Place: Miami

Weekly Dispatches from the Frontlines of World Literature

The latest literary news from North Macedonia, Latin America, and the Philippines!

This week, our Editors-at-Large take us to book fairs, awards ceremonies, and book launches. From celebrated poets and dearly departed essayists to up-and-coming novelists and prize-winning translators, read on to find out more!

Sofija Popovska, Editor-at-Large, reporting from North Macedonia

The recent publication of The Long Coming of the Fire, a collection of poems by Aco Šopov, translated from the Macedonian by Rawley Grau and Christina E. Kramer, was met with interest and celebration from Macedonian literary critics, journalists, and laymen alike. The book features a total of seventy-four poems, selected by Jasmina Šopova—daughter of the poet and established connoisseur of his work. A selection of Šopov’s poems in Kramer and Grau’s translation was featured in the Winter 2023 issue of Asymptote Journal.

Aco Šopov’s literary output is significant beyond its stylistic excellence and thematic range—it also marks the beginning of the modernist period in Macedonian culture. “His work,” writes N.M. for Nova Makedonija (New Macedonia), “is essential to a poetic movement that freed poetry from the grasp of both the folk oral tradition and the short-lived socialist-realist style, thus directing the [still] tenuous poetic tradition of authors writing in the newly minted Macedonian language towards the expansive spaces of modern European songmaking.” This swift evolution, propelled onwards by the “long strides” of Šopov’s visionary lyric, was the reason Macedonian literature managed to catch up with the still-relevant themes and styles of its European counterpart.

Now, 100 years after Šopov’s birth, the public at large can experience his unforgettable voice through The Long Coming of the Fire, a bilingual Macedonian-English edition published by Deep Vellum Press. In an unusual but successful move, the edition was translated via the synergy of three translators. In an interview organized by the Macedonian Academy of Sciences & Arts, Kramer explains that this translation resulted from the synergy of three unique approaches and skillsets: “Rawley [Grau], who translates poetry very well but doesn’t know Macedonian, me, who knows the Macedonian language very well but not how to translate poetry, and Jasmina, who weaved the threads together in a way that resulted in the creation of a team of translators.” Although, being a linguist, she would’ve “been more comfortable discussing Šopov’s use of nouns and verbs than his poetics”, Kramer notes that his images, recurrent within his poems, “subtly bind” the author’s inner workings to the outside world, creating poetry that is “simultaneously personal and universally human”. READ MORE…

Weekly Dispatches from the Front Lines of World Literature

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…

“The Illustrated Woman” by Guillermo Rosales Translated from the Spanish by Anna Kushner

Taking license with Ray Bradbury

If you ever pass through Citrus Park, I recommend that you not enter Miss Roberta Donovan’s bar. Keep going, at full speed, and try not to listen to the siren’s song of the women tattooed on that enormous madam. I had the bad luck of stopping in Citrus because my car broke down there. The radiator, the spark plugs, who knows what went wrong with my old ’69 Mazda. Today it’s gone forever in the sands of that ghost town.

Because, gentlemen, Citrus Park is a ghostly town. There are no garages, no markets, no pharmacies, no cafés: nothing. One glance is enough to understand that it’s completely uninhabited, perhaps due to those hurricanes in the early part of the century that beat the Florida coast with unusual fury. The houses are in ruins, the streets are made of white sand, and millions of gi­ant red ants crawl over everything in search of scarce shrubs found around the periphery. They’re enormous ants, perhaps the world’s largest, and they attack humans, leaving enormous terribly itchy welts. READ MORE…