow, Dún Laoghaire–Rathdown County Council and The Poetry Programme (RTÉ), and awards including the Hennessy New Writer of the Year, the Ireland Chair of Poetry Bursary, and the Listowel Poetry Prize. In 2016, she was named one of the ‘Rising Generation’ of poets by Poetry Ireland. She is the recipient of the Lawrence O’Shaughnessy Award for Poetry 2023.
She reviews poetry for The Irish Times, RTÉ Radio 1’s Arena, and for Poetry Ireland Review. She is an inaugural Creative Fellow of UCD, where she completed her MA in Creative Writing in 2008, and has held residencies including the Yeats Society, Sligo, and Carlow College. She was Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown Writer in Residence for 2021-22 and is University of Galway Writer in Residence for 2023. She is poetry editor at Banshee.
Pit Lullabies
(Poems)
by Jessica Traynor
Publisher: Bloodaxe Books
2022
Language: English
ISBN-10: 1780376065
ISBN-13: 978-1780376066
Paperback
96 pages
£10.99
Shortlisted for the Yeats Society Sligo’s Poetry Prize 2023
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Maud Joiret est née en 1986 à Bruxelles. Chroniqueuse notamment pour Le Carnet et les Instants, elle est programmatrice littéraire. Cobalt est son premier recueil de poésie. Quelques textes ont paru aussi pour la revue Boustro (numéro VII), Passa Porta, Poetenational.be, Bela. Lauréate d’une bourse de la Fédération Wallonie-Bruxelles – Bourse de découverte 2020
Maud Joiret: Jerk
Arbre de Diane,
coll. « Les deux sœurs »,
2022
ISBN: 978-2-930822-21-1
89 pages
€12,00
Bibliographie
Jerk (2022)
Cobalt (2019)
Marées vaches
“ Tu deviendrais muet sans même le savoir
Tu garderais secrètes tes plaintes et tes larmes
Tu écrirais des poèmes
que personne ne lirait
Les jours impairs, tu te cuisinerais des pâtes
pourvu qu’elles soient cuites à point
juste comme elle les aime.”
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An den Mond
Wandle, wandle, holder Schimmer!
Wandle über Flur und Au,
Gleitend, wie ein kühner Schwimmer,
In des stillen Meeres Blau.
Sanft im Silberglanze schwebest
Du so still durchs Wolkenmeer,
Und durch deinen Blick belebest
Du die Gegend rings umher.
Manchen drücket schwerer Kummer,
Manchen lastet Qual und Pein;
Doch du wiegst in sanften Schlummer
Tröstend ihn, voll Mitleid, ein.
Sanfter, als die heiße Sonne,
Winkt dein Schimmer Ruh und Freud,
Und erfüllt mit süßer Wonne,
Tröstung und Vergessenheit.
Hüllst in dichtbewachsnen Lauben
Mit der sanften Fantasie
Ganz den Dichter; machst ihn glauben,
Seine Muse weiche nie.
Franz Seraphicus Grillparzer
(Wien 1791 – 1872)
An den Mond (Gedicht)
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Mon rêve familier
Je fais souvent ce rêve étrange et pénétrant
D’une femme inconnue, et que j’aime, et qui m’aime,
Et qui n’est, chaque fois, ni tout à fait la même
Ni tout à fait une autre, et m’aime et me comprend.
Car elle me comprend, et mon cœur transparent
Pour elle seule, hélas ! Cesse d’être un problème
Pour elle seule, et les moiteurs de mon front blême,
Elle seule les sait rafraîchir, en pleurant.
Est-elle brune, blonde ou rousse ? Je l’ignore.
Son nom ? Je me souviens qu’il est doux et sonore,
Comme ceux des aimés que la Vie exila.
Son regard est pareil au regard des statues,
Et, pour sa voix, lointaine, et calme, et grave, elle a
L’inflexion des voix chères qui se sont tues.
Paul Verlaine
(1844 – 1896)
Mon rêve familier
Poèmes saturniens
Photo: Willem Witsen, 1892
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The Vast Hour
All essences of sweetness from the white
Warm day go up in vapor, when the dark
Comes down. Ascends the tune of meadow-lark,
Ascends the noon-time smell of grass, when night
Takes sunlight from the world, and gives it ease.
Mysterious wings have brushed the air; and light
Float all the ghosts of sense and sound and sight;
The silent hive is echoing the bees.
So stir my thoughts at this slow, solemn time.
Now only is there certainty for me
When all the day’s distilled and understood.
Now light meets darkness: now my tendrils climb
In this vast hour, up the living tree,
Where gloom foregathers, and the stern winds brood.
Genevieve Taggard
(1894 – 1948)
The Vast Hour
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Schwermütig kam die Nacht …
Schwermütig kam die Nacht. Ich bin allein.
Rings wuchern Bücher, Möbel und Tapeten
Im gelben Licht der Lampe fremd und kalt.
Wie weh tun Sehnsucht, Nacht und Einsamsein!
Still möcht ich in dein junges Leben treten
Wie eine Wanderschaft durch einen grünen Wald.
Hans Ehrenbaum-Degele
(1889 – 1915)
Schwermütig kam die Nacht …
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En la forest de Longue Attente
En la forest de Longue Attente
Entrée suis en une sente
Dont oster je ne puis mon cueur,
Pour quoy je vis en grant langueur,
Par Fortune qui me tourmente.
Souvent Espoir chacun contente,
Excepté moy, povre dolente,
Qui nuit et jour suis en douleur
En la forest de Longue Attente.
Ay je dont tort, se je garmente
Plus que nulle qui soit vivante ?
Par Dieu, nannil, veu mon malheur,
Car ainsi m’aid mon Createur
Qu’il n’est peine que je ne sente
En la forest de Longue Attente.
Marie De CLÈVES
(1426-1487)
En la forest de Longue Attente
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This keenly anticipated new collection from the Costa Poetry Award-winner speaks ‘out of fear and grief into splendour and joy’.
Following their award-winning debut, Flèche (2019), comes Mary Jean Chan’s gleaming second collection: Bright Fear. Through poems which engage fearlessly with intertwined themes of identity, multilingualism and postcolonial legacy, Chan’s latest work explores a family’s evolving dynamics, as well as microaggressions stemming from queerphobia and anti-Asian racism that accompanied the Covid pandemic.
Yet Bright Fear remains deeply attuned to moments of beauty, tenderness and grace. It asks how we might find a home within our own bodies, in places both distant and near, and in the ‘constructed space’ of the poem. The contemplative central sequence, Ars Poetica, traces the radically healing and transformative role of poetry during the poet’s teenage and adult years, culminating in a polyphonic reconciliation of tongues. Throughout, Chan offers us new and galvanising ways to ‘withstand the quotidian tug- / of-war between terror and love’.
Mary Jean Chan is the author of Flèche (Faber, 2019), which won the Costa Book Award for Poetry and was shortlisted for the International Dylan Thomas Prize, the John Pollard Foundation International Poetry Prize, the Jhalak Prize, the Seamus Heaney Centre First Collection Poetry Prize and a Lambda Literary Award. Chan won the 2018 Geoffrey Dearmer Prize and was shortlisted for the Forward Prize for Best Single Poem in 2017 and 2019, receiving an Eric Gregory Award in 2019. Chan co-edited the anthology 100 Queer Poems (Vintage, 2022) with Andrew McMillan, and is a judge for the 2023 Booker Prize. Born and raised in Hong Kong, Chan serves as Senior Lecturer in Creative Writing (Poetry) at Oxford Brookes University and lives in Oxford.
Most mornings, you see the face
of a boy in the mirror. You
expect to fall in love with him,
someday. Meanwhile, your fingers
brush the wrist of another girl as
you jostle into the assembly hall,
and you understand that sin was
never meant to be easy, only
sweet. What might light up the
pond you sat beside in dreams,
eyeing skin and so much depth it
would be years before you dared?
What curvature of tongue might
you taste, as if another’s breath
were blessing? One night, you find
yourself back there. You dream.
A voice says: Hell is not other
people. You sink, stripped of the
glowing dress you wore for
thousands of days.
(fragment poem)
Bright Fear
by Mary Jean Chan
(Poems)
Publisher: Faber & Faber;
Main edition
3 August 2023
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0571378900
ISBN-13: 978-0571378906
Dimensions: 15.8 x 0.6 x 20.5 cm
Paperback
72 pages
£10.99
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Gebet
Urewiger!
Unendlicher!
Du hörst das Schreien
Der ringenden Seele.
Zu Dir geflüchtet
Bin ich in Stunden,
Wo Dir entfremdet
Und Dich verhöhnend,
In Schmutz und Sünde
Sich Jene wälzten,
Die gestern lobpriesen
Dein heiliges Wort,
Die morgen wieder
Vor Deinem Kreuze
Im Staub sich winden,
Ein heiliges Antlitz
Und heilige Sitten
Frommlächelnd zeigen. –
O ewiges Wesen
Barmherzig bist Du,
Du bist milde,
Göttlich, gütig! –
Ich glaube an Dich,
Ich hoffe auf Dich,
Und wenn auch versinkend,
Ruf ich zu Dir!
Du hörst dies Rufen …..
Der Krämerseelen
Erbärmlich Winseln
Dringt nicht an Dein Ohr:
Doch dort, wo Jammer
Und große Schuld
Vor Dir sich beugen
In schmerzlicher Reue,
Dort, wo beladen
Mit menschlichem Elend,
Von Dir ein Wesen,
Sündenmüde,
Lebensmüde,
Erlösung heischt,
Dort wirst Du hören, –
Denn Du bist Gott!
Ada Christen
(1839 – 1901)
Gebet
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Inspiring oral histories of women fighting for justice and radical social change at community, state, and national levels.
Award-winning oral historian Lynn Lewis brings together the stories of nine exceptional women, from their earliest formative experiences to their current strategies as movement leaders, organizers, and cultural workers.
Each chapter is dedicated to one activist—Malkia Devich-Cyril, Priscilla Gonzalez, Terese Howard, Hilary Moore, Vanessa Nosie, Roz Pelles, Loretta Ross, Yomara Velez, and Betty Yu.
Reflecting upon the path their lives have taken, they talk about their struggles and aspirations, insights and victories, and what keeps them in the fight for a better world.
The life stories of these inspiring women reveal the many ways the experience of injustice can catalyze resistance and a commitment to making change. They demonstrate how the relationships and bonds of collective struggle for the common good not only win justice, but create hope, love, and joy.
Lynn Lewis (editor) is an oral historian, educator, and community organizer. She is the author of Love and Collective Resistance: Lessons from the Picture the Homeless Oral History Project and is the former executive director and past civil rights organizer at Picture the Homeless. Lewis is the recipient of many honors and awards, including a 2022/2023 National Endowment for the Humanities Oral History Fellowship. She lives in New York City.
Women Who Change the World:
Stories from the Fight for Social Justice
by Lynn Lewis (Editor)
ISBN-13: 9780872868748
Publisher: City Lights Books
Series: City Lights Open Media
Publication date: 08/29/2023
Pages: 280
Paperback
$17.95
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Skull Song
A sea-god, whose father had been a mortal, becomes a skeleton.
The skin of the sea was thick, to-night,
And the tone of the sea was dull;
When I found by the edge of the sullen sea
The half of a sea-god’s skull.
Half of a sea-god’s skull was there,
Half of a sea-god’s tail.
When I dug them out of the clutch of the sand
The peering moon went pale.
The peering moon went pale, because
Her other eye had seen
The other half of the sea-god’s bones
Ten thousand fathom green . . .
Ten thousand fathom green with sea,
The sea-god’s other bones
Swayed in a dead sea-goddess’s arms
On a pile of sea-washed stones.
The skin of the sea was thick, to-night,
And the tone of the sea was dull,
While I buried away from the sinister sea
All the mortal part of a skull.
Genevieve Taggard
(1894 – 1948)
Skull Song
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