My OperaEVERY
Saturday, December 12, 2009 10:20:57 AM
There were two major literary events in town in November / December:
International Writers Workshop
and
International Poetry Nights in Hong Kong.
OUTLOUD, Kubrick Poetry and Arabic Nadwah each co-hosted events.
Here is a write-up.
EVERY
By Madeleine Marie Slavick
Every day for fourteen days, I have been holding onto voices. Twenty-two writers have been in town, talking, reciting, singing.
On the first day, we meet in a hotel, their consular generals or assistants sending them off to the public. We hear sounds from Okinawa, Mandarin from Hualien and Jiangsu, and a variety of English – which one writer calls ‘the second language of the world’ – from a Filipino, Hawai’an, Korean, New Zealander and Singaporean.
We meet a prizewinner. ‘Life is fully different now.’ The first novel comes out next year, in more than ten languages, more than fifteen countries.
We share coffee, food held by the finger, then rum.
At dinner, we meet another prizewinner. Ditto. Yet, more: ‘In truth, winning a prize is a bit like a lottery, the judges changing every year, entrants too. This time, I was picked.’
I invite them all to hear live blues. We have dumplings, wine, and after midnight, a tender island song. There is guitar, mandolin, erhu, harmonica, flute, drum and a woman who always sings with closed eyes. Later, I give my melancholy.
Thank-you emails in the morning inbox: ‘I was happy,’ the unscripted singing beautiful, the atmosphere extraordinary. ‘The night resembles night in my hometown.’
In the bar of an arts center, we talk about what keeps us writing, what supports us. Living by the ocean, a Taiwanese writer says, showing us his double-page-spread photograph of a wet horizon. (I think we saw the image three times in the fortnight.) Another writer says living by Victoria Park, for the solidarity. A Jiangsu writer is paid by the government every month. A Singaporean writer says film and theatre rights bring in the best cash.
One writer with eight books has only given one interview in her life. I listen to it at lunchtime, at the desk. The voice delicate, crisp, curled, ecstatic, on KCRW, my radio station from about twenty-five years ago, which was about when the translator discovered the writer’s work in a corner shop of a sleepy, bookstore-less town. Her book of ‘sensual landscapes’ with ‘exciting syntax’ was next to bottled drinks and Supermacho Comics.
In the ladies room, I wait behind a writer I had not had the chance to talk to. I tell her I liked the story she had just told everyone, that it was warm, kind, felt. We smile. I never see her again. Later, her translator in Beijing tells me that she herself had been in line in the ladies room with an outrider poet once, and she too loves that memory.
For an evening or two, handfuls of writers sit on piles of books as stools, light projected on a screen behind them, and as they walk to the microphone to recite, their shadows do too.
I hear, I hold onto voices from Albania, China, Egypt, Germany, Hong Kong, Japan, Mexico, Taiwan and the United States.
I hold onto: Në familjen time / lutjet bëheshin fshehtas / me zë të ulët, me një hundë të skuqur nën jorgan, / gati mërmëritje, / me një psherëtimë në fillim dhe fund / të hollë, e të pastër si një garzë… / Në shtëpinë time / lutha ishte një dobësi, / që nuk përflitej kurrë, / si të bërit dashuri / pasohej nga nata e frkshme e trupit. / In my family / prayers were said secretly, / softly, murmured through sore noses / beneath blankets, / a sigh before and a sigh after / thin and sterile as a bandage… In my house praying was considered a weakness / like making love. / And like making love / it was followed by a long / cold night of the body.
Another piece opens: ‘Leicht fällt das Jahr in den Schnee / und langsam sinkt auch das Licht / Lightly the year falls into snow / and slowly the light sinks too’.
And this one ends: ‘– Agua nutria, agua pez. Agua / de medusas, agua láctea, sinuosa; Aqua, / Otter water, fish water. Water of jellyfish, lacteal, sinuous water, Water,’
‘This poem is really an essay,’ the writer says as a preface: the beliefs of the Lacandons, of the forests of Chiapas. The only piece he recites, it stands well alone.
‘If you dream of a jaguar, people are coming. If the jaguar bites you, they are not people… If you dream of a mirror, you will see white stones. If you dream of your tongue, beware… If you dream of a radio, you will see a wild boar. If you dream of a poet, someone will cry… If you dream of a lake, it is nothing. If you dream of a frog, it is nothing. If you dream of a flower, it is nothing…’
One afternoon, we sit in circles, inner, outer, like the UN, with simultaneous interpretation, a personal microphone and switch. The topic: translation. In Mexico, almost every poet translates. An Albanian writer credits eleven people as translators on the title page of her book. Translation is good for young writers, a poet-professor from Hong Kong says, they can get in, concentrate, have control, and not be egotistic. About seventy per cent of foreign literature in China is from the United States, a Chinese writer says, and I add that translations from the Chinese are what sell best at the oldest poetry bookshop in USA: the Grolier.
One writer from ‘the mother of the world’ says few people can read his language correctly, he insists he be one to do so. As he recites in a favorite bookstore, he almost sings, and he says his voice used to be more beautiful fifty years ago, when his first book was published. He answers our questions in his language, holding our eyes throughout. Do we understand? The moderator says she has been trembling sitting beside him, sees him as a ‘giant mountain… like Tai Mo Shan’. How does she see herself?
In a lecture room for a recitation, the speaker wants to close the upright monitor bolted to the lectern. He seems to dislike the computer, tries to ignore it, tells us to ignore it.
In his eighty years, he has lived with mountains, with sea, with shamans, with professors, with wives, with friends, with word, with the pre-verbal; and it seems we can live with this voice, for days, for years, for humor, for the many connections.
He says good (fiction) writing is like good storytelling, good (poetry) writing is like good singing, and that it is best to let writing sit for a year before publication. He says so many things, that poetry gives ‘soul to history… strengthens the community… intensifies human bonds, and heightens the life of the spirit… It has done the world much good…’
He hopes we all have the chance to be out on the open sea, that very large space, ‘we all need that once in a while’. He still has his papers as a seaman.
Another dinner. Afterwards, we talk about the Pacific: most of us live near the edges of this many-named body of water. One writer now believes what his mother said: that they can walk from Canada to Manila if there are enough days. Another threw up food, then bile, then blood, the first time he was out at sea. He then repeated this,
spiritually, to write his first best work. Two writers think of Keats: ‘Then felt I like some watcher of the skies / When a new planet swims into his ken’.
One writer took up fishing, at age four, to get away from eating any more canned corned hash. Another, also living in North America, says, To jump from the Golden Gate Bridge, one has to decide: landward or seaward?
We hear a new short story, of meeting a man trapped in sand, of not freeing him, of telling this to his wife, who then says he does not love her.
We meet a guqin-playing mathematician man, hear him play the seven strings, fingers lifting at the tip, watch him leave the stage the same self-assured way he came: qin under arm. Now he moves his chopsticks from hand to fluttering hand.
After a closing dinner in a fourteenth-floor club, I take a bus home, the three-hundred-page memento book ‘The Other Voice’ in my hands, in my body. On page fifteen, the editor explains: ‘Between revolution and religion, poetry is the other voice… heretical and devout, innocent and perverted…’
I walk past palm, bougainvillea, a gun shop, three 7-Elevens.
I forget to close the door to my home when I sleep.
5 December 2009
Madeleine Marie Slavick, a writer living in Hong Kong, joined various events hosted by INTERNATIONAL WRITERS WORKSHOP, since 2004, an annual series by Hong Kong Baptist University, November - December 2009, www.iww.hkbu.edu.hk / INTERNATIONAL POETRY NIGHTS IN HONG KONG, organized by Chinese University of Hong Kong, 26-29 November 2009, http://chinesestudies.cuhk.edu.hk/cuhk-portal/html/poetry2009 / OUTLOUD, since 1999, a monthly poetry reading, http://my.opera.com/PoetryOutLoud/blog / ARABIC NADWAH, since 2004, a monthly poetry meeting, www.arabicnadwah.com / KUBRICK POETRY, since 2006, a monthly poetry event, http://kubrickpoems.blogspot.com/
International Writers Workshop
and
International Poetry Nights in Hong Kong.
OUTLOUD, Kubrick Poetry and Arabic Nadwah each co-hosted events.
Here is a write-up.
EVERY
By Madeleine Marie Slavick
Every day for fourteen days, I have been holding onto voices. Twenty-two writers have been in town, talking, reciting, singing.
On the first day, we meet in a hotel, their consular generals or assistants sending them off to the public. We hear sounds from Okinawa, Mandarin from Hualien and Jiangsu, and a variety of English – which one writer calls ‘the second language of the world’ – from a Filipino, Hawai’an, Korean, New Zealander and Singaporean.
We meet a prizewinner. ‘Life is fully different now.’ The first novel comes out next year, in more than ten languages, more than fifteen countries.
We share coffee, food held by the finger, then rum.
At dinner, we meet another prizewinner. Ditto. Yet, more: ‘In truth, winning a prize is a bit like a lottery, the judges changing every year, entrants too. This time, I was picked.’
I invite them all to hear live blues. We have dumplings, wine, and after midnight, a tender island song. There is guitar, mandolin, erhu, harmonica, flute, drum and a woman who always sings with closed eyes. Later, I give my melancholy.
Thank-you emails in the morning inbox: ‘I was happy,’ the unscripted singing beautiful, the atmosphere extraordinary. ‘The night resembles night in my hometown.’
In the bar of an arts center, we talk about what keeps us writing, what supports us. Living by the ocean, a Taiwanese writer says, showing us his double-page-spread photograph of a wet horizon. (I think we saw the image three times in the fortnight.) Another writer says living by Victoria Park, for the solidarity. A Jiangsu writer is paid by the government every month. A Singaporean writer says film and theatre rights bring in the best cash.
One writer with eight books has only given one interview in her life. I listen to it at lunchtime, at the desk. The voice delicate, crisp, curled, ecstatic, on KCRW, my radio station from about twenty-five years ago, which was about when the translator discovered the writer’s work in a corner shop of a sleepy, bookstore-less town. Her book of ‘sensual landscapes’ with ‘exciting syntax’ was next to bottled drinks and Supermacho Comics.
In the ladies room, I wait behind a writer I had not had the chance to talk to. I tell her I liked the story she had just told everyone, that it was warm, kind, felt. We smile. I never see her again. Later, her translator in Beijing tells me that she herself had been in line in the ladies room with an outrider poet once, and she too loves that memory.
For an evening or two, handfuls of writers sit on piles of books as stools, light projected on a screen behind them, and as they walk to the microphone to recite, their shadows do too.
I hear, I hold onto voices from Albania, China, Egypt, Germany, Hong Kong, Japan, Mexico, Taiwan and the United States.
I hold onto: Në familjen time / lutjet bëheshin fshehtas / me zë të ulët, me një hundë të skuqur nën jorgan, / gati mërmëritje, / me një psherëtimë në fillim dhe fund / të hollë, e të pastër si një garzë… / Në shtëpinë time / lutha ishte një dobësi, / që nuk përflitej kurrë, / si të bërit dashuri / pasohej nga nata e frkshme e trupit. / In my family / prayers were said secretly, / softly, murmured through sore noses / beneath blankets, / a sigh before and a sigh after / thin and sterile as a bandage… In my house praying was considered a weakness / like making love. / And like making love / it was followed by a long / cold night of the body.
Another piece opens: ‘Leicht fällt das Jahr in den Schnee / und langsam sinkt auch das Licht / Lightly the year falls into snow / and slowly the light sinks too’.
And this one ends: ‘– Agua nutria, agua pez. Agua / de medusas, agua láctea, sinuosa; Aqua, / Otter water, fish water. Water of jellyfish, lacteal, sinuous water, Water,’
‘This poem is really an essay,’ the writer says as a preface: the beliefs of the Lacandons, of the forests of Chiapas. The only piece he recites, it stands well alone.
‘If you dream of a jaguar, people are coming. If the jaguar bites you, they are not people… If you dream of a mirror, you will see white stones. If you dream of your tongue, beware… If you dream of a radio, you will see a wild boar. If you dream of a poet, someone will cry… If you dream of a lake, it is nothing. If you dream of a frog, it is nothing. If you dream of a flower, it is nothing…’
One afternoon, we sit in circles, inner, outer, like the UN, with simultaneous interpretation, a personal microphone and switch. The topic: translation. In Mexico, almost every poet translates. An Albanian writer credits eleven people as translators on the title page of her book. Translation is good for young writers, a poet-professor from Hong Kong says, they can get in, concentrate, have control, and not be egotistic. About seventy per cent of foreign literature in China is from the United States, a Chinese writer says, and I add that translations from the Chinese are what sell best at the oldest poetry bookshop in USA: the Grolier.
One writer from ‘the mother of the world’ says few people can read his language correctly, he insists he be one to do so. As he recites in a favorite bookstore, he almost sings, and he says his voice used to be more beautiful fifty years ago, when his first book was published. He answers our questions in his language, holding our eyes throughout. Do we understand? The moderator says she has been trembling sitting beside him, sees him as a ‘giant mountain… like Tai Mo Shan’. How does she see herself?
In a lecture room for a recitation, the speaker wants to close the upright monitor bolted to the lectern. He seems to dislike the computer, tries to ignore it, tells us to ignore it.
In his eighty years, he has lived with mountains, with sea, with shamans, with professors, with wives, with friends, with word, with the pre-verbal; and it seems we can live with this voice, for days, for years, for humor, for the many connections.
He says good (fiction) writing is like good storytelling, good (poetry) writing is like good singing, and that it is best to let writing sit for a year before publication. He says so many things, that poetry gives ‘soul to history… strengthens the community… intensifies human bonds, and heightens the life of the spirit… It has done the world much good…’
He hopes we all have the chance to be out on the open sea, that very large space, ‘we all need that once in a while’. He still has his papers as a seaman.
Another dinner. Afterwards, we talk about the Pacific: most of us live near the edges of this many-named body of water. One writer now believes what his mother said: that they can walk from Canada to Manila if there are enough days. Another threw up food, then bile, then blood, the first time he was out at sea. He then repeated this,
spiritually, to write his first best work. Two writers think of Keats: ‘Then felt I like some watcher of the skies / When a new planet swims into his ken’.
One writer took up fishing, at age four, to get away from eating any more canned corned hash. Another, also living in North America, says, To jump from the Golden Gate Bridge, one has to decide: landward or seaward?
We hear a new short story, of meeting a man trapped in sand, of not freeing him, of telling this to his wife, who then says he does not love her.
We meet a guqin-playing mathematician man, hear him play the seven strings, fingers lifting at the tip, watch him leave the stage the same self-assured way he came: qin under arm. Now he moves his chopsticks from hand to fluttering hand.
After a closing dinner in a fourteenth-floor club, I take a bus home, the three-hundred-page memento book ‘The Other Voice’ in my hands, in my body. On page fifteen, the editor explains: ‘Between revolution and religion, poetry is the other voice… heretical and devout, innocent and perverted…’
I walk past palm, bougainvillea, a gun shop, three 7-Elevens.
I forget to close the door to my home when I sleep.
5 December 2009
Madeleine Marie Slavick, a writer living in Hong Kong, joined various events hosted by INTERNATIONAL WRITERS WORKSHOP, since 2004, an annual series by Hong Kong Baptist University, November - December 2009, www.iww.hkbu.edu.hk / INTERNATIONAL POETRY NIGHTS IN HONG KONG, organized by Chinese University of Hong Kong, 26-29 November 2009, http://chinesestudies.cuhk.edu.hk/cuhk-portal/html/poetry2009 / OUTLOUD, since 1999, a monthly poetry reading, http://my.opera.com/PoetryOutLoud/blog / ARABIC NADWAH, since 2004, a monthly poetry meeting, www.arabicnadwah.com / KUBRICK POETRY, since 2006, a monthly poetry event, http://kubrickpoems.blogspot.com/
