This week, our editors-at-large report on a celebration of a beloved poets, a controversial change to a major literary award, the last chance to see a powerful museum show, and more. Read on to learn more about current events in world literature!
Rubén López, Editor-at-Large, reporting from Guatemala
On January 26, the Ministry of Sports and Culture of Guatemala announced several changes regarding the National Literature Award. The award, given yearly since 1988, honors the exceptional careers of writers like Augusto Monterroso, Rodrigo Rey Rosa, Carmen Matute, Gloria Hernández, Eduardo Halfon, among others. However, the Ministry has now announced that the award will be presented every three years. Christian Calderón, Vice Minister of Culture, said that the decision is part of a “strategy to give an opportunity to develop young writers.” Gloria Hernández, who was granted the award in 2022, expressed criticism of this new policy in a local newspaper. She argues that the Ministry’s motivation for the change is only saving the monetary grant for three years and that this will not benefit local writers. She added that Guatemala should emulate Mexico’s National Literature Award, which grants a lifetime pension so that the creator can devote to writing. In her opinion, this would be more valuable to Guatemalan literature. In the same interview, Gerardo Guinea, who received the award in 2009, said that it is absurd to grant the award every three years and argues that the only effect of this change is to limit the number of laureates.
Taking a different approach to encouraging young writers and readers, the British Embassy in Guatemala is celebrating “Literature Week” with programming designed to incentivize reading and writing among young Guatemalans. British ambassador Nick Whittingham declared that this initiative will give young readers the opportunity to participate in activities linked to literature. One of the main events is writing a love letter to Guatemala; the embassy will select the finalists and the winner will get to attend a writing workshop with Dennise Phé-Funchal, writer and director of Editorial Cultura.
Carol Khoury, Editor-at-Large, reporting from Palestine
Anyone finding it hard to see the commonalities between Pakistan and Palestine still has an opportunity to see the exhibition “The Man who Talked until He Disappeared”, running since last November at Birzeit University Museum (BZUM), which helps illustrate the obvious and the imperceptible.
The exhibition is the first solo exhibition by Pakistani artist Bani Abidi in Palestine, yet the remarkable reception it received from the university community and Palestinians at large proved correct what Rana Barakat the Director of BZUM saw in Abidi’s work: it shows remarkable success in “navigating the barriers and impasses imposed on the (im)mobility of the oppressed.”
One notable aspect of this exhibition is its ability to show how this (im)mobility persists even across language. In the section titled Memorial to Lost Words, language “serves as an anti-monumental memorial” to the forgotten sacrifice of a million Indian soldiers who served the British military in WWI.
“Evoking Muharram majlises, with the presentation of a darkened room and melancholic incantations,” folk songs, poetry, and an archive of soldiers’ historical letters are translated from Punjabi, Hindi, and Urdu into English, and made available through a mixed-media installation where the only light comes from a table that displays the letters. As one gazes down to read the “lost words,” the artist’s sound installation conjures these soldiers’ sentiments, amplified by a sung poem based on censored letters (the poem is by Amarjit Chandan and the music was composed and performed by singer Ali Aftab Saeed). Another sound installation is a restaging of old Punjabi folksongs sung by women a hundred years ago (re-sung by Ismet, Zainub and Saleema Jawad of Harsakhia).
As if the exhibition itself is not thought-provoking enough, Bani Abidi sat for two conversations about the work in this exhibition and her work as an artist and experimenter. The first was with Yazid Anani, and the second with Rema Hammami.
The exhibition ends on the last day of February 2023, but BZUM’s website will continue to provide a virtual tour for this exhibit, as it does for all previous exhibitions held at the museum since its inception in 2005.
Sofija Popovska, Editor-at-Large, reporting from Macedonia
Recently, Stevo Pendarovski, the current President of North Macedonia, has announced a year-long celebration of the life and work of the poet Aco Šopov throughout 2023. To honor—and spread awareness about—Šopov’s oeuvre, the North Macedonian government will be collaborating with UNESCO to hold events including a multimedia art exhibition, a tribute to Šopov at the annual Flipbook film festival, an homage during the international poetry festival Struga Poetry Evenings, a theatrical rendition of his work, new publications of his books, and more. Šopov (1923-1982), is a staple of Macedonian school curricula and literary scholarship alike. A selection of his poetry, translated by Christina E. Kramer and Rawley Grau, was featured in Asymptote’s Winter 2023 issue—a development which caused much excitement in Macedonian media.
Šopov’s early life was darkened by the loss of his mother, who passed away due to illness when he was eleven years old; throughout his career, the themes of human suffering, both collective and private, figured heavily in his poetry. Initially taken with socialist realism, Šopov explored topics such as the exploitation of the working class and the loss of fellow partisans in the 1943 antifascist resistance movement. The 1950s saw him move away from socialist realism, a shift which was initially met with criticism from the public. Šopov’s consecutive, increasingly personal writing retains its trademark darkness. His collection Nebidnina (Not-Being), for instance, was, per the poet, “a final approach and unfolding of not-being,” represented visually by multitudinous images of desolation which permeate the poems: they are full of ruins, draughts, forests and buildings burnt to ash, and black waters.
Šopov was and continues to be a central presence in Macedonian literature, not only due to his legacy as a poet, but also because of his work as a translator, editor, and one of the founding members of the Macedonian Academy of Sciences and Arts. Moreover, he is one of the most widely translated poets to ever emerge from the region: his poetry is featured in eleven anthologies published throughout the world. Excitingly, the corpus of Šopov’s work in translation will be receiving a new addition soon: A bilingual English-Macedonian edition of Šopov’s poems, translated by Christina E. Kramer and Rawley Grau, will be published later this year by Deep Vellum.
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