June 30, 2015
"The Flame in the Grate: Uche Nduka's Surrealism" | essay by Joyelle McSweeney [link]
For an essay on several books by poet Uche Nduka, "The Flame in the Grate: Uche Nduka's Surrealism," by Joyelle McSweeney, go here:
Uche Nduka (Nigeria / lives USA) 1963
Uche Nduka (Nigeria / lives USA)
1963
Born in Umuahia, Nigeria on October 14, 1963, Uche Nduka earned a B.A.
in English from the University of Nigeria, Nsukka in 1985. He worked as the
first Executive Secretary of the Associationof Nigerian Authors from 1987 to
1989, becoming the National Publicity secretary of the same organization from
1992 to 1995.
From 1995 to 2001 and again from 2003-2007, Nduka was a Lecturer in African Literature at the University of Bremmen, and lived in the Netherlands and Germany before moving to New York, where he currently lives.
His first
volume of poetry was Flower Child,
published in 1988, followed by Second Act
in 1994. Since then he has written seven further books of poetry: The Bremen Poems, Chiaroscuro (which won
the Association of Nigerian Authors Poetry Prize in 1997), If Only the Night, Heart’s Field, eel on reef and Ijele.
Nduka
edited two collections of poetry, Poets
in their Youth of 1988 and Und auf de
Straßen eine Pest: Junge Nigerianische Lyric in 1988.
In 2000 he
published Belltime Letters
commentaries and meditations in prose.
His work
has been translated extensively into German, Dutch, and other languages.
BOOKS OF POETRY
Flower
Child
(Lagos, Nigeria: Update Communications, 1988); Second Act (Lagos,
Nigeria: Journoblues Communications, 1994); The Bremen Poems (New Leaf
Press, 1995); Chiaroscoro (Bremen: Yeti Press, 1997); If Only the
Night (Sojourner Press); Heart’s Field (Bremen: Yeti Press, 2005); eel
on reef (Los Angeles: Black Goat, 2007); Tracers (Wheelhouse
Press, 2010); Ijele (Brooklyn:
Overpass Books, 2012) Nine East (SPM Publications: 2013); Living in
Public (2018); Facing You (San Francisco: City Lights, 2020)
For three poems by Uche Nduka, go here:
For three other poems by Nduka, click below:
Christian Uetz (Switzerland) 1963
Christian Uetz (Switzerland)
1963
Born in Egnach,
Switzerland on August 8, 1963, Christian Uetz received his teacher training in
Kreuzlinger, after studying philosophy, comparative literature, and ancient
Greet at the University of Zurich.
His first
book of poetry, Luren appeared in
1993, and since then he has published several other collections of poetry.
Since 1998 he has lived as a freelance writer in Zurich, where he also become a poet-performer. In 2011 he published two fictions, Nur Du, und nur Ich and Federer für alle. Since then he has continued to work in fiction, penning Sunderwarumbe (2012) and Es passierte (2015). Besides poetry and fiction, he has published several audio works, Nichte und andere Gedichte (1999), Live im Schiffbau (2002), and Mysterienspiel live in der Jesuitenkirche (2003).
In 2011 Uetz published his first fiction Nur Du, und nur Ich (Zurich: Secession Verlag).
Uetz has won several major literary
awards, including the Prize of the Ingeborg Backmann Competition in 1999, the
Internationa Lake Constance Conference Award in 2001, an Award from the City of
Zurick in 2002, the Thurgau Cultural Award in 2005, and The Prize of the
Federation of German Industry in 2005.
BOOKS OF POETRY
Luren. (Frauenfeld: Im Waldgut, 1993); Luren und Reeden. Zwei
Gedichtbände in einem (Frauenfeld: Im Waldgut, 1994); M.T. (Teil 2 von
7) (Siegendorf,:NN-Fabrik, 1998)[with a CD]; Nichte (Graz: Droschl,
1998); Zoom Nicht (Graz: Dorschl, 1999); Don San Juan (Frankfurt
am Main: Suhrkamp, 2002); Das Sternbild versingt (Frankfurt am Main:
Suhrkamp, 2004)
Arseny Tarkovsky (USSR / Russia) 1907-1989
Arseny Tarkovsky (USSR / Russia)
1907-1989
Born on June 25,
1907 in the Ukranian city of Elisavetgrad (now Kirovoohrad) to a bank clerk,
Aleksander, who was also a revolutionary and amateur actor. In 1921 he and
several friends published an acrostic poem about Lenin, and the group was
arrested and sent to Nikolayev for execution. Only Tarkovsky escaped.
In 1923 Tarkovsky moved to Mosscow, where
he would live for much of the rest of his life, where he worked as a newspaper
journalist for the railroad workers, Gudok.
There he established an editorial section dedicated to verse.
From 1925-1929 the young poet studied at a Moscow university, a student for some time of the playwright Ivan Karpenko-Kary. By the late 1930s he had become a noted scholar and translator of several languages, including Turkmen, Georgian, Armenian, and Arabic, publishing poetry by Abu'l-Ala-Al-Ma'arri, Nizami, Magtymguly, Kemine, Sayat-Nova, Vazha-Pshavela, Adam Mickiewicz, Mollanepes, and Grigol Orbeliani.
During the
Second World War, Tarkovsky served as a war correspondent for the Soviet Army
publication Battle Alarm. Seriously
wounded in the War, Tarkovsky developed gangrene in his leg and had to undergo
six different amputations. He received the Order the Red Star for valor.
Living
through that experience, the poet came to write some of his most well-known
poems. His first book was scheduled to be published in 1946 but with the attack
of Anddrei Zhdanov against major Soviet writers such as Anna Akhmatova and
Mikhail Zoshcenko, the book was abandoned. Indeed, although known as one of the
most important poets of the period, Tarkovsky was unable to publish a
collection until Before Snow in 1962,
when Tarkovsky was 55. That book and the
rise of his son, the filmmaker Andrei, brought him international acclaim.
Yet among
his peers Tarkovsky had developed a remarkable reputation. As Akhmatova
described him in a later interview, “he was the one ‘real poet’ in the Soviet
Union. And as the critic Yuri Kublanovsky wrote in his introduction to the
complete works of Tarkovsky in Russian:
Tarkovsky managed to keep his creative mind un-
damaged and free. What I mean, of course, is not
just freedom from propaganda, but also the principal
freedom, inner freedom, the one defined by Blok was
the secret freedom of humanity. Somehow he never
succumbed to the temptation of pleasing—not only
damaged and free. What I mean, of course, is not
just freedom from propaganda, but also the principal
freedom, inner freedom, the one defined by Blok was
the secret freedom of humanity. Somehow he never
succumbed to the temptation of pleasing—not only
the criminal authorities, but also to a more subtle
temptation of pleasing the reading public—of tuning,
half-consciously, while writing, to their demands.
temptation of pleasing the reading public—of tuning,
half-consciously, while writing, to their demands.
Many poets and critics have seen Tarkovsky’s work as a
continuation of translators Philip Metres and Dimitri Psurtsev have described
as Mandelstam’s “poetic and cultural surgery.”
Tarkovsky
died on May 27, 1989 in Moscow.
BOOKS OF POETRY
Перед снегом (Before snow) (1962); Земле земное (To
Earth Its Own) (1966); Вестник (Messenger)
(1969); Стихотворения (Poems) (1974);Зимний день (Winter Day) (Moscow:
Sovetskii pisatel, 1980); Избранное (Selected works) (1982); Стихи разных лет (Poems
of different years) (Moscow: Izd-vo “Sovremennik,” 1983) [compilation of early
verse]; От юности до старости (From Youth to Old Age) (Moscow: Sovetskii
pisatel, 1987); Благословенный Свет (The Blessed Light) (1993 -posthumously)
ENGLISH LANGUAGE TRANSLATIONS
Richard McKane (trans.) Poems (Emscotet Lawn, Warwick, England: Grnville Press, 1992); Virginia
Rounding (trans.) Life, Life: Selected
Poems (Crescent Moon Press, 2007); Philip Metres and Dimitri Psurtsev
(trans.) I Burned at the Feast: Selected
Poems of Arseny Tarkovsky (Cleveland, Ohio: Cleveland State University
Poetry Center, 2015)
For
a poem, “On a Bank,” published in English in The New York Review of Books, click below:
For another
selection of poems in English, go here:
http://www.connotationpress.com/a-poetry-congeries-with-john-hoppenthaler/2014-07-31-16-08-50/july-2013/1940-arseny-tarkovsky-translated-by-dimitri-psurtsev-poetry
For the poem, “First
Dates,” also appearing in Andrei Tarkovsky’s film The Mirror, go here:
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