Wednesday, December 26, 2018

Anna Swir / Trank You, My Fate


Anna Swir



Thank You, My Fate
by Anna Swir

Great humility fills me,
great purity fills me,
I make love with my dear
as if I made love dying
as if I made love praying,
tears pour
over my arms and his arms.
I don't know whether this is joy
or sadness, I don't understand
what I feel, I'm crying,
I'm crying, it's humility
as if I were dead,
gratitude, I thank you, my fate,
I'm unworthy, how beautiful
my life.


Thursday, December 20, 2018

Against Complaint by Roddy Lumsden

 


Against Complaint

BY RODDY LUMSDEN

After the Yoruba

Though the amaryllis sags and spills
so do those my wishes serve, all along the town.
And yes, the new moon, kinked there in night's patch,
tugs me so—but I can't reach to right the slant.
And though our cat pads past without a tail, some
with slinking tails peer one-eyed at the dawn, some
with eyes are clawless, some with sparking claws
contain no voice with which to sing
of foxes gassing in the lane.
                                                         Round-shouldered pals
parade smart shirts, while my broad back supports
a scrubby jumper, fawn or taupe.
                                                          The balding English
air their stubble while some headless hero sports
a feathered hat. I know a man whose thoroughbred
grazes in his porch for want of livery.
There are scholars of Kant who can't find Kent
on the map, and men of Kent who cannot
fathom Kant.
                   We who would polish off a feast have lain
late in our beds, our bellies groaning, throats on fire.
We who'd drain a vat of wine have drunk
our own blood for its sting.
                                                            Each of us in tatters flaunts
one treasured garment flapping in the wind.


Three poems by Sophie Robinson

Sophie Robinson


THREE POEms
BY SOPHIE ROBINSON

<3

jagged are names and not our creatures
– veronica forrest-thomson

 

i wish i had a better name to be called by like you might call a dog at a lake and she would surely turn
& i could eat your name for days: i would gladly bow my head o as the ploughman to the plough
& become the machine that made me that gave me my name my job (& what would i be called then)
for now i sit & wait in boots i made myself & laced in faith on better days than this with better names
& all & thinking on the names that trump other names & who wears them; how for example when you
search
for yourself you don’t always find what you’re looking for or say your name & feel like a stranger
at the bank with your wad of cash for rent or at the park you stop when called to find a pup called sophie
chasing down a human you don’t know. do you have a problem in your life? no.
buddha says: look on the internet & you will surely find one i mean a problem.
i had 107 problems & i named them all to keep them safe (each of them is called ‘<3’)
& then i kissed them on the back and sides, i brushed their hair & called them my baby diamonds.
buddha says: name your price. so i named my price sophie & she is high & heavy, she is surely gold, but
now
i want to call my price better i want to make my price a price a dog would pay. besides
you can call my price by any name and she will come just the same.
like dogs we neglect our work & lie on soft carpet and laugh and rofl about
to the tune of the internet & shed our love
all upon & around our bumbling manchild that we made & named.
you can say eat the cake & you can even eat it
but you can’t say anna mae & no you can’t turn her. how stupid & crazy to always have to say everything
so much, to have to tell people not to hit it up or be a fucking joker, to have to always be the one
to say no & then the long walk back to womanhood so obvious and boring to you
so you make up names & say you are anything
or write some awkward long-limbed poem just to remember that
you have a clit. if you turn the head of my dog she will surely come but
my cat does not come when i call he doesn’t come anywhere at all
but stays home all day shagging blankets or crying on the roof & waiting
for my face at the window. buddha says: do you get naked in the distant thunder. no sir.
i keep my clothes on so my pets will know me so my poems will know me.

  

 

fucking up on the rocks

 

ducking my head under each wave on fire
island i try to think of other times ive felt this done
w/life & survived
frank o’hara died here everybody knows
alcoholics die everywhere all the time everybody knows
he was purple wherever his skin showed
i never thought of myself as a useless drunk
i never felt
so unspecial through the white hospital gown
in the daytime it feels
like it would be easy to die
to dip my head under
just a second too long
but in the dark death is real
like an animal up close
he was a quarter larger than usual
on the edge of sleep you could fall
straight into & thru it                   & nobody wld know yr name there
naked in the atlantic at midnight cutting a path where the moon hits
the water i could swim a straight line out into forever & nobody
would stop me. would know my name. every few inches
there was some sewing composed
of dark blue thread   i want to shut my eyes        i want to shut a million things
strawberry moon     orange to silver                      my simple tits
bobbing on the water                some stitching was straight and three or four
inches long      others were longer and semicircular              urge to die breathing out & folding in
on itself until it feels like nothing   we get out     shiver lose the keys to the house
find them & laugh on the porch     the lids of both eyes were bluish black         jameson
drinking an inch of mezcal & me sucking on my seltzer like it’s a beer
alive         smiling      only half-quitting    only half-gone           a normal heart
flashing in & out on the shore it was hard to see his beautiful
blue eyes which receded a little into his head           the wifi is out
my 4g is fake           replacing each image in my recent life with a square and a ?
(i know rite)   he breathed with quick gasps. his whole body quivered.
i have taken a solemn vow to stop looking
at your face on the internet                 to stop imagining your unkind thoughts
of me my life as a little nobody
there was a tube in one of his nostrils down to his stomach
i go to sleep in a wood-panelled room the same length & width
as my bed     & count the waves as they break
over my head                    i sleep like im already dead
face to the wall
greedy for the nothing         won’t fall
in the crib he looked like a shaped wound
i wake up constipated
in the morning sun  drink coffee & smoke
on the beach feeling full of shit     & good to no-one
his leg bone was broken and splintered and pierced the skin
every rib was cracked.
a third of his liver was wiped out by the impact
i could make a home here prone forever
belly to the sand
let my messages go unread
let my phone battery run flat
let the sun burn my back
let all the ships fuck up on the rocks
indistinguishable      baby small      little pieces
floating         like the world floats    gay unbroken
bloated & golden
a monument to my favourite alcoholic
the greatest homosexual    who ever lived & died

 


sunshine belt machine

 

happy valentines i am not
at my jazziest     matching sweat
shirt    hair in a cheerful pony so dirty
it would stay up by itself                ‘i hope
you’re as good at sucking dick
as you are at being lonely’      unknown
quantity of poems inside me     unknown
quantity of living moments    moon’s outside
almost full     blood on my pillow
never these days
i take care of myself okay
like a baby something
like a mama something
& my eyes
dressed like candy
big as the moon
& it’s fine to be full
of pretty much anything
just for a while i love life i love being
alive one day after another
forever. what’s next.


Sophie Robinson

Sophie Robinson teaches Creative Writing at the University of East Anglia and is the author of and The Institute of Our Love in Disrepair. Recent work has appeared in n+1, the White ReviewPoetry Review, the Brooklyn Rail, Ploughshares and BOMB Magazine. Her third full collection, Rabbit, is published by Boiler House Press, 2018.

GRANTA


Tuesday, December 11, 2018

My hero / Maya Angelou by her publisher Lennie Goodings

 


My hero: 

Maya Angelou

by her publisher Lennie Goodings


The late author's UK editor remembers a funny, gracious, kind, demanding, delightful and wise human being – and writer of one of the world's great autobiographies

BIOGRAPHY

Thursday 29 May 2014

Maya Angelou was one of the world's most important writers and activists. She lived and chronicled an extraordinary life: rising from poverty, violence and racism, she became a renowned author, poet, playwright, civil rights' activist – working with Malcolm X and Martin Luther King – and memoirist. She wrote and performed a poem, "On the Pulse of Morning", for President Clinton on his inauguration; she was given the Presidential Medal of Freedom by President Obama and was honoured by more than 70 universities throughout the world.


Maya Angelou and Lennie Goodings at Maya's 70th birthday party



I last saw her at the beginning of this month in her home in Winston Salem, North Carolina, and though she obviously wasn't entirely well, she was very much her larger-than-life self: funny, gracious, kind, demanding, delightful and wise. Our conversation ranged over Michelle and Barack Obama, for whom she held huge respect; her "daughter" Oprah; her son and grandchildren, and my family. She talked about James Baldwin and Malcolm X, and we ate pancakes and then, later, wonderful spare ribs. We laughed and we drank. At the time I thought how blessed I am, and now I know I was.

Her first book, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings is one of the best memoirs I have ever read. Almost like a novel, it takes the reader into a time and place – 1930s Stamps, Arkansas, the segregated southern US town where her grandmother ran the general store – that is never to be forgotten. It was first published in America by Random House in 1969. Angelou said that Bob Loomis (who was her editor in America for 40 years) asked her many times to write her life story – she was convinced he was put up to it by "Jimmy" Baldwin – and she demurred until finally he said: "Well, it's hard to write a good autobiography." "I will start tomorrow," came her answer.

It was hugely acclaimed in America, but when it was shown to British publishers in the 1970s, according to Maya, they said that British people wouldn't care about a young black girl growing up in the American south in the 1930s. So no British edition appeared. In the mid 1980s Ursula Owen, then editorial director of Virago, visited Random House US, where the rights director suggested she have a look. Owen knew immediately it was for us.

I was the publicity director at the time and, soon after, a seriously crazily typed letter from Jessica Mitford arrived for me. She was going to make it her business to tell the world about her great friend and this book! We wondered how these two women had become friends – and we later discovered that they were devoted to each other. Jessica, claimed Maya, came once to her rescue to face down the Ku Klux Klan, saying she was Maya's mother. I copied parts of her letter to send to all the press and the response was immediate.

Then Maya came to London. Well, that is just too tame a description. In our tiny office, 6ft Maya sang and danced and laughed her way into our lives. She recited her poem "Phenomenal Woman" in our office. We were astonished and thrilled – and very much awed.

So it was that 15 years after the first US publication, we published I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings in a Virago paperback. Maya appeared on Afternoon Plus. It was a heartfelt, bold interview, and Maya talked about the part in her book where she is raped at eight and how she became mute until literature coaxed her back into speaking. The TV switchboards were jammed; the reviews and features that followed were stunning. Maya beamed straight into British hearts. 

I don't think we quite knew what we had. Our first print run was around 8,000 paperbacks and was sold out before publication. We printed another cautious 8,000. Today, the Virago edition of I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings has sold more than 600,000 copies, and it's still selling year on year, month on month. It's on courses, reading lists and remains, to my mind, one of the world's great autobiographies. We went on to publish all Maya's works: six more volumes of autobiography, her poetry, essays and cookbooks.

She brought us bestsellers but, more than that, she brought us a reminder that the human need for dignity and recognition is a gift easily given to one another, but frighteningly easy to withhold. Maya's fierce belief was that each of us has a deep worth – a simple yet profound fact. She was an indomitable force, famed for her spirit and style, courage and laughter. 

In 2009 she wrote: "My life has been long, and believing that life loves the liver of it, I have dared to try many things …" She was a wonderful teacher: "You may not control all the events that happen to you, but you can decide not to be reduced by them … Do not complain. Make every effort to change things you do not like … Be certain that you do not die without having done something wonderful for humanity."

She did that, many times over.

THE GUARDIAN



Friday, December 7, 2018

Anna Swir / A Conversation Through the Door




A Conversation Through the Door
by Anna Swir
Translated by Czeslaw Milosz & Leonard Nathan


At five in the morning
I knock on his door.
I say through the door:
in the hospital at Sliska Street
your son, a soldier, is dying.

He half-opens the door,
does not remove the chain.
Behind him his wife
shakes.

I say: your son asks his mother
to come.
He says: the mother won't come.
Behind him the wife
shakes.

I say: the doctor allowed us
to give him wine.
He says: please wait.

He hands me a bottle through the door,
locks the door,
locks the door with a second key.

Behind the door the wife
begins to scream as if she were in labor.