Weekly Dispatches from the Front Lines of World Literature

June 24, 2022 | in Dispatches, News, Weekly Roundup | by Carol Khoury, Nestor Gomez, and Peera Songkünnatham

New poems, book fair discussions, and online publications from Thailand, El Salvador, and Palestine!

This week, our editors from around the world report on an international poetry volume in support of human rights, an author talk between two Salvadoran poets, and an online exploration of the history of Jerusalem that includes a wealth of Palestinian literature. Read on to find out more!

Peera Songkünnatham, Editor-at-Large, reporting from Thailand

Five Thai poems got a chance to shine in the company of poems in English, Spanish, Portuguese, French, and Swahili. On June 15, the Human Rights Defenders Poetry Challenge, organized by Protection International together with its partners from ProtectDefenders.eu and the University of York, concluded with an awards ceremony and a booklet launch. As part of the #StayWithDefenders campaign, the challenge called on “all creatives, activists and advocates for human rights” to submit poems honoring those who “have suffered, succeeded, fought and fallen.” The top three winners were announced from a pool of thirty finalists, five from each of the languages. You can read the booklet here; every poem not originally in English is accompanied by an English translation. How nice it is for poets to slip through the political and poetical confines of their countries into an ad-hoc international space, at least virtually on Zoom and in translation.

“To be a poet in this country is like being in a cage,” stated Mek Krueng Fah about Thailand upon winning third place overall. His poem “Remember, we’re all by your side” (โปรดจำไว้.. เราต่างอยู่ข้างเธอ) manages to console even as it stares into an unrelenting bleakness: “On the road of fighters that will know no end, / The ones who came before lie dead, uncovered; / Their bodies caution ‘watch your step, my friend,’ / And nightly, to protect, their spirits hover.”

First place went to “The Full Truth” (Ukweli Kamili) by Martin Mwangi from Kenya. The poem deftly impersonates the flippant attitudes of shrewd politicians who speak in half-truths: “Welcome, it is here that we will give you vegetable rice while we eat pilau rice / then if you complain we’ll say be thankful at least you ate. / However, for how long shall you live with these half-truths of at least? / I don’t know, answer that yourself.” Second place was awarded to María del Campo from Uruguay, whose “To Those Afraid of Windmills” (A quienes les temen los molinos) will make human rights defenders—“those who slip through the cracks and pose a threat to the wall as bridge, brick, step, door”—feel seen and touched. READ MORE…

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Weekly Dispatches from the Front Lines of World Literature

July 26, 2019 | in Dispatches, News, Weekly Roundup | by Poupeh Missaghi, Rachael Pennington, and Shelly Bhoil

Awards, book sales, conferences, festivals—poetics in its varied forms span the globe in this week's news.

Our editors pull both national bodies of literature and international exchanges into focus this week with a melange of events alive with tribute, celebration, and solidarity. In Toronto, a wide ranging arts and culture festival bring Iranian New Wave poetry and theatre to its stages. Valencia Poetry Festival proves a worthy debut with enthralling performances, experiments, and urgent messages. Tibetan literature and academia is featured with a comprehensive translation of a classic Buddhist text and a rich anniversary conference. This week’s dispatches are not to be missed!

Poupeh Missaghi, Editor-at-Large, reporting from New York City

Tirgan Festival, a celebration of Iranian art and culture, is held between July 25 and 28 in Toronto, Canada. This year’s festival includes some fifty events with participation of two hundred thirty guests, including performers, musicians, writers and poets, scholars, and others.

One of the events is a tribute to Iranian New Wave poet Yadollah Royaï (born 1932). Currently based in Paris, Royaï is one of the founders of “espacementalisme,” a poetry style influenced by Husserl’s phenomenology. The event will include scholars Farzaneh Milani and Khatereh Sheibani, editor and journalist Hassan Zerehi, Tirgan CEO Mehrdad Ariannejad, and Yadollah Royaï himself.

Weekly Dispatches from the Front Lines of World Literature

May 17, 2019 | in Dispatches, News, Weekly Roundup | by José García Escobar and Layla Benitez-James

From literary festivals to prize winners, this is the week in world literature.

This week, dispatches from Spain and Central America witness the rise of Spanish-language writers and events that support and promote the literatures of up-and-comers alongside established stars of the field. To celebrate the community of world literature is a necessary joy, and our editors are here with the revelry.

Layla Benitez-James, Podcast Editor, reporting from Spain

It was time for big celebrations in a tiny, trilingual bookshop located in the centre of Madrid on the night of May 10. Francesca Reece had been named winner of the second ever Desperate Literature Short Fiction Prize, and ten other writers were being honoured alongside her in the publication of Eleven Stories 2019, the shortlist for the competition which follows after the sold out original Eleven Stories from their inaugural 2018 contest.

The event celebrated the launch of the mini collection with readings from ten of the eleven shortlisted authors. The project is an international prize based out of the bookshop Desperate Literature in Madrid, but with partners in London, Paris, and New York, it has drastically evolved over just its first year. After feedback from the inaugural winner and shortlist, the founders decided to add a one week stay as the artist-in-residence at the Civitella Ranieri in Italy, and a consultation with a New York literary agent who works for Foundry Literary + Media. With the aim of giving as much support to emerging and non-traditional writers as possible, they sought to develop additional assistance alongside a cash prize and are looking to continue this line of development for next year’s iteration. This year they partnered with five literary journals: 3:AM, Structo Magazine, Helter Skelter, The London Magazine, and The Second Shelf (women only), who will publish stories from the shortlist throughout the year. They also added a collaboration with the Casa Ana in Andalucia, who selected Jay G Ying from the shortlist for another residency.

Close Approximations: In Conversation With Poetry Runner-up Sarah Timmer Harvey

August 16, 2017 | in Interviews | by Claire Jacobson

"I spent less time in my head or researching, and more time translating purely from instinct, from the body."

Today, we continue our spotlight on the winners of Asymptote’s annual Close Approximations translation contest, now into its 3rd edition. (Find the official results and citations by judges David Bellos and Sawako Nakayasu here.) From 215 fiction and 128 poetry submissions, these six best emerging translators were awarded 3,000 USD in prize money, in addition to publication in our Summer 2017 edition. After interviews with fiction winner Suchitra Ramachandran and fiction runners-up Brian Bergstrom and Clarissa Botsford, today we have poetry runner-up Sarah Timmer Harvey in conversation with Asymptote Assistant Interviews Editor, Claire Jacobson.

Sarah Timmer Harvey is a writer and translator currently based in New York, where she is completing her MFA in Writing and Translation at Columbia University. Her excerpted translation of Marieke Lucas Rijneveld’s poetry collection Kalfsvlies (Calf’s Caul) was a runner-up in Asymptote’s Close Approximations contest. Poetry judge Sawako Nakayasu wrote, “The tumbling syntax of this poetry could not have been easy to translate, but it works so very well here—carrying the reader along the dark swerves of this youthful, yet not-so-innocent series of mini-narratives with a touch of the surreal.”

Claire Jacobson (CJ): I loved reading your translation of several of Marieke Lucas Rijneveld’s poems from her collection Kalfsvlies (Calf’s Caul). What was it that drew you to this text and motivated you to translate it?

Sarah Timmer Harvey (STH): I first became aware of Rijneveld’s work through Dutch literary magazines and blogs in 2015, when Kalfsvlies was first published in the Netherlands by Atlas Contact, who have a great reputation for attracting and fostering exceptional writers. Both readers and critics seemed completely bowled over by Kalfsvlies, something rather unusual in the Netherlands, given the genre and Rijneveld’s youth, but once I read the collection, I understood why everyone was raving. The first line of the first poem in Kalfsvlies (Calf’s Caul) reads “How do you go to bed when you have just run over a sheep?” Now, that is an opening! I found it so incredibly brutal and compelling. I read the entire collection in one sitting and then, the next day, I began translating, purely for the pleasure of it. A little while later, I contacted Marieke Lucas to discuss doing something with my translations.

To me, Rijneveld’s work feels quite rebellious—the narrative voice in Kalfsvlies is unfiltered and entirely unconcerned with establishing its authority. Rather, it is blatantly vulnerable and at times incredibly naïve considering the deeper themes at play: the death of a sibling, alcoholism, struggles with gender and sexuality, the confines of a rural upbringing. But Rijneveld’s youthful eye is also her strength, it draws the reader into a world that feels spontaneous, wildly intimate and full of unexpected wisdom. I can’t wait to read her debut novel, which will be published in the Netherlands (also by Atlas Contact) in October.