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Global Voices Interviews *Germany* Andra Schwarz & Caroline Wilcox Reul in conversation with LIT’s JP Apruzzese
A dialogue between authors and translators
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Last month Andra Schwarz’s poetry collection In the morning we are glass (Am morgen sind wir aus glass, 2017) was published in English by ZephyrPress thanks to a wonderful translation by Caroline Wilcox Reul. At LIT, we were delighted to publish five poems from Schwarz’s collection in March 2020. It is tempting when first reading these poems to assume they are about memories of a childhood home or reflections on the irretrievable past.
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Global Voices Interviews *Hungary* Kinga Tóth & Timea Balogh in conversation with LIT’s JP Apruzzese
The Hungarian version of this interview is forthcoming in Aprokrif in early 2021.
In Kinga Tóth’s world everything is alive and moving and coalescing at each moment. Separation and disconnection are notions she considers unnatural in the natural world. In her work, the multimedia artist and poet captures what most of us neglect to see – not so much the interconnectedness of everything – which suggests the possibility of disconnection – but rather the relentless and organic becoming of everything into one living body that contains all animate and inanimate life.
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Two Poems by M. Vasalis and Arno Bohlmeijer (translated from the Dutch by Arno Bohlmeijer) Artwork by Ton van Rijsbergen
Death
Death pointed out little interesting things:
here’s a nail – said Death – and here’s is a rope.
I look him in the eye, a child. He is my master
because I trust and admire him,
Death.He showed me everything: drink, pills,
pistols, gas tap, steep roofs,
a bath tub, a razor, a white sheet,
“casually”– in case I’d fancy it, one day,
death.And before he left, he gave me a little portrait…
“I don’t know if you forgot it yet, -
Three Poems by Rubén Merriwether Peña (translated from the Chilean Spanish by David Rock)
I’m Pretty Sure I Saw You
I’m pretty sure I saw you
at the end of the world,
trembling under the weight of your perfections.
Your endless eyes like a wellspring
of second guesses, trompe l’oeil of Venus
eclipsing everything.I’m pretty sure I saw you
on the road to tomorrow,
going the other way, farm girl of these
my most fruitful illusions, patroness of hunters
with empty hands.I’m pretty sure I saw you
kneeling in the church
of a misguided God, -
“Kind of a Short-length Letter for a Full-length Film” by Luis Miguel Rivas (translated from the Colombian Spanish by Valentina Calvache) Artwork by Daniela Moreno Ramirez
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This story is from Rivas’ debut in the Latin American fiction industry: an anthology of short stories written from one of Colombia’s literary outcasts — he didn’t gain recognition until the Guadalajara Book Fair named him one of Latin America best-kept secrets, and his works went through the roof, with translations in French and the signing of his latest novel with Sony Pictures.
“Kind of a Short-length Letter for a Full-length Film” is a magnificent story that encloses and discloses — at the same time — Colombian reality seen through the eyes of a sharp writer,
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“Elisa” excerpt from the novel The One We Adored by Catherine Cusset (translated from the French by Armine Kotin Mortimer) Artwork by Ilan Averbuch
“Elisa”
excerpt from the novel
The One We Adored
by Catherine CussetIn this novel, Catherine speaks in the first person and addresses Thomas in the second, as if telling him the story of his life.
At the dinner I arrange for my husband’s birthday at the end of February, you meet Elisa. You are astonished to discover that this name, with its exotic sonorities, is simply spelled “Elisa,” not, as if it were French, “I-Laïza.” Even more surprised to see that this exotic Elisa I’ve been telling you so much about is so beautiful.
