Fleurs du Mal Magazine
Winner of the T.S. Eliot Prize 2020 and the RSL Ondaatje Prize!
These are finely crafted poems that reveal Roger Robinson’s capacity to tell involving stories and capture the essence of a character in a few words, to move the emotions with the force of verbal expression, and engage our thoughts, as in the sequence of poems that reflect on just what paradise might be. A Portable Paradise is a feast to be carried by lovers of poetry wherever they go.
Roger Robinson’s range is wide: the joys and pains of family life; the ubiquitous presence of racism, both subtle and unsubtle; observations on the threatening edge of violence below the surface energies of Black British territories in London; emblematic poems on the beauty and often bizarre strangeness of the world of animals; quizzical responses to the strange, the heartening, and the appalling in incidents or accounts of incidents encountered in daily life; reflections on the purposes and costs of making art, as in fine poems on a George Stubbs’ painting, John Coltrane’s Ascension and cocaine. Not least, in the sequence of poems that reflect on the meanings of the Grenfell Tower fire, Roger Robinson finds ways to move beyond a just indignation to uncover the undertones of experience that bring us nearer to the human reality of that event.
The collection’s title points to the underlying philosophy expressed in these poems: that earthly joy is, or ought to be, just within, but is often just beyond our reach, denied by racism, misogyny, physical cruelty and those with the class power to deny others their share of worldly goods and pleasures. A Portable Paradise is not the emptiness of material accumulation, but joy in an openness to people, places, the sensual pleasures of food and the rewards to be had from the arts of word, sound and visual enticement – in short an “insatiable hunger” for life. The poems express a fierce anger against injustice, but also convey the irrepressible sense that Roger Robinson cannot help but love people for their humour, oddity and generosity of spirit.
These are finely crafted poems, that reveal Roger Robinson’s capacity to tell involving stories and capture the essence of a character in a few words, to move the emotions with the force of verbal expression, and engage our thoughts, as in the sequence of poems that reflect on just what paradise might be. A Portable Paradise is a feast to be carried by lovers of poetry wherever they go.
• Roger Robinson is a writer and performer who lives between London and Trinidad. His first full poetry collection, The Butterfly Hotel, was shortlisted for The OCM Bocas Poetry Prize. He has toured extensively with the British Council and is a co-founder of both Spoke Lab and the international writing collective Malika’s Kitchen.
• Review by Bernardine Evaristo for the New Statesman on Wednesday, November 13, 2019: “A Portable Paradise (Peepal Tree Press) is the fourth poetry collection by Trinidadian-British poet Roger Robinson. It’s also his finest, ranging from the most breath-taking poems about the Grenfell Tower fire to the most exquisitely moving poems about the premature birth of his son, who had to fight for his life in an incubator. His poems are deep, mature, moving and inventive.”
A Portable Paradise
Roger Robinson (author)
Publisher: Peepal Tree Press Ltd
ISBN: 9781845234331
Number of pages: 144
Dimensions: 206 x 135 mm
Paperback
Published: 08/07/2019
£9.99
# new poetry
Roger Robinson:
A Portable Paradise
• fleursdumal.nl magazine
More in: #Editors Choice Archiv, - Book News, - Bookstores, Archive Q-R, Archive Q-R, Art & Literature News, Awards & Prizes, Black Lives Matter
Con Large Comme Un Estuaire
Con large comme un estuaire
Où meurt mon amoureux reflux
Tu as la saveur poissonnière
l’odeur de la bite et du cul
La fraîche odeur trouduculière
Femme ô vagin inépuisable
Dont le souvenir fait bander
Tes nichons distribuent la manne
Tes cuisses quelle volupté
même tes menstrues sanglantes
Sont une liqueur violente
La rose-thé de ton prépuce
Auprès de moi s’épanouit
On dirait d’un vieux boyard russe
Le chibre sanguin et bouffi
Lorsqu’au plus fort de la partouse
Ma bouche à ton noeud fait ventouse.
Guillaume Apollinaire
(1880 – 1918)
Con Large Comme Un Estuaire
• fleursdumal.nl magazine
More in: Apollinaire, Guillaume, Archive A-B, Archive A-B, Guillaume Apollinaire
Weltende
Es ist ein Weinen in der Welt,
Als ob der liebe Gott gestorben wär,
Und der bleierne Schatten, der niederfällt,
Lastet grabesschwer.
Komm, wir wollen uns näher verbergen …
Das Leben liegt in aller Herzen
Wie in Särgen.
Du, wir wollen uns tief küssen –
Es pocht eine Sehnsucht an die Welt,
An der wir sterben müssen.
Else Lasker-Schüler
(1869 – 1945)
Weltende
• fleursdumal.nl magazine
More in: Archive K-L, Archive K-L, Lasker-Schüler, Else
Hard Damage works to relentlessly interrogate the self and its shortcomings. In lyric and documentary poems and essayistic fragments, Aria Aber explores the historical and personal implications of Afghan American relations.
Drawing on material dating back to the 1950s, she considers the consequences of these relations—in particular the funding of the Afghan mujahedeen, which led to the Taliban and modern-day Islamic terrorism—for her family and the world at large.
Invested in and suspicious of the pain of family and the shame of selfhood, the speakers of these richly evocative and musical poems mourn the magnitude of citizenship as a state of place and a state of mind. While Hard Damage is framed by free-verse poetry, the middle sections comprise a lyric essay in fragments and a long documentary poem. Aber explores Rilke in the original German, the urban melancholia of city life, inherited trauma, and displacement on both linguistic and environmental levels, while employing surrealist and eerily domestic imagery.
One hears everything here, where the landscape
is a clean knife, slicing the mute—just a cat
wiping its face, roofs with snow for weeks, ice
falling from fir trees like books pushed off a shelf.
“The book is an academic asset. It is fine literature, from beyond the borders of the English-speaking sensibilities. Students of literature, political science, sociology, foreign affairs, and many other disciplines can benefit from Hard Damage…” – NY Journal of Books
Aria Aber was raised in Germany, where she was born to Afghan refugees. Her debut book Hard Damage won the Prairie Schooner Book Prize in Poetry and will be published in September 2019. Her poems are forthcoming or have appeared in The New Yorker, New Republic, Kenyon Review, The Yale Review, Poem-A-Day, Narrative, Muzzle Magazine, Wasafiri and others. A graduate from the NYU MFA in Creative Writing, where she was the Writers in Public Schools Fellow, she holds awards and fellowships from Kundiman and Dickinson House and was the 2018-2019 Ron Wallace Poetry Fellow at the Wisconsin Institute of Creative Writing. She’s currently based in Berlin and is at work on her second book.
Aria Aber (Author)
Hard Damage
Poetry
Series: Prairie Schooner Book Prize in Poetry
Paperback
126 pages
Publisher: University of Nebraska Press
2019
Language: English
ISBN-10: 1496215702
ISBN-13: 978-1496215703
Product Dimensions:
6 x 0.3 x 9 inches
$17.95
# new books
Aria Aber:
Hard Damage
Poetry
• fleursdumal.nl magazine
More in: #Editors Choice Archiv, - Book News, - Bookstores, Archive A-B, Archive A-B, Art & Literature News
Don Paterson’s new collection of poetry starts from the premise that the crisis of mid-life may be a permanent state of mind.
Zonal is an experiment in science-fictional and fantastic autobiography, with all of its poems taking their imaginative cue from the first season of The Twilight Zone (1959-1960), playing fast and loose with both their source material and their author’s own life. Narrative and dramatic in approach, genre-hopping from horror to Black Mirror-style sci-fi, ‘weird tale’ to metaphysical fantasy, these poems change voices constantly in an attempt to get at the truth by alternate means. Occupying the shadowlands between confession and invention, Zonal takes us to places and spaces that feel endlessly surprising, uncanny and limitless.
Don Paterson has published seven poetry collections, three books of aphorisms, translations of Machado and Rilke, several works of literary criticism and an ambitious ars poetica, The Poem. His poetry has received many awards. He is Professor of Poetry at the University of St Andrews and Poetry Editor at Picador Macmillan; he also works as a jazz musician. He lives in Edinburgh.
Zonal
Don Paterson (author)
Poems
English language
Faber & Faber (publisher)
Hardback
Pages: 80
Publication Date: March 5, 2020
ISBN: 9780571338245
RRP: £14.99
# new books
Zonal
poems by Don Paterson
• fleursdumal.nl magazine
More in: #Editors Choice Archiv, - Book News, - Bookstores, Archive O-P, Archive O-P
Eerste aanblik
En peinzend zie ‘k uw zee-blauwe oogen pralen,
Waarin de deernis kwijnt, de liefde droomt, –
En weet niet wat mij door mijn adren stroomt:
Ik zie naar u en kan niet ademhalen:
Een gouden waterval van zonnestralen
Heeft nooit een zachter aangezicht bezoomd…
‘t Is of me een engel heeft verwellekoomd,
Die met een paradijs op aard kwam dalen.
‘k Gevoel mij machtig tot u aangedreven
En buiten mij. ‘k Was dood, ik ben herrezen,
En voel mij tusschen zijn en niet-zijn zweven:
Wat hebt gij, tooveres, mij goed belezen!
Aan u en aan uwe oogen hangt mijn leven:
Een diepe rust vervult geheel mijn wezen. –
Jacques Perk
(1859 – 1881)
Eerste aanblik
• fleursdumal.nl magazine
More in: Archive O-P, CLASSIC POETRY, Jacques Perk
En 2018 s’est produit un phénomène que personne n’avait vu venir et qui restera dans l’histoire de la poésie française : un recueil a rencontré à la fois un succès critique et public.
Cécile Coulon avait alors 27 ans, elle était connue comme romancière depuis déjà plusieurs années, et son premier recueil, Les Ronces, suscita un intérêt et un engouement dépassant de loin le cercle « habituel » des lecteurs de poésie.
Son second recueil, Noir volcan, est tout aussi éruptif, celui d’une poésie affranchie, libératrice, terrienne. Il fait partie d’un étonnant renouveau de la poésie constaté par les libraires dont Alexandre Bord : « Des poétesses comme Cécile Coulon et Rupi Kaur, dont les textes ont pu être lus au préalable sur les réseaux sociaux, attirent en librairie des lecteurs qui n’avaient jamais acheté un recueil de poésie. » Il est évident à la lire, que Cécile Coulon ne peut vivre sans poésie.
Cécile Coulon est née en 1990 à Clermont-Ferrand. En quelques années, elle a fait une ascension fulgurante. Elle a publié sept romans dont Trois saisons d’orage (Viviane Hamy), prix des Libraires, et Une bête au paradis (L’Iconoclaste), prix littéraire du Monde. Son premier recueil de poésie, Les Ronces (Le Castor Astral), a reçu le prestigieux prix Apollinaire.
Noir volcan
de Cécile Coulon (Auteur)
Alexandre Bord (Préface)
Broché : 160 pages
Editeur : Le castor astral
6 février 2020
Collection : Poésie
Langue : Français
ISBN-13 : 979-1027802449
ASIN : B07Z76LM7B
Dimensions du produit:
14,1 x 1,5 x 20,5 cm
15,00 EUR
# new books
Cécile Coulon:
Noir volcan
Poésie
• fleursdumal.nl magazine
More in: #Editors Choice Archiv, - Book News, - Bookstores, Archive C-D, Archive C-D, Art & Literature News
The Inevitable
While I was fearing it, it came,
But came with less of fear,
Because that fearing it so long
Had almost made it dear.
There is a fitting a dismay,
A fitting a despair.
’Tis harder knowing it is due,
Than knowing it is here.
The trying on the utmost,
The morning it is new,
Is terribler than wearing it
A whole existence through.
Emily Dickinson
(1830-1886)
The Inevitable (Poem)
• fleursdumal.nl magazine
More in: Archive C-D, Archive C-D, Dickinson, Emily
If two girls are two halves of a deep, lifelong friendship, what does one girl wholly become when the other is gone?
Amy Woolard‘s debut collection, Neck Of The Woods, sets this question as a hero-quest deep inside the mythos of the American South, wandering through childhood stories in which a girl alone must work to save herself.
These poems take on what happens when you wake up the morning after something happens, and find yourself in a different world, knowing there isn’t truly a way back home.
Part-elegy, part-survivor’s testimony, Neck Of The Woods maps a path divided into a before and an ever after.
Amy Woolard is a legal aid attorney working on civil rights policy and legislation in Virginia. Her first collection, Neck of the Woods, received the 2018 Alice James Award from Alice James Books. Her poems have appeared in The New Yorker, The Paris Review, Poetry, Boston Review, Ploughshares, and elsewhere, while her essays and reporting have been featured in publications such as Slate, The Guardian, and Virginia Quarterly Review. She has received fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Vermont Studio Center, and the Breadloaf Writers’ Conference. She lives in Charlottesville, Virginia.
Neck of the Woods (Poetry)
Amy Woolard (Author)
Publisher: Alice James Books
Publish Date: April 07, 2020
Pages 100
Dimensions: 5.9 X 0.4 X 8.9 inches
Language: English
Type: Paperback
ISBN: 9781948579070
Price: $16.95
# new poetry
Amy Woolard:
Neck of the Woods
• fleursdumal.nl magazine
More in: #Editors Choice Archiv, - Book News, - Bookstores, Archive W-X, Art & Literature News
The Lonely Dancer
I had no heart to join the dance,
I danced it all so long ago–
Ah! light-winged music out of France,
Let other feet glide to and fro,
Weaving new patterns of romance
For bosoms of new-fallen snow.
But leave me thus where I may hear
The leafy rustle of the waltz,
The shell-like murmur in my ear,
The silken whisper fairy-false
Of unseen rainbows circling near,
And the glad shuddering of the walls.
Another dance the dancers spin,
A shadow-dance of mystic pain,
And other partners enter in
And dance within my lonely brain–
The swaying woodland shod in green,
The ghostly dancers of the rain;
The lonely dancers of the sea,
Foam-footed on the sandy bar,
The wizard dance of wind and tree,
The eddying dance of stream and star;
Yea, all these dancers tread for me
A measure mournful and bizarre:
An echo-dance where ear is eye,
And sound evokes the shapes of things,
Where out of silence and a sigh
The sad world like a picture springs,
As, when some secret bird sweeps by,
We see it in the sound of wings.
Those human feet upon the floor,
That eager pulse of rhythmic breath,–
How sadly to an unknown shore
Each silver footfall hurryeth;
A dance of autumn leaves, no more,
On the fantastic wind of death.
Fire clasped to elemental fire,
‘Tis thus the solar atom whirls;
The butterfly in aery gyre,
On autumn mornings, swarms and swirls,
In dance of delicate desire,
No other than these boys and girls.
The same strange music everywhere,
The woven paces just the same,
Dancing from out the viewless air
Into the void from whence they came;
Ah! but they make a gallant flare
Against the dark, each little flame!
And what if all the meaning lies
Just in the music, not in those
Who dance thus with transfigured eyes,
Holding in vain each other close;
Only the music never dies,
The dance goes on,–the dancer goes.
A woman dancing, or a world
Poised on one crystal foot afar,
In shining gulfs of silence whirled,
Like notes of the strange music are;
Small shape against another curled,
Or dancing dust that makes a star.
To him who plays the violin
All one it is who joins the reel,
Drops from the dance, or enters in;
So that the never-ending wheel
Cease not its mystic course to spin,
For weal or woe, for woe or weal.
Richard Le Gallienne
(1866 – 1947)
The Lonely Dancer
From: The lonely Dancer and other Poems, 1913
• fleursdumal.nl magazine
More in: Archive G-H, Archive G-H, Gallienne, Richard Le
Poet, writer, and dancer Tishani Doshi was born in Madras, India, to Welsh and Gujarati parents. She earned a BA from Queens College in North Carolina and an MA from the Writing Seminars from the Johns Hopkins University. After working in the fashion magazine industry in London, Doshi returned to India.
An unexpected meeting with one of Indian dance’s leading choreographers, Chandralekha, led Doshi to a career in dance. She currently performs internationally with the Chandralekha group. She is a freelance journalist, and her work has appeared in newspapers and journals such as the Guardian, the National, and the Hindu. She writes a regular column for New Indian Express and was a finalist in the Outlook/Picador India Non-Fiction Competition.
Doshi is widely acclaimed as a creative writer; her first book of poetry, Countries of the Body (2006), won a Forward Prize for Best First Collection. Her other collections include Everything Begins Elsewhere (2013), Dolce Marcescenza (Sweet Decay) (2015), and Girls Are Coming Out of the Woods (2018).
Doshi’s first novel, The Pleasure Seekers (2010), was shortlisted for the Hindu Best Fiction Award and has been translated into several languages. She is also the author of Fountainville: New Stories from the Mabinogion (2013), a retelling of the Mabinogion myth, as well as two books about place and home, Madras Then Chennai Now (2013) and The Adulterous Citizen (2015). Her latest novel is Small Days and Nights (W. W. Norton, 2020).
From “The River of Girls” by Tishani Doshi the poem:
i.m. India’s missing girls
This is not really myth or secret.
This murmur in the mouth
of the mountain where the sound
of rain is born.
( . . . . . )
This is the sound of ten million girls
singing of a time in the universe
when they were born with tigers
breathing between their thighs;
when they set out for battle
with all three eyes on fire,
their golden breasts held high
like weapons to the sky.
Tishani Doshi, “The River of Girls”. Copyright © 2013 by Tishani Doshi.
Source: Everything Begins Elsewhere (Copper Canyon Press, 2013)
Her honors and awards include an Eric Gregory Award and an All-India Poetry Prize. She lives in Tamil Nadu, India.
Small Days and Nights
A Novel
by Tishani Doshi (Author)
Hardcover
$25.95
272 pages
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
January 21, 2020
Language: English
ISBN-10: 1324005238
ISBN-13: 978-1324005230
# fleursdumal.nl magazine
More in: - Book News, - Book Stories, Archive C-D, Archive C-D, Art & Literature News, REPRESSION OF WRITERS, JOURNALISTS & ARTISTS, Tishani Doshi
An Emilie
Zum Garten ging ich früh hinaus,
Ob ich vielleicht ein Sträußchen finde?
Nach manchem Blümchen schaut’ ich aus,
Ich wollt’s für dich zum Angebinde;
Umsonst hatt’ ich mich hinbemüht,
Vergebens war mein freudig Hoffen;
Das Veilchen war schon abgeblüht,
Von andern Blümchen keines offen.
Und trauernd späht’ ich her und hin,
Da tönte zu mir leise, leise
Ein Flüstern aus der Zweige Grün,
Gesang nach sel’ger Geister Weise;
Und lieblich, wie des Morgens Licht
Des Tales Nebelhüllen scheidet,
Ein Röschen aus der Knospe bricht,
Das seine Blätter schnell verbreitet.
»Du suchst ein Blümchen?« spricht’s zu mir,
»So nimm mich hin mit meinen Zweigen,
Bring mich zum Angebinde ihr!
Ich bin der wahren Freude Zeichen.
Ob auch mein Glanz vergänglich sei,
Es treibt aus ihrem treuen Schoße
Die Erde meine Knospen neu,
Drum unvergänglich ist die Rose.
Und wie mein Leben ewig quillt
Und Knosp’ um Knospe sich erschließet,
Wenn mich die Sonne sanft und mild
Mit ihrem Feuerkuß begrüßet,
So deine Freundin ewig blüht,
Beseelt vom Geiste ihrer Lieben,
Denn ob der Rose Schmelz verglüht —
Der Rose Leben ist geblieben.«
Wilhelm Hauff
(1802 – 1827)
An Emilie, Gedicht
• fleursdumal.nl magazine
More in: Archive G-H, Hauff, Hauff, Wilhelm, Tales of Mystery & Imagination
Thank you for reading Fleurs du Mal - magazine for art & literature