This week, our writers deliver the latest literary news from Hong Kong, Slovakia, and India. Read about the newest translations to come out of Hong Kong, including works by Duo Duo and Leung Lee-chi. Meanwhile, the pandemic continues to shake the literary world: we hear of how the arts continue to be neglected in Slovakia’s recent recovery plan, and India losing some of her brightest writers amidst this crisis. Despite this, some hopeful signs that things might change. Read on to find out more!
Jacqueline Leung, Editor-at-Large, reporting from Hong Kong
Chinese poet Duo Duo’s Words as Grain, translated from the Chinese by award-winning translator Lucas Klein, is out this month. A recipient of the PEN/Heim Translation Fund grant, Words as Grain is a new collection spanning approximately five decades of the poet’s oeuvre since the 1970s, with a full representation of Duo Duo’s work since his return to China from exile in 2004 and a selection of earlier poems. Duo Duo is hailed as an exponent of the Chinese Misty Poets and has been described by essayist and critic Eliot Weinberger as “a political poet who makes no statements; a realist poet in an alternate universe.” One may revisit Duo Duo’s poem, “Promise,” published in Asymptote’s July 2018 issue and translated by Klein, for a taste.
May also sees the publication of Jennifer Feeley’s translation of Hong Kong writer Leung Lee-chi’s short story, “Empty Rooms,” up on Two Lines Journal. A 2020 winner of the Award for Young Artist in Literary Arts by the Hong Kong Arts Development Council, Leung is among a younger generation of Hong Kong writers starting to get exposure in the English language. “Empty Rooms” is a response to late novelist Liu Yichang’s short story “Turmoil” depicting the chaos of the 1967 riots through the perspectives of inanimate objects. In a similar vein, “Empty Rooms” portrays the interior of an apartment to piece together moments of memory and departure.
It is also exciting to see the announcement of results for the 7th Bai Meigui Translation Competition organized by The Leeds Centre for New Chinese Writing. “The Season When Flowers Bloom,” Francesca Jordan’s winning translation of an excerpt from Taiwanese writer Yang Shuangzi’s novella, is selected by the judging panel consisting of Susan Wan Dolling, Mike Fu, and Darryl Sterk. Jordan will be offered a place in the upcoming “Bristol Translates” Literary Translation Summer School in July. Honorable mentions from the competition include entries by Stella Jiayue Zhu, Will Jones, and Lucy Craig-McQuaide.
Julia Sherwood, Editor-at-Large, reporting from Slovakia
Spring has brought hope to Slovakia with infection rates plummeting and the pace of vaccination picking up after a slow and chaotic start. The country is gearing up for a full reopening and the Slovak Parliament has recently approved a recovery plan and submitted it to the European Union. To the great dismay and disappointment of the arts community, the plan fails to even mention the creative industries. As pointed out in an open letter addressed to the EU Commission signed by hundreds of people working in the arts, this directly contradicts the European Parliament‘s recommendation for 2% of the funds to be allocated to culture, a sector “hit even harder than tourism, as it lost 27% of its income.” While a number of European countries respected this recommendation (for example, about 350 million US dollars will go to the arts in the plan adopted by the neighbouring Czech Republic), not a penny has been allocated specifically to the arts in Slovakia’s plan.
Although literature has been relatively less severely affected than other sectors, the performing arts in particular, many literary organisations have struggled during the pandemic. They include FACE (Forum of Alternative Culture and Education), based in Prešov in eastern Slovakia, which publishes the literary journal Vertigo as well as books on arts and literature including translated fiction and poetry, and organises literary events, such as Vertigo Café. Unable to publish the journal for eight months, Vertigo decided to draw attention to the lack of government support by launching #bielyprotest (white protest, symbolizing blank pages), inviting poets, slammers, critics, readers, and teachers to respond to the big culture freeze. While live events were not on the agenda, the team channelled its energies into organising Vertigo Fest – Poetry Without Borders, a 12-hour extravaganza featuring poets from twenty-two countries, on 15 May. In short videos posted on YouTube, each of the participating poets presents a short sample of their work, from Amsterdam-based poet and performer Masha Bronnikova, through Emílio Tavares Lima from Guinea Bissau, Kenyan spoken word artist Carolyne M. Acen, to Japanese calligraphy poet Ban’ya Natsuishi and a number of other poets, many of them from Slovakia.
Other literary organisers, who were forced to switch to online events, such as Literárny klub.sk, feel cautiously optimistic about a return to live programming. Plans are underway for the annual BRaK literary festival to be held at Nová Cvernovka in Bratislava in late June and welcome live audiences and publishers, including the feminist publishing house ASPEKT, who will be celebrating the 35th anniversary of its founding. The ten writers longlisted for the country’s most prestigious literary award, Anasoft Litera, are scheduled to present their works to live audiences during Literafest, a multi-genre festival in Bratislava’s café Pod lampou from 23 to 25 June, followed by readings across the country in July and August. Literary events will also feature at Slovakia’s largest and most popular music festival, Pohoda, which is going ahead with slightly reduced audience numbers from 8 to 10 July. Reflecting the continued uncertainty about international travel, Měsíc autorského čtení (Month of Authorial Readings), jointly organised by the Brno publishing house Větrné mlýny and Literárny klub.sk, is going ahead in a different format, with readings by Czech and Slovak writers and poets held at venues across Bratislava every day throughout July.
Suhasini Patni, Editor-at-Large, reporting from India
Perpetual sorrow enfolds India as the second wave of COVID-19 claims lives, leaving the survivors with hunger, loss, and breathlessness. As we wonder how to fight this fear and grief, state-wide restrictions once again have us locked in our homes. This year, the lockdown is devoid of empty jokes of overgrown body hair or bread recipes. Instead, people have taken to social media for SOS calls, organizing sources for oxygen, ambulances, ICU beds, etc. Novelist Anuradha Roy wrote of her experience of getting COVID-19 for Scroll.in: “We all now know we must find our own resources. In cities there might be Whatsapp and Twitter networks for oxygen and plasma; in villages still sunk in large-scale illiteracy and poverty, people rely on herbal teas and prayers.”
A collective grief has shaken the country, as each one mourns a personal loss. The literary world is no exception having lost many gems: Subhadra Sen Gupta, Manzoor Ahtesham, TN Shanbagh, and Vilas Wagh, among many others.
Among those who passed away was Sahitya Akademi award-winning Assamese writer, Homen Borgohain. Borgohain, was a controversial writer and journalist who criticized the Emergency and returned his award to protest the growing intolerance and lynching in India. In his novel Matsyagandha, he wrote about a low caste woman from the fisher-folk community of Assam. His collected works have been translated by his son Pradipta Borgohain and a full-length interview about his work can be found here.
Despite the mourning, Indians have also recognized their collective strength. In a crisis where the government has remained absent, citizens have come to help each other out. The glaring inequality of the public health system, and how viruses and epidemics disproportionately affect the disadvantaged are no longer easy to ignore. The pandemic has pushed a change in the publishing industry, but the lack of Dalit narratives in mainstream publishing remains evident:
Dalit writings find no publishers; they are mostly written by the writer, published by the writer with his own finances and also sold by the writer. So, there is no publishing house, which really supports them. Despite popularity of Dalit writings, despite their good presence in market, they face issues in publishing their work.
(Kalyani Thakur Charal. Interview, Dalit Camera. 5 April 2021)
Panther Paw’s Publication wrote on their Facebook page: “Like we need vaccine and willpower to fight against the virus, we also need anticaste stories to fight against the pandemic called CASTE.” Their latest collection of essays, Singing/Thinking/Anti-Caste, which Yogesh Maitreya, owner of the publication and author of the text, has been pushing to deliver despite contracting COVID-19, is available to order.
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